Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/368

358 the art of printing with movable and cast letters, and so gave the example to Mentz. … In the beginning, the art was secretly practised as a trade in manuscripts, not only during the lifetime of the inventor, but by his successors after his death." De Vries placed the invention about 1423.

It is not necessary to protract this review of the different versions of the legend, nor yet to point out the fatal disagreements and inaccuracies of these versions. It is plain that all the authors who have maintained the claims of Coster have taken their leading facts from Junius. It is equally plain that they have been dissatisfied with his statements and have tried to fill up the gaps in the evidence with conjectures. But they have not made the legend any more credible. The exact nature and date of the invention, the name of the inventor, his method of making types, the books he printed, the thief who stole his process, the fate of his printing office, the total disappearance of the knowledge of the new art—these and other features of the positive statement first made by Junius are enveloped in as complete a mystery as they were when Batavia was written.

With all its inconsistencies and improbabilities, the legend has been accepted as essentially truthful by many eminent bibliographers in France and England. Of late years it has encountered but feeble opposition from German writers. In many modern books on printing, Coster has been recognized either as the inventor or as one of the co-inventors of the art. There has been a general belief that, however absurd the legend might be in some minor matters of detail, it had a nucleus of truth. Coster's place in typographical history, at the middle of the present century, seemed almost as firmly fixed as that of Gutenberg.

In Holland, this legend of the invention of printing by Coster was an article of national faith which only the bold man dared to deny. It has produced results which could never have been foreseen by the vain old man Gerrit Thomaszoon, in whose conceit the fable originated. Haarlem is dotted with