VOL. XXV.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