of this book resemble those of the Speculum, but they are sufficiently unlike to establish the fact that they could not have been cast from the matrices used for the Speculum. This edition of the Doctrinal could not have been printed at Mentz.
The zealous indignation of Cornelis does not compensate us for his mysterious concealment of the name of the thief.[1] His evidence is extremely unsatisfactory. Cornelis, who was in the employ of Coster when the theft was made, who knew the process, who bound the printed work, who was an old resident of Haarlem, who had business relations with every printer that succeeded Coster, of all men, should have been the one most
- ↑ The story of theft is not only improbable, but it is unsupported by external evidence. Jacobus Koning, a diligent searcher in the archives of Haarlem, discovered that, on and after Christmas day, 1440, the constabulary of Haarlem were often sent to Amsterdam upon important business. The inference attempted is that the constables were in search of the workman who stole Coster's implements. The records do not say that they were sent for a thief. Their business was of another nature. There had been a great mortality in Haarlem, and the officers of the town had left it while the pestilence was raging. The journeys of the constables were made to the temporary residences of the magistrates who, from a more healthy city, sent directions for the government of the town. Koning knew this fact but suppressed it.
The accusation of unfair practice, is frequently made by men who have been defeated in a fair contest. Whenever such an accusation is accompanied, as it was in this instance, with dramatic details, it effects a lodgment in the popular belief, from which it is not easily removed. Junius was not the first, nor the last, to use this discreditable but effective method of making-up a case. There is an old French record which narrates how Nicholas Jenson was sent from Paris to Mentz in the year 1458 to get a knowledge of the German invention. Jenson did acquire this knowledge, and became an eminent printer. His detractors say that he stole the secret; his eulogists say that he learned nothing, that he was the real inventor.—The story of Richard Atkyns about the English theft is too full of absurdities for criticism.—Sometime between 1520 and 1570, Daniel Specklin wrote a chronicle of Strasburg, in which he relates that printing was invented at that city in the year 1440, by John Mentel; that Mentel's unfaithful servant, one John Gensfleisch, stole the secret, not the punches, and took it to Mentz.—There is a popular legend in Italy that Pamphilo Castaldi invented printing types at Feltre in the year 1450; that John Fust, who happened to be in the town, abstracted the knowledge of the invention, carried it to Mentz, and arrogated all the honors of the rightful inventor.
