Part 24
When strolling in the woods near the city, as citizens who enjoyed ease were accustomed to do after dinner and on holidays, it happened that he undertook as an experiment to fashion the bark of a beech tree in the form of letters. The letters so made he impressed the reverse way, consecutively, upon a leaf of paper, in little lines of one kind and another, and the kindness of his nature induced him to give them, as a keepsake, to the grandchildren of his son-in-law [Thomas Pieterzoon]. He had succeeded so happily in this that he aspired to greater things, as became a man of cultivated and enlarged capacities. By the aid of his son-in-law, Thomas Pieterzoon, to whom were left four children, most of whom attained the dignity of burgomaster (I say this that all the world may know that this art was invented in a reputable and honorable family, and not among plebeians), he invented, first of all, an ink thicker and more viscid than that of the scribes, for he found that the common ink spread or blotted. Thereupon he made, by the addition of letters, explanations for pictures engraved on wood.
Of this kind of printing I myself have seen some stamped block-books, the first essays of the art, printed on one side only, with the printed pages facing each other, and not upon both sides of the leaf. Among them was a book in the vernacular, written by an unknown author, bearing the title of _Spieghel onzer behoudenis_ [the edition in Dutch of the _Speculum Salutis_]. This book was among the _a b c s_ of the art—for an art is never perfected at its inception—and the blank sides of the leaf were united by paste, to hide the uncouthness of the unprinted pages. He subsequently changed the beech-wood letters for those of lead, and these again for letters of tin, because tin was a less flexible material, harder, and more durable. To this day may be seen in the very house itself, looking over on the market-place as I have said (inhabited afterward by his great-grandchild, Gerrit Thomaszoon, who departed this life but a few years since, and whom I mention only to honor), some very old wine flagons, which were made from the melting down of the remnants of these very types.
The new invention met with favor from the public, as it deserved, and the new merchandise, never before seen, attracted purchasers from every direction, and produced abundant profit. As the admiration of the art increased, the work increased. He added assistants to his band of workmen; and here may be found the cause of his troubles. Among these workmen was a certain John. Whether or not, as suspicion alleges, he was Faust[186]—inauspicious name for one who was [p332] equally unfortunate and unfaithful to his master—or whether he was another of the same name, I shall not trouble myself to ascertain—for, I am unwilling to disturb the _shades_ of the dead, inasmuch as _they_[187] must have suffered from the reproaches of conscience as long as _they_ lived. _This_ man, although bound by oath to [preserving the secrets of] the typographic art, when he knew himself to be perfectly skilled in the operations of type-setting, in the knowledge of type-founding, and in every other detail appertaining to the work, seized the first favorable opportunity—and he could not have found a time more favorable, for it was on the night of the anniversary of the nativity of Christ, when all, without distinction, are accustomed to assist at divine service—and flew into the closet of the types, and packed up the instruments used in making them that belonged to his master, and which had been made with his own hands, and immediately after slunk away from the house with the thief. He went first to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and finally regained Mentz, as it were to an altar of safety so it is said, and as if beyond all possibility of a recapture, where, having opened his office, he reaped an abundant reward from the fruits of his theft. That is to say, within the space of a year, or about 1442, it is well known that he published by the aid of the same types which Laurentius had used in Haarlem, the _Doctrinal_ of Alexander Gallus, the most popular grammar then in use, and also the _Treatises_ of Peter of Spain, which were his first publications.
These are the facts. Nearly all of them are from old men worthy of belief, who, each in turn, have accepted and transmitted them, as they would pass a lighted torch from hand to hand. I knew these facts long time ago, and have positive knowledge from other sources which have attested and confirmed them. I remember that Nicholas Gallius, the preceptor of my boyhood, a man of tenacious memory, and venerable with gray hairs, narrated these circumstances to me. He, when a boy, had more than once heard Cornelis, an old bookbinder and an under workman in the same printing office, when not an octogenarian and bowed down with years, recite all these details as he had received them from his master, embracing the inception of the enterprise, the growth and cultivation of the rude art, and other transactions connected therewith. But as often as he made mention of the theft, he involuntarily would burst into tears at the recollection of the infamy of the sequel; and then the anger of the old man [p334] would flash up, as he thought of the glory of the invention that had been stolen with the other theft; and he wished, if his life had been spared, that he might have been able to set forth the thief in irons, ready to be pronounced a subject for the executioner; and then again he was wont to consign his sacrilegious head to the direst punishment, and to curse and execrate the nights which he had passed upon the same bed for many months with that villain. These details do not disagree with the words of Quirinius Talesius, burgomaster; for I acknowledge that a long time ago I received nearly the same story from him as was received from the mouth of the bookbinder.[188]
The story of Junius is the real foundation of the modern legend of Haarlem. All that had been written before is of little value; all that has been written since is but in explanation of its obscurer features. Before any criticism is given [p335] to this important document, the capability and credibility of the learned author of _Batavia_ should be considered.
