therefore not likely to have gone astray in this particular case. It has also been suggested that Zell most likely learnt his art in Fust and Schoeffer's office and invented the passage to injure the reputation of Gutenberg, who had been their enemy. Finally it has been said that Zell did not suggest or write the passage at all; but it is hard to see how this can be maintained in face of the compiler's own statement to that effect.
As, therefore, all these suggestions do not weaken or invalidate Zell's testimony, we must see how far it harmonizes Lourens Coster's Claims. with other circumstances and the testimonies xxxiv., xli. to xlix., which claim the honour of the invention for Haarlem in Holland.
Testimony xxxiv. (the Pedigree) is sufficiently clear as to the invention of printing at Haarlem, the supposed date and the name of its inventor. Testimonies xli. and xlii., though coming from Haarlem, do not mention the name of the inventor. But xli. is a mere introduction destined for a complete book that seems to have been lost during the siege of Haarlem in 1573 before it was printed; we are, therefore, not justified in saying that Van Zuren did not know the name; xlii. may have omitted the name, because the publication of Van Zuren's work was in contemplation at the time that it was written. That Guicciardini (testimony xliii.) in 1566 did not mention the name of the reputed Haarlem inventor cannot be considered as an indication that it was not known or had not yet been “invented” when he wrote, as his accounts of the cities of the northern Netherlands are all rather meagre and for the most part derived from correspondence. He and other authors coming after him (testimonies xlv.-xlvii.) state that the Haarlem inventor had died before the art was perfected, and that thereupon his servant had brought it to perfection at Mainz. We do not find any such statement in Junius. The latter's account (xliv.), however, gives various particulars as regards the inventor and his invention. He begins by referring to the difficulty of vindicating the honour of the invention for Haarlem on account of the deep-rooted and general opinion that it took place at Mainz. He then mentions that Lourens (son of jan) surnamed Coster resided at Haarlem “more than 128 years ago,” and gives us to understand that in the year indicated by that phrase he invented the art of printing. Junius's book was not published till after his death, in 1588, but its two prefaces are dated 1575 (he died June 16, 1575), hence the number 128 is supposed to go back from the date when he actually wrote his account, which he is calculated to have done about 1568. Thus we get the year 1440 as the supposed date of the Haarlem invention, though, if we based our calculation upon the date of the preface, the year 1446 or 1447 would have to be assumed. But, as Junius adds that Coster's types were stolen by one of his servants, who fled with them to Mainz, and, establishing there a printing-office, printed within a year's time, in 1442, two books, he must, if this latter date is correct, have meant 1440. By testimonies xlix. and l. we see that in the 17th century the date of the Haarlem invention was first put back as far as 1428, then to 1420; and since then it has usually been regarded as 1420-1423, especially after it was discovered that the Haarlem wood where Coster is said to have cut his wooden letters was destroyed during a siege in 1426.
The researches regarding the reputed Haarlem inventor have hitherto been made in an inadequately scientific manner, and it appears that, after Scriverius (1628) had pushed back, in spite of Junius, the date of the invention to 1420-1428, he and later Dutch authors on the subject mixed up two Haarlem citizens (a) Lourens Janszoon, who never bore the surname Coster: he is proved to have been sheriff, wine merchant and innkeeper from 1404 to 1439, and to have died in the latter year; (b) Lourens Janszoon Coster, authenticated by official documents as a chandler and innkeeper from 1436 to 1483, leaving Haarlem in the latter year. The name of this person and some genealogical particulars known of him seemed to agree with Junius's account and the Coster pedigree.
But recent investigations at Haarlem and elsewhere tend to show that there have been two, if not three, persons of this name living at Haarlem about the same time. Though this superabundance of namesakes shows that van der Linde and those who accepted his conclusions were gather hasty in declaring L. J. Coster to be a myth, it is somewhat perplexing to the historian, and it would seem that the Dutch people prefer to make speculations and guesses on this point, rather than search in some systematic way the original documents and registers from which they draw haphazard extracts. The result of the latest inquiries (so far as they may be called inquiries) is that L. J. Coster, who would agree with Junius's account and the Haarlem Coster pedigree, was a member of a Christmas-gild in 1436, is mentioned in the Haarlem registers as a dealer in candles and oil till 1454, and seems to have died before 1460 (see Fruin, De huidige stand van het Costervraagstuk, 1906; Enschedé, Laurens Jansz. Coster, 1904); so that his business as printer was probably continued by one of his relatives, and finally broken up about 1481, when the Speculum cuts are in the hands of Veldener.
