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272 in the composition and spelling of words, which prove that they must have been recomposed for this edition.

The Third Edition is in Dutch prose. The types are like those of the previous editions, with the exception of pages 49 and 60, which are printed in types of a smaller body. The face of the smaller types has all the peculiarities of the types of the earlier editions, and is apparently the work of the same letter-cutter. In the few known copies of this edition there are differences in typographic arrangement which show that types were altered between the first and the last impression.

The Fourth Edition is also in Dutch prose. All known copies of this edition are so badly printed that they have the appearance of spoiled or discarded sheets. Many authors have supposed that this must have been the first edition, and, perhaps, the first experiment with types; but a closer examination proves that the bad printing is owing, not so much to ignorance and to inexperience as to worn types and careless presswork—that this edition is really the last. The copy that is preserved by the city of Haarlem shows, in the handwriting of the sixteenth century, this inscription in Dutch: "The Speculum Salutis, the earliest production of Lourens Coster, the inventor of typography, who printed at Haarlem about the year 1440." Between the second and the third leaf has been inserted a portrait of Lourens Coster, "engraved by Vandervelde after Van Campen," with the words, in Latin, "Lourens Coster, of Haarlem, first inventor of the typographic art about the year 1440." Underneath this inscription is a Latin verse by Scriverius, in which he extols Coster as indisputably the inventor of typography. As the writing, the portrait, and the inscription were added a long time after the book had been printed, these additions cannot, consequently, be accepted as evidences of any real value.

Junius, the historian of Holland, writing in 1568, was the first to call attention to the Speculum. He noticed but one edition: it is not probable that he knew of the others. He said it was made by Coster from types of wood, in Haarlem,