The learning of Junius cannot be questioned; but Junius must be judged not by his dead reputation, but by his living performance. _Batavia_, although written in unexceptionable classical Latin, is not a valuable, nor even a mediocre book. The author was not above the pedantry and the bad taste of his age. His book is full of classical allusions, lugged in, not to illustrate the subject, but to display the author’s omnivorous reading;[189] his style is rhetorical, and his arrangement of facts is bewildering. These faults would be overlooked, if we could be sure of his so-called facts; but one cannot read many pages of _Batavia_ without being convinced of the credulity of the author, and of the thorough untrustworthiness of many of his [p336] descriptions. His defenders must confess that the book would have been of higher authority, if he had been more chary of rhetoric and more exact in description.[190]
The fixing of the period in which the inventor lived seems to have been made with a studied carelessness and intended obscurity. If we deduct the 128 years from the year 1568, the year in which the manuscript of _Batavia_ was completed, we have the date 1440. In this year Coster lived. When he was born, when he died, and how long he had been occupied with the practice of printing, is not related. If we infer that Junius intended that this year 1440 should be considered as the year of Coster’s death, the inference is purely conjectural. He does not say so. It may be supposed, but it is not said, that Coster printed with types before 1440. Whatever may have been the intention of Junius, the year 1440 was at first accepted by the authorities of Haarlem as the true date of the [p337] invention of typography.[191] It was thought that the fixing of the invention within this year would sufficiently establish the priority of Coster, for the year 1442 was the date then assigned to the rival invention in Germany. The authority of Junius for the year 1440 was, no doubt, a pedigree of the Coster family, of which he makes no mention.
There are troublesome entanglements connected with this date of 1440. Subsequent defenders of the legend, who tried to supply the deficiencies and correct the errors of Junius, made discoveries which compelled them to acknowledge that Lourens Janszoon (supposed by them to be Lourens Janszoon Coster) died in the year 1439. If he died in 1439, and if we believe that the invention was made in 1440, then he did his typographic work in the year after his death.[192] The absurdity of this date was clearly perceived when it was afterward discovered that Gutenberg had been engaged as early as 1436 in experiments with printing. To preserve the appearance of probability, the date of the invention was removed to 1423, so as to allow Coster time for experiment and for the perfection of his invention.
The name of the inventor is as uncertain as the date of the invention. Junius names him Laurentius Johannes, surnamed Ædituus, or Custos. In the pedigree, the name was [p338] written Lourens Janssoens Coster. Surnames were not then in common use; the son was identified through a name which described him in words as the son of his father. Lourens Janssoen Coster is literally, Lourens, son of John, the keeper, or the sexton.[193] He is most widely known in typographical literature by the name of Coster.
By the record, it appears that Coster was both a printer and a publisher. He cut blocks and made types, he mixed printing inks, he printed books, he employed many workmen, he had an honorable reputation as a printer, he reaped abundant profit from the sale of his merchandise. These statements are inconsistent with the eulogy which represents him as an idle man who experimented with types for amusement.[194]
That Coster knew nothing whatever about printing when he took his walk in the wood may be properly inferred from a careful reading of the story. His experiments with bark seem to have surprised and amused him as much as they did his [p339] grandchildren. There is nothing unreasonable in this part of the legend, but faith fails us when Junius says that Coster printed his book with types of wood.[195] The statement must be put aside as entirely unworthy of belief, for it has been shown that types of wood are impracticable, and that the types of every known edition of the _Speculum_ were made of founded metal.
