Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/336

 XVII

Van der Linde.

the year 1561, Jan Van Zuren and Dierick Coornhert, with other partners, set up a printing office in Haarlem. Van Zuren was a native and burgomaster of the town of Amsterdam; Coornhert, who was a notary and an engraver, is said to have been the instructor of the famous engraver Goltzius. Their first book was an edition of Cicero de Officiis, to which they prefixed the following quaint dedication:

To the burgomaster, sheriffs and councilors of the town of Haarlem, D. V. Coornhert wishes as his honorable and commanding masters, salvation to soul and body.

"I was often told, in good faith, honorable, wise, and prudent gentlemen, that the useful art of printing books was invented first of all here at Haarlem, although in a very crude way, as it is easier to improve on an invention than to invent; which art having been