were sold at Messrs. Sotheby's in 1870 for £23 10s. 0d. There were sixteen in all, and a date was assigned to them in the Catalogue of circa 1350. They were probably not much later. It is quite possible that they were printed, not from blocks, but by means of stencil plates. Of wood cutting, proper, the Spencer St. Christopher is probably the earliest example in existence. It is dated "1423." To a date very little subsequent to this it is usual to assign the works of Lorenz Coster of Haarlem.
This semi-mythical personage lived between the end of the fourteenth century and the year 1440. I do not intend to enter at all upon the controversy respecting his claims to be the inventor of printing. I can, however, say, that, perhaps on account of my own neglect, perhaps for some other reason, I have not yet seen any production which could be satisfactorily traced to him; and notwithstanding the sometimes very positive statements of Ottley, and all that has been written upon the subject, I am sometimes inclined to regard the whole story of his invention as an invention itself.[1]
The only positive evidence we have as to the practice of a form of printing at that early date consists in the existence of such volumes as the Biblia Pauperum, the Apocalypsis, and other similar books of memoriæ technicæ for preachers, and of what are known as "Donatuses." Coster is said to have produced two editions of this grammar. Anything like a complete copy of one of these is quite unknown. M. Holtrop gives facsimiles of these, but the few leaves I have ever seen differed from his plates. It is possible that Coster printed this book, but I am strongly of opinion that his work never extended beyond a few pages at a time; that it was printed from blocks, not from moveable type; and that, therefore, the whole process was extremely awkward, and was confined to those few leaves which were necessary in the education of the young, and which were often repeated with more or less variation.
The whole story that Fust, or Gutenberg, or indeed any other person filched his secret from Coster and fled with it to Mentz, may be dismissed from our minds; and I may go further, and offer as a private opinion my very strong
- ↑ A notice of Mr. Hessel's translation of the learned work of Dr. Van der linde on this subject was printed in Arch. Journ., vol. xxviii. p. 341.