No part of Junius’s statement is more incredible than his description of the ease with which Coster solved the problem of typography. Coster knew nothing of printing; but having carved a few letters on bark, and having cherished the idea that books could be printed from single types, he undertook to make—not types, but wood-cuts. Eager to realize his idea of typography, he began work with a formidable task of engraving. Here is an absurdity. To design, engrave, and print the illustrations of the _Speculum_ was a task almost as great as that of making the types. If the engravings were not in the possession of Coster before he made this experiment (and Junius does not authorize this hypothesis), it is not possible that he could have added to his task by attempting so many large wood-cuts. What follows is equally incredible. He passed from the work of cutting letters and pictures to that of making types without hesitation or experimentation; [p340] he struck out the correct method of making the types at the outset. His only mistake with types was in the selection of materials; wood was laid aside for lead, and tin supplanted lead; his greatest difficulty was encountered in the manufacture of the ink. If this story is true, then typography was invented through inspiration, for its origin was unlike that of all great mechanical inventions.
Junius describes this pretended invention of typography, not as he knew it was done, but as he thought it should have been done. Ignorant of the necessity for that strict accuracy of body, which is the vital principle of typography, and which can be secured only by the most ingenious mechanism, he thought, as thousands have thought, that the merit of the invention consisted in the conception of the idea. The construction of the mechanism he has skipped over as a little matter of mechanical detail entirely unworthy of notice. He tells us nothing about it. He shows the extent of his reading and the weakness of his judgment, by treading in the footsteps of German authors who attempted to describe the German invention of typography, not from positive knowledge, but through the exercise of a lively imagination. He makes Coster follow the road which they say was taken by Gutenberg: first, the types of wood; then, engraved letters on blocks of wood; next, types of lead; lastly, types of tin.[196]
The artful insinuation that John Fust was the false workman is discreditable. Junius does not unequivocally say that Fust was the thief, but his language authorizes the calumny. That John Fust of Mentz could not have stolen the implements of Coster will be positively established by records of [p341] the highest authority. The Dutch historians of typography who defend the story of Junius, say that Junius did not know the name of the real thief, but that the name of Fust is properly inserted, because Fust was honored as the inventor of typography in Mentz; that there was, probably, a complicity between Fust and the false workman, and that Fust was, for that reason, properly mentioned as the real offender.[197]
The determination of Junius to fasten this theft on Fust is shown in his statement that the thief regained or returned to Mentz, as to “the altar of safety.” At that time Paris, Rome and Venice had more schools and scholars, more book-readers and buyers than Mentz, and offered greater inducements for the founding of a printing office. These were the cities to which printers from Mentz subsequently went, and to which a thievish printer from Haarlem should have gone. But Junius finds it necessary to send him to Mentz to explain the introduction of typography in Germany.
The charge of theft is not corroborated by the discoveries of bibliographers. The two books which Junius says were printed in Mentz in 1442, with the types of Coster, cannot be traced to Mentz. Fragments of a copy of the _Doctrinal_ of Alexander Gallus, the work of some unknown printer, have been found, not in Mentz, but in the Netherlands. The types [p342] 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.[198] 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 [p343] competent to describe the work of Coster. But the information that he has furnished through Junius is ridiculously trivial, scanty as to facts and dates, inconsistent, and, in some points, entirely untrue.
Before we accept all that Junius has said about Cornelis, it will be well to learn what we can about him from other sources. The first entry in an account book of the cathedral of Haarlem for the year 1474 is to this effect: “Item. . . . I have paid to Cornelis, the binder,[199] six Rhine florins for binding books.” Similar items, describing Cornelis as a bookbinder, are found in similar account books between the years 1485 and 1515. Payments were also recorded to Cornelis for coloring the initial letters of the “bulls of the indulgences.” After the year 1515 his name appears no longer as a bookbinder; in 1517 another binder did the work of the church. Seiz mentions an old book, printed by Jacob Bellaert of Haarlem in 1485, on the last leaf of which was written: “Bought at Haarlem in the Cruysstraet, of Cornelis the bookbinder, in May, 1492.” The register for the year 1522 contains this entry: “Cornelis the bookbinder was buried in the church. For the making of his grave, twenty pence.” There can be no doubt that there was a bookbinder Cornelis at Haarlem, and that the Cornelis of Junius is the Cornelis of the church record. The dates in these records will enable us to test the accuracy of one portion of the chronology of the legend.
