VOL. XXIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 8) 



account of the progress of this invention during an interval of more than 30 

 years. 



Boxhorn, as well as Schrevel and other authours, expressly say, that Koster 

 could not advance this invention so far as to print so large a work as the Spe- 

 culum Salutis, v.'ithout gradual improvements; and that his first essays were on 

 loose and small leaves of paper, before he attempted whole books. These 

 being loose and single are supposed to be all lost; but I once observed a loose 

 leaf of paper in octavo, lying in an old MS. breviary in her majesty's library at 

 St. James's, which I thought was one of Koster's first pieces, done when he 

 had attained to some experience in the art, and to get money. It is a small 

 rude wooden cut, of the five wounds of our blessed Saviour, and the instru- 

 ments of his passion, with a Latin inscription at the bottom, to this purport, 

 that those who should say so many Ave Marias before it, should have so many 

 thousand years of pardon. The ink used in this cut or print was writing ink, 

 and it was all black, without those other colours with which Koster seems after- 

 wards to have adorned his books. 



In the above-mentioned Boxhorn's book De Origine Artis Typographicae, it 

 is said, that Hadrian Junius had a book printed by Koster, and like that kept 

 in the chest at Haerlem ; now among those bequeathed to the Bodleian library 

 at Oxford, by Mr. Francis Junius, a kinsman of Hadrian's, there is a thin 

 small folio, numbered 31, which may probably be the same; and which Mr. 

 Foss, a learned and curious Danish gentleman, assured me was very like to 

 that at Haerlem. This contains the sum of the history of the Old Testament, 

 all represented in rude wooden cuts, coloured with divers colours, without 

 shadows, resembling our cards, which, with sheet-ballads, are remains of the 

 old manner of printing, and stamped on one side only; the white sides of two 

 leaves being pasted together, the black both in the pictures and in the inscrip- 

 tions, which show their meaning, being writing ink,* as the aforesaid leaf, 

 inartificially spread upon the wooden block, here thick and there thin, spread- 

 ing and yellowish ; the letters extremely rude, and altogether manifestly show- 

 ing that the art was yet in its infancy. The stamping of this book on one side 

 oiily, was not because the printer did not know how to dispose the pages in such 

 manner as might be proper and easy for the book-binder's use ; for it has its 

 signatures all along in minuscule letters, set in the middle of the page ; but 

 because it ^vas thought that the paper would not bear a second impression on 



* It is to be wished that Mr. Ellis, when he had Koster's books in his hands, had observed whe- 

 ther the black ink was printing ink or not ; whether Koster's picture was ancient, and coloured or 

 not j 01 if there were more in either of the books j whether the whole was cut upon wood, or com- 

 posed with printing letter; whether there were signatures for the book-binders, &c. — Orig. 

 VOL. V. M 



