82 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1703. 



the backside, just as the book writers of those times, when paper began to be 

 cheap, and to be made up into books, would yet have the first and last leaf of 

 each quaternio, senio, &c. to be of parchment, for strength's sake. This book 

 is imperfect, and has no date now appearing, and perhaps never had any; nei- 

 ther has such another book as this, which contains the history of St. John and 

 the Apocalypse, in such like wooden coloured pictures and inscriptions. This 

 is inscribed LAVD. E. 65. in the same Bodleian library, and has also its signa- 

 tures in majuscule letters, as indeed I have observed signatures in many MSS. 

 of different ages, as high as 1000 years ago and upwards, expressed either by 

 letters or numbers. This book, though printed on one side, and pasted as the 

 former, is yet more elegant, and shows that the art was much improved. And 

 in the same library, Arch. B. Bodl. 88, there is an ancient MS. with the same 

 figures and inscriptions, though the habits of the figures are different, those of 

 the MS. being of the older fashion; and it is very likely that- there is another 

 copy of this body in the emperor's library at Vienna; for Lambecius, Comment, 

 de Biblioth. Caes. lib. II. p. 7 72, reckons among those which he brought away 

 from the archiducal library at Inspruck, a book, of which he gives this account, 

 Apocalypsis S. Joannis Apostoli et Evangelistas Latino Germanica, chartacea in 

 folio, una cum Vita ipsius, et multis figuris ligno incisis, quae propter vetustatem 

 suam spectatu sunt dignissimae ; and in this book at Oxford, besides the printed 

 cuts, there is also a Commentary on the Apocalypse in High Dutch. Besides these 

 two very ancient printed books, Mr. Bagford told me that in the MS. library of 

 Corpus Christi, or Bennet College in Cambridge, he saw a third, containing the 

 History of our Saviour, printed on one side only of the paper, with such like 

 wooden cuts, but yet more neatly than either of the former, which I had before 

 shown him at Oxford. And these three books being, as is before said, stamped 

 only on one side of the leaf, the whole wrought or cut upon wood, not set or 

 .composed with printing letter, and printed with writing ink, sufficiently de- 

 monstrate that the art was as yet in its infancy, and may, though they bear no 

 workman's name, be very reasonably ascribed to Koster, not only because no 

 other person lays claim to them, but because in divers circumstances they agree 

 with the history of the man, and with what remains of his workmanship. If 

 it be asked, why Koster did not set his name and the year to these books, as 

 well as to that at Haerlem, mentioned by Mr. Ellis? it may be answered, that 

 Schrevel tells us, that Koster bound Fust, above-mentioned, by oath to 

 secrecy, and not to betray the art to any person whatever. In which it is likely 

 that his design was not so much to let the world think that he had a new way 

 of multiplying the copy of a book, much quicker than the quickest penman ; 

 but that he designed to impose upon the world, by selling his printed books for 



