Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/543

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As, therefore, all these suggestions do not weaken or invalidate Zell's testimony, we must see how far it harmonizes

with other circumstances and the testimonies xxxiv., xli. to xlix., which claim the honour of the invention for Haarlem in Holland.

The researches regarding the reputed Haarlem inventor have hitherto been made in an inadequately scientific manner, and it appears that, after Scriverius (1628) had pushed back, in spite of Junius, the date of the invention to 1420-1428, he and later Dutch authors on the subject mixed up two Haarlem citizens (a) Lourens Janszoon, who never bore the surname Coster: he is proved to have been sheriff, wine merchant and innkeeper from 1404 to 1439, and to have died in the latter year; (b) Lourens Janszoon Coster, authenticated by official documents as a chandler and innkeeper from 1436 to 1483, leaving Haarlem in the latter year. The name of this person and some genealogical particulars known of him seemed to agree with Junius's account and the Coster pedigree.

As the evidence for Haarlem's claims has been obscured by various adverse and not always intelligent criticisms, and

no less by imperfect and incorrect descriptions of the books on which they rest, we describe here, from autopsy, the types and books that have always been and still may be, on solid grounds, attributed to Coster, and which, for this reason, we continue to call Costeriana.