Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length.”
And patriotic Dutchmen in the nineteenth century, with a full reliance on the stability of the structure thus raised, have struck medals, put up tablets, and erected monuments, commemorative of the memory of the “immortal and incomparable Laurent Janssoen,” and the art he is alleged to have invented, with an enthusiasm strangely at variance with their utter ignorance of the man and his invention for upwards of a century after his death.[107]
Of a very different opinion however was Erasmus, who, it may fairly be presumed, was not left unacquainted by his secretary, Talesius, with the tradition which assigned to Haarlem and Coster the origin of printing; but who shewed, by his public declarations assigning that honor to Mentz, that he deemed the tradition unworthy of belief, and destitute of even a basis of truth. Of a different opinion too, was Van Opmer, who must have been aware of the statements put forth in Coornhert’s edition of Cicero’s Offices, and had opportunity of judging of their truth; although Spiegel, living at the same time and in the same city with Opmer, adopted them, and asserted Laurentius to be the inventor of separable wooden types. Carl Van Mander, however, a later writer, pursuing his investigations in the city of Haarlem, while preparing the materials for his History of the Lives of Painters and Engravers, which was printed there about 1605, is as silent on the subject of Coster, as Prior Gerbrant.
Notwithstanding all this, Meerman and the multitude who follow in his wake, cling to their faith in Junius. His assertions, contradictory as they have been shewn to be, to those of writers immediately preceding him, outweigh with them all other evidence. Enough for them the support he receives in the testimony of Ulric Zell and Mariangelus Accursius. The reader has that testimony before him, and can form his own estimate of its weight on the Costerian side of the balance. Zell is the only authority for the statement that Block-book Donatuses were first printed in Holland. Accursius but recapitulates Zell’s words, upon a Donatus which he states was printed by Faust at Mentz in 1450. Zell was a Fleming, and although he learned the art of printing at Mentz and carried it thence to Cologne, he had without doubt his national partialities; his account is not however borne out by that of Schœffer, given to Abbot Trithemius in 1484, although the two statements are not contradictory. Neither do they contradict the account of the origin of the art as stated by Bergel. Each may supplement the other. The first idea of printing may have occurred to Gutenberg from the impressions made in wax by his signet ring, and his cogitations upon the subject have been further confirmed by Block-books bought at Aix-la-Chapelle. It may therefore be admitted, that Block-book Donatuses were printed and sold in Holland, prior to 1436. But what then? Haarlem is not Holland, any more than Liverpool is England. And to argue that if such books were printed in Holland, they must therefore have been produced at Haarlem;[108] and if the work of a Hollander, why not of Coster?[109] is simply to attempt to cut through a difficulty which has defied every other effort to penetrate or solve; and moreover it leaves untouched the question, whether separable types were first made in Germany or Holland, which is the hinge whereon the whole controversy in regard to the origin of Typography turns.
But Junius specifies the “Mirror of Human Salvation,” as a work, the like of which, or of which sort, was the work which had been printed by Coster:—a work with wood-cut figures and descriptive text below, and printed on one side only. There were several works of this kind known; and although some have been alluded to in the previous chapters, a more extended notice of them may here be given.
Temptationes Demonis; a large block covering one side of an entire sheet of paper, and containing texts of Scripture, with figures of angels and devils.
Donatus, de Octo Partibus Orationis.