Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/269

Rh has been conjectured that this block may have been one of Gutenberg's earlier experiments in printing. Apart from the similarity of the characters, there is no warrant for this conjecture. This similarity is entirely insufficient as evidence; it is not even proof of age. The block was probably engraved during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.

Koning, author of a treatise on early printing in Holland, has given in his book the fac-simile, which is here copied, of a fragment of a leaf from a xylographic Donatus. It was taken from the cover of a book printed by Gerard Leeu, of Antwerp, in 1490. Koning says that the fashion of the letters in this book is like that of letters in the manuscripts of Holland during the fifteenth century, and that they closely resemble the engraved letters of one edition of the Ars Moriendi. Holtrop gives a fac-simile of the entire page of a xylographic Donatus with similar letters, which he claims as a piece of early Dutch printing.

The arrangement of words in Koning's fac-simile of this fragment cannot be passed by without notice. The words are more readable than those of many block-books, but I have reset a small portion in modern type, that they might be more clearly contrasted with the modern method of composition. The words that do not appear in the mutilated fragment given by Koning are restored from the perfect copy of Holtrop.