Junius's account of the Haarlem invention is based on three books: (1) a Dutch edition of the Speculum humanae salvationis; (2) the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus; and (3) the Tracts of Petrus Hispanus (Pope John XXI.). The first work, he said, was printed by Coster as a first specimen of his art, and it would seem from his words that the tradition believed it to be printed with wooden types; the second and third books, he declares, were printed at Mainz with Coster's types, stolen from him by his workman. Of the Hispanus Tracts no edition answering to Junius's description has as yet come to light. Of the Doctrinale and the Speculum we possess editions which fit into his account, though, of course, it will be impossible to say whether any of the Doctrinale editions were printed at Haarlem or at Mainz. Various editions of the Latin grammar of Aelius Donatus, printed in the same types, link Junius's independent testimony regarding Haarlem and Coster on to that of Ulrich Zell, who declares in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 that editions of this school book printed in Holland were the models (prefiguration) for the printing at Mainz, which commenced about 1450.
As the evidence for Haarlem's claims has been obscured by various adverse and not always intelligent criticisms, and Costeriana. no less by imperfect and incorrect descriptions of the books on which they rest, we describe here, from autopsy, the types and books that have always been and still may be, on solid grounds, attributed to Coster, and which, for this reason, we continue to call Costeriana.
The Costeriana. Xylographic Printing.
Of the Speculum humanae salvationis, a folio Latin blockbook (that is, an edition printed entirely from wooden blocks) must have been printed several years before 1471, consisting, like the later type-printed Latin editions, of at least 32 sheets = 64 leaves, all printed on one side of the leaf only, alternately on the versos or rectos (therefore 64 printed pages). The sheets were, no doubt, arranged in the same number of quires (a3 for the preface; bcd7, e8 = 29 sheets for the text) as in the later editions; the first leaf was perhaps blank, the preface occupied the leaves 2 to 6, and 58 leaves remained for the 29 chapters of text, each occupying two opposite pages of two columns each. We may further assume that the upper part of each printed page of the text was occupied by one of the woodcuts, which we know from the later editions, and which are divided each into two compartments or scenes by a pillar, with a line or legend below each compartment explaining, in Latin, the subject of the engraving; and that underneath the woodcut was the text, in two columns, corresponding to the two divisions of the engraving above.
This blockbook has already been alluded to above among the Netherlandish blockbooks, but we give here further details, as various circumstances make it clear that it was the work of the same (Haarlem) printer who issued the other editions of the Speculum, together with the several incunabula described below, and to whom a Haarlem tradition ascribes the invention of printing.
All the Speculum editions which concern us contain, so far as we know, 29 chapters. But previous to the above blockbook another one of more than 29 chapters (may be 45, like most of the MSS.) must have existed, as may be inferred from Johan Veldener's 4to edition of a Dutch version of the Speculum, published in 1483, in which all the 58 blocks of the old folio editions reappear cut up into 116 halves to suit this smaller edition, besides twelve additional woodcuts for three additional chapters (the 25th, 28th and 29th) not found in any of the old folio editions. As these additional woodcuts appear to be also cut-up halves of six larger blocks, they point to the existence, at some earlier period, of a folio edition (xylochirographic or xylographic?) of at least 32 chapters, at present unknown to us.
Of the blockbook as is here assumed we know now only 10 sheets or 20 leaves, which, in combination with 22 sheets or 44 typographically printed leaves, make up an edition, called, on account of this mixture of xylography and typography, the mixed Latin edition. These twenty xylographic leaves are (counting the 6 leaves of the type-printed preface) 7 + 20, 8 + 19, 10 + 17, 11 + 16, 12 + 15, 13 + 14 (in quire b); 22 + 33, 23 + 32, 27 + 28 (in quire c); 52 + 61 (in quire e).
Copies of this mixed Latin edition still existing: (1) Bodleian Library, Oxford (Douce collection, 205), perfect; (2 and 3) Paris National Library, 2 copies, one perfect, the other wanting the first (blank) leaf; (4) John Rylands Library at Manchester (Spencer collection), wanting the first (blank) leaf; (5) Colonel Geo. Lindsay Holford, London, wanting the first (blank) leaf; (6) British Museum (Grenville collection), wanting the leaves 1 (blank) and 21 (this being supplied in facsimile); (7) Royal Public Library at Hanover, wanting the leaves 19 (xylogr.) and 24 (typ.), but having duplicates of the (xylogr.) leaves 15 and 28; (8) Museum Meerman- Westreenen, the Hague, wanting the leaves 1 to 36, and portions of the text of
