public who clamored for them should have persuaded Coster's successors to fill their wants. The new art of printing which found so many admirers should not have been completely forgotten fifty years afterward. There is nothing in the story of Junius to satisfy these doubts. If we accept his account of the invention, we must rest contented with the belief that typography in Haarlem died as suddenly as it was born, leaving behind as its only relics one edition of the Speculum and the old wine-flagons of Thomaszoon. The same strange fatality followed the alleged thief John who fled to Mentz and printed two books in 1442. Immediately after, his types, his peculiar process and his printed books disappear forever.
The improbable features of this legend were not seen in the uncritical age in which Batavia was written. Patriotic Dutchmen did not wish to see them. Holland, at the close of the sixteenth century, was flushed with pride at her successful resistance to the power of Spain. Grateful to the men who had made her famous, she exaggerated the services of all her eminent sons. Coster was not forgotten. The name of Junius gave authority to the Haarlem legend, and the story of Coster was read and believed throughout the Netherlands. There were dramatic features connected with it which pleased the imagination and fastened themselves to the memory. To people who had no opportunity to examine the evidences, the legend of Haarlem soon became an article of national faith, to disbelieve which was to be disloyal and unpatriotic. But this enthusiasm would have subsided if it had not been nourished. If subsequent writers had added nothing to this legend of Junius, it would not be necessary to write more about it. Long ago it would have been put aside as untrue. But the legend has grown: it has been almost hidden under the additions that have been made to it. The snow-ball has become a snow-heap. It is necessary to expose the falsity of the additions as well as of the legend, and to show how recklessly this chapter of the history of typography has been written.
