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HISTORY] signatures, without printed initial directors, without printed catchwords; in short, without any of those characteristics which we see gradually, one after the other, come into almost general use when printing becomes more developed, that is from 1473 (if not earlier) to 1480. Hence a comparison of the Speculum, Donatus and Doctrinale editions, printed in the Speculum and other types, with the Gutenberg and Schoeffer Donatuses and their other books enumerated above, shows that the types, mode of printing and workmanship of all these books stand on nearly the same primitive stage. Yet there is a considerable difference between the productions of the three offices, those of the Haarlem office being more primitive than any of the other two. First of all the types of the Costeriana (which have nothing in common with any of those used in the Netherlands after 1471), show by their t with the perpendicular stroke attached to its cross-bar, the r with a curl, and the signs of contraction connected by a fine link to the tops of the letters over which they stand, that they were manufactured during the MS. and block-printing periods of Holland. Secondly, none of the Costeriana have any hyphens, which, in the Gutenberg and Schoeffer incunabula appear already from the beginning. Thirdly, the five editions of the Speculum are all printed anopisthographically (that is, on one side), the woodcuts at the top of the pages as well as the explanatory text underneath, which would hardly be the case if they had been printed after 1471, when the printing of woodcuts, together with text in movable types, on both sides of the leaf, was no longer a novelty. None of them have any colophon (except such a word as explicit), which would, for a collection of nearly 50 books, be incompatible with a period after 1471, but not with the earlier period of the blockbooks and MSS. Moreover, of the 50 no less than 38 are printed on vellum, which is incompatible with a. period after 1471 and even earlier, when printing on paper had become universal, but not with the earlier period of the MSS. Therefore, those who wish to date the Donatuses, ascribed to Gutenberg, before 1450, or before 1447, must not forget that the more primitive editions of the Speculum, Donatus and Doctrinale printed in types I. and II. &c. can also be dated before 1450 or 1447; and when once so much is admitted, there is no reason to reject Zell’s statement that the Donatuses printed in Holland served as models to Mainz printing.

In addition to the above considerations, there is the remarkable fact that the chief productions of the three earliest printing-offices are editions of Donatus, all printed on vellum. This fact has become more conspicuous by the discovery in recent years, in various parts of Holland and Germany, of a multitude of fragments of different editions of this schoolbook. Of the Haarlem office we know 23 editions; 13 are ascribed to Gutenberg; 9 we have in the Schoeffer or B42 type. The production of so many editions, all about the same time in the infancy of printing and in two different places, so widely apart from each other as Haarlem and Mainz, cannot have been an accident or coincidence, but suggests some connexion, some links between the three or more offices that produced them. One link we find in Ulrich Zell’s statement that the Donatuses printed in Holland were the models for Mainz printing, another in the Haarlem tradition, as narrated by Junius, that one of Coster’s workmen, taking his master’s types and tools, went with them to Mainz and settled there as a printer. These two statements go far to explain not only how the art of printing was transferred from Haarlem to Mainz, but how, at the latter place, it was thought expedient to continue the printing of Donatuses begun at Haarlem. Bearing this obvious connexion between the three earliest offices in mind, and also that the books of the printer of the Speculum show that he could not have learnt his art at Mainz or any other place, the only question really is: Can the Costeriana, or some of them, by placing an interval between them, be dated so far back that they may be placed before the certain or speculative dates now attributed to books or broadsides printed at, or ascribed to Mainz. In our former edition, when only 20 Costerian editions of Donatus were known, and no earlier final date than 1474, we suggested an interval of 18 months between each of them, giving about 30 years, from 1474 back to 1445, for the issue of all the Donatuses. We now know 23 editions, and 1472 as final date for the existence of all the types, though, of course, some of the editions may have appeared after this year. Therefore, our interval need not be longer than about 15 months, which makes a stretch of nearly 29 years from 1472 back to 1443. As to an interval between the types, an eminent type-founder, Dr Ch. Enschedé of Haarlem, when dealing with Coster’s types (in his treatise Laurens Jansz. Coster de uitvinder van de boekdrukkunst,

Haarlem, 1904, p. 28), reminds us of three printers (Eckert van Homberch of Delft, Govaert Bac and Willem Vorsterman, of Antwerp), who used one type all the time that they were printing (which means 23 years for the first and 19 for the second), and declares that we could not possibly put a shorter interval than 6 years between each type. As there are seven Costerian types, such an interval would mean a period of 42 years, from 1472 back to 1430, hence only four and a half years (= 31 years) between each type would suffice to reach the year 1440.

