With reference to the 5th point, the invention of metal types,—whether cut or cast Junius does not say,—Henry Spiegel, senator of Amsterdam (b. 1549, d. 1612), states in his Dutch poem Hertspiegel.
“Thou first, Laurentius, to supply the defect of wooden tablets, adoptedst wooden types, and afterwards didst connect them with a thread, to imitate writing. A treacherous servant surreptitiously obtained the honor of the discovery: but truth itself, though destitute of common and wide spread fame, truth I say, still remains.”
This Spiegel was a personal friend of Coornhert, and it may be presumed consulted him respecting Junius’s account of the origin of printing at Haarlem. Of metal types he makes no mention; but if the traditions of Haarlem at that time gave Laurentius the credit of their invention, it is altogether unaccountable why Spiegel omitted so noteworthy a circumstance. He probably rejected, on Coornhert’s authority, what Junius had written on that part of the subject.
Junius’s story of the theft of Coster’s types and implements is confused and contradictory. For supposing for a moment that Coster was the printer of the Mirror of Salvation, and that the types were made of pewter; if all that had been cast for printing, (at the most not more than two pages at a time), had been carried away, together with the punches, matrices, &c., how came the wine-pots, alleged to be still in existence when Junius wrote, to be made of them when they became waste metal? These wine-pots afford grounds for the assertion, by later writers, that the art continued to be practised by the Coster family after the alleged theft; but that assertion is contradicted by the statements elsewhere made. Of the theft itself there is no proof. The records of the city have been searched in vain for evidence of any such robbery. And the search has been equally fruitless for evidence of any such invention. As to the latter, the wine-pots are the chief witnesses. They were said to be kept in the house inhabited by Laurent Coster’s great-grandson Gerard Thomas; they could be appealed to; but what then? their evidence is not even as valuable as that adduced by the school boy who claimed to be the carver of a certain piece of wood-work, “and here,” said he, “is the very knife with which I did it.” In the boy’s case it could at least be shewn, that the knife was one with which the carving might have been executed; but it would be utterly impossible to prove, without other and more reliable evidence than the appearance of the pots themselves, that they had been the original prototypes of the art of Typography. Meerman, however, insists upon it that the Costers carried on the printing business at Haarlem until about the year 1472, when a better method having been introduced by disciples of the Mentz school, they sold off their stock and retired. But all these allegations are based upon suppositions; there is no proof whatever that such was the case: only, it is evident that some such story must be contrived, in order to account for the pewter wine-pots being manufactured out of the waste and worn-out types. But then the part of the narrative of Junius where the wine-pots are alluded to, does not tally with that other part, wherein it is stated that the thief and his accomplice decamped with “the collection of types, and all the implements his master had got together.” For Junius does not say, that Laurentius Janssoen Coster got together fresh implements, and made new types; nor does he intimate that his family did so after his decease. On the contrary, he speaks of the theft as an irreparable loss, the thought of which made the old book-binder Cornelius, curse with the greatest vehemence. This irascible garrulous old man is the same who, when a boy, is said to have been employed in Coster’s printing office, and who, when upwards of eighty years old, told the story to Nicholas Galius the old gentlemen of tenacious memory, who in his turn told it to his pupil Junius. It is plain that the sole object of the original tellers of the story of the stranger, servant, or thief, was to account for the otherwise inexplicable fact, that the world was persuaded that printing originated at Mentz, instead of, as the tradition-mongers would have it, at Haarlem.
It is singular that Van Zuyren and Coornhert make no mention of Coster and the wine-pots. They had had the house pointed out to them, where printing was said to have been invented and first practised in private and in a very rude and imperfect form; and if that house really belonged to the family of Laurent Janssoen, copies of the books printed,—the old types themselves,—the original prototypes of the art of Typography—ought surely to have been the pride and glory of the house, rather than pewter wine-pots, a common enough article of household furniture.
