belief that the greater part of all the stories relating to Coster are pure fabrications, and that the majority even of the block books, and probably also of the "Donatuses," were really produced at a later date than the Mazarin Bible and the Mentz Psalter.[1]
The known facts respecting Gutenberg and his relations with Fust and Schoyffer are almost equally rare. It is curious that we derive our whole information as to the invention of printing by Gutenberg to three pieces of documentary evidence, and that two of these three have recently failed us, whilst the third is not contemporary. I am indebted to Mr. Hessels, late of the Cambridge University Library, for this note. The three sources mentioned were, first a book in the Strasburg Library, which gave an account of a lawsuit in which Gutenberg was engaged while living there; this has disappeared with the rest of that ill-fated collection, and it was at best but second-hand evidence, for it only purported to have been early copied from an older original. Secondly, there was a volume, the "Speculum Sacerdotum," in the Mentz Library, which contained a MS. inscription presenting it to the monastery by "Johannes de Bono Monte." This book also has disappeared. The only copy of it now known to exist was among the Loan Collection. It belongs, like so many other unique books, to the Rev. J. Fuller Russell, F.S.A. Thirdly, and this is all that remains to us, in a very common book printed in or about 1515, and written by Trithemius, the "Chronicon Spanheimense," the author under the year 1450 refers to the invention of printing as having been made anew about that time by "one John Gutenberg." It is not easy to understand the word anew in this account; but in another of the same writer's books, the "Compendium de Origine Francorum," printed by John Schoyffer in 1515, there is a long colophon, describing the invention as having been made by the said John Schoyffer's father Peter, and his partner Fust; and there is no mention of Gutenberg, although the colophon was in all probability written by Trithemius himself. After this date we have numerous references to Gutenberg; but it is almost impossible to identify any book as his undoubted handiwork.
In the following list I have placed under his name a number of almost unique books, which are usually attributed
- ↑ These lines were written before the appearance of Mr. Hessels's book.