These calculations, however, include the Abecedarium (i.), Valla (v.), Pontanus (vi.) and Saliceto (vii.) types. and, as has been pointed out above there is no absolute proof that these four also belonged to the printer of the Speculum. Types v., vi., and vii. cannot be separated, and two circumstances, mentioned above, make it more than probable that they did belong to him. But the Abecedarium type can be ascribed to the Speculum printer on no other grounds than that it has all the characteristics of the Costerian types; that it is too primitive to be attributed to any later Dutch printer, so far as we know them, and that the Abecedarium printed with it, was discovered at Haarlem in a Dutch MS. which belonged to a Haarlem family.

Hence a computation based on the five Speculum editions (all printed and issued at least before 1471), the 12 editions of Donatus and four editions of the Doctrinale printed in the same types might be more convincing to the opponents of Haarlem’s claims. Apart from the final date (1471) for them there is also evidence that the Speculum type 1 existed a considerable time before 1474, as in that year the bookbinder Cornelis used fragments of a Donatus printed in that type in the binding of an account book of the cathedral church at Haarlem. Their types and workmanship, moreover, compel us to place them before the Valla, Pontanus and Saliceto (or Pius) types. The last two, employed together in one book, cannot have been used for this book before 1458, as it bears the name of Pope Pius II., who was not elected till that year, but it is certain that it cannot have been printed after 1472. The Valla type, however, existed before the Pontanus and Saliceto types, as four capitals of the former were used to supply the want of such capitals in the Pontanus type.

If then, as suggested by Enschedé, the type-founder, an interval of six years is placed between the three Speculum types, it would mean 18 years, or a period from 1471 back to 1453. A similar number of years we obtain by intervals of 18 months between each of the 12 editions of Donatus printed in type 1. Even this moderate calculation makes it plain that the printer of the Speculum must have begun printing at least about the same time that printing began at Mainz. But we have seen above that this printer did not hesitate to make up complete copies of his books by mixing sheets of a later edition, printed in a different type, with those of an earlier edition, and even mixed type-printed with xylographically printed sheets. A printer so carefully and economically husbanding his stock of sheets is not likely to have printed new editions of his books before the old ones were fully sold off, or to have manufactured new types till his old ones were used up. Moreover, Haarlem, a quiet provincial town, could not have been a favourable market for a rapid sale of books, especially not for books in the vernacular, like the Dutch versions of the Speculum. Hence we should not put too short an interval either between his editions or his types.

As (e.g.) Gerard Leeu printed at Gouda, during the six years 1477 to 1482, 17, mostly bulky, volumes, together consisting of 2968 leaves, or nearly 6000 folio pages, all in one type, we need not hesitate to place at least eight or nine years between each of the three Speculum types, that is together 24 or 27 years from 147I back to 1447 or 1444. It is true, the types manufactured after, say 1477, may have been more enduring than the earlier types, as being, perhaps, cast of better material and by a more perfect process than those of Coster, but the number of pages printed by the latter with the three Speculum types, barely amounts, so far as we know, to a tenth part (600 pages) of Gerard Leeu’s work. Our calculations are, of course, liable to modification or alteration; earlier dates may yet be discovered in the Costeriana or in other documents; more editions of Donatus in the same types may be found, which would shorten the intervals. But we have shown that, without straining chronology, bibliography or typology, the Costeriana can be dated back so as to harmonize with any historical date, Dutch (1440, 1446) or German (1450), known at the present time, or so as to precede even the speculative dates (1447 or 1444) assigned to some Gutenberg products.

There is therefore no reason to discredit Zell’s statement in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, that the Donatuses printed in Holland were anterior to, and the models for, the art of printing at Mainz, or that of Hadrianus Junius in his Batavia, that printing was invented at Haarlem by Lourens Janszoon Coster, and that the Speculum

was one of his first productions. The two statements were made independently of each other. But even without