Junius said that Cornelis told his story before he was an octogenarian. Eighty years might properly be considered as the limit of his life, which, according to the record, ended in 1522. If, to ascertain the date of the birth of Cornelis, we deduct eighty years from 1522, the result would show that he must have been born in 1442. But this was at least one year, perhaps two years, after the alleged theft. If Cornelis lived to the age of ninety years, the allowance of ten years more would not reconcile the discrepancy. Cornelis would have [p344] been a child of eight years of age; but the story of Junius requires, not a child, nor even a boy, but a man, an under-workman, the associate and room-mate of the false workman. To call it by the mildest name, here is a grievous blunder. The blunder is not in the record of the church, in which the chronology is consistent, for it represents Cornelis as beginning to work for the church when he was about thirty-two years of age. It would be a waste of time to show that the chronology of Junius is impossible: it is enough to say that the first link in the attempted chain is broken, and that Cornelis could not have been an eye-witness of the facts.[200]
It is a suspicious circumstance that the testimony of Cornelis should be recorded for the first time nearly half a century after his death. Hasback, Andrieszoon and Bellaert, the early printers of Haarlem, should have heard from Cornelis this story about Coster and his invention. The people of Haarlem, we are told, were proud of Coster, and envious of the honors conceded to Gutenberg. Why the printers and the people of Haarlem allowed the important testimony of Cornelis to remain unpublished for so long a time is a question that cannot be answered.
At this late day, it is impossible to discover the kernel of truth that may be concealed in the heart of so great a husk of fiction. It may be that Cornelis, who seems to have been a simple-minded man, and who appears as a binder in the church record about nine years before Bellaert opened his printing office, imagined that this first printing office in Haarlem was the first printing office on the globe. There may have been a theft of types and of secrets from the office of Jacob Bellaert at or about 1485. Cornelis blundered about dates, and his inaccuracies have been exaggerated by the gossip of the next generation. These are possible conjectures. [p345] But we must remember that this story of Cornelis is not told by himself, but by Junius.
One of the authorities referred to by Junius is Talesius, burgomaster of Haarlem when Junius was writing _Batavia_. In referring to him, Junius is careful in his choice of words. “My account does not disagree with that of Talesius. . . . I recollect that I have heard from him nearly the same story.” This is a timid assertion—one that Talesius could have modified in some of its features. Talesius himself has not spoken. Talesius was, in his youth, the secretary, and, in mature age, the intimate friend of Erasmus, to whom he must have spoken about the legend, but he did not make Erasmus believe it.[201]
The mysterious disappearance of the practice of the art from Haarlem is even more wonderful than its introduction. The tools may have been stolen, but the knowledge of the art must have remained. Coster may have died immediately after the theft, but his son-in-law Thomas Pieterzoon, and the workmen, who knew all about the details of typography, were living, and able to go on with the work.[202] The making of books may have been temporarily suspended, but the curious [p346] 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.
[p347]
XVIII
The Growth of the Legend.
Perversion by Bertius . . . Romance of Scriverius . . . Date of Invention removed to 1428 . . . Illustration of First Statue to Coster . . . Date of 1420 given by Boxhorn . . . Rooman’s Date of 1430 . . . History and Chronology of Seiz . . . Doubts of Hollanders . . . Discrepancies in the Dates on Medals . . . Meerman and his Unsatisfactory System . . . Fac-similes of Medals . . . Koning and his Prize Essay . . . Dr. De Vries’s Theory . . . Radical Disagreements of the Authors . . . All Versions Enlargements of the Legend as given by Junius . . . An Article of Patriotic Faith in Holland . . . Monuments to Coster . . . Illustration of Last Statue.
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Who is there that has not opinions planted in him by education time out of mind, which by that means came to be as the municipal laws of the country, which must not be questioned, but are to be looked on with reverence . . . when these opinions are but the traditional grave talk of those who receive them from hand to hand without ever examining them?
_Locke._
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