“But,” says Van Zuyren, “the house has long since been despoiled of its precious contents.” In his days then, and he is the earliest writer on the subject, the wine-pots did not exist; or if they did, and if they were known to be the re-shaped relics of the original metal types, how is his ignorance of their existence to be accounted for? He and Coornhert were both living and writing in the city at the same time with Junius, with whom, as one of the learned literati of the day, they could not but have been well acquainted, if not on intimate and friendly terms. After a long absence, Junius returned to the city where the others were born and bred, and where one of them, Van Zuyren, filled the office of Scabinus from 1549 to 1561, when he was advanced to the dignity of Burgomaster, (in which year his partner dedicated his work to him and the other officials of the city). How then came Junius alone to learn the history of Laurent Janssoen’s invention? and how is Van Zuyren and Coornhert’s silence to be accounted for, in regard to such important matters affecting Laurent the son of Jans, who filled the lucrative office of Coster of the great church; who was member of the great council, sheriff, sheriff-president, and finally treasurer of the city;—whose portrait was engraved, (or supposed to have been), along with those of Ouwater, Hemsen, Mandin, and Volkert, all eminent Haarlemese painters of the fifteenth century;—and whose history must have been well known to both, when they wrote, the one declaring “for the love of his country alone,”—and the other, “not because I am jealous of the glory of others, but because I love truth”? Where then was the love of country and the love of truth, if they omitted, or suppressed, the name of the man who invented the art, the glory of which they “could not consent should be effaced from the memory of men, and be buried in eternal oblivion; claims of which it is our duty to preserve the memorial, for the benefit of our latest posterity”?
There can be no doubt but that considerations of this nature have led older writers to express suspicions in regard to the authenticity of Junius’s narrative, and to believe that his manuscript was tampered with between the time of his death, and the publication of the work in which it appears; as well as to induce “misgivings” in the minds of learned Dutchmen of the present day “as to the ultimate result of full inquiry into the subject.”[89]
Admitting with the writers on the Haarlem side, that the Coster family was one of wealth and influence, how comes it, on the one hand, that the thief who stole the types and implements was not pursued, exposed and punished? or at any rate stripped of his stolen plumes, when so early as 1457 works were published in Mentz by printers who ascribed the whole merit of the invention to themselves?—and on the other, that having replaced the stolen types and other implements by new ones, and continuing to print until 1472, the descendants of Laurent never claimed the honor of the invention for themselves or their sire, although they must have known all along of what was taking place at Mentz,—where Faust and Schœffer were yearly publishing books with their names attached? How comes it that the family possessed no documents that in any way referred to the invention?—that they never kept by them copies of the works they are said to have printed?—that none of such works were known or found in Haarlem until 1654 or 1660, when a chestfull of old books without date or printer’s name was bought by the city authorities at a sale at the Hague—two centuries later, and at once attributed to them? How is it that no Dutch writer or printer, from 1441 to 1588, claimed the honor of the invention for his countryman Coster?—that neither Nicholas the son of Peter of Haarlem, who printed at Padua in 1476, and at Vicenza in 1477; Henri of Haarlem, who printed from 1482 to 1499 in different cities; and Gerard of Haarlem, who exercised the art at Florence in 1499, never claimed it for their brother citizen and birthplace? How comes it that the earliest known printers in Haarlem itself, John Andriesson and Jacob Bellaert, whose books are dated 1483 and 1485, are silent upon the subject?—that the first printers in Utrecht in 1473—and between that date and 1498, those of Alost, Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Culembourg, Delft, Deventer, Ghent, Gouda, Hertogenbosch, Leyden, Louvain, St. Maartensdyk, Niemegen, Oudenarde, Schiedam, Schoonhoven, Zwolle, and elsewhere in Holland and the Low countries, make no mention of it?—and that nothing whatever is known of any of the “multiplied workmen,” and “dependents,” whom Laurent Janssoen Coster, it is alleged, was obliged to employ to meet the demands made upon him by purchasers for copies of the products of the newly invented art? How, finally, is it to be accounted for, that while Coster’s descendants were living in Haarlem, when Van Zuyren, Coornhert, and Junius, were writing their works, those writers omitted to make inquiry of any member of the family on a subject respecting which the family were the parties most interested, and could have given the most authentic information? Perhaps they did; and when they asked for the story of the invention, discovered that the family had, like Canning’s knife-grinder, “no story to tell.”
To the objections, that no printed book bears the name of Coster or his descendants, and that neither he nor they ever entered their protest against the pretensions of Mentz, Koning replies:[90]—“We agree that no such book has been found; but neither is any book to be found bearing the name of Gutenberg. Must we, on this account, strike his name out of the list of the first printers? The aim of the first printers was to imitate manuscripts, and to make their printed books pass for such; and therefore, lest their art should be found out, it behoved them to keep their names a profound secret.... The first inventor could have no idea of the astonishing influence which his art would have in the world in future ages; and no person can feel surprise that he did not affix his name to his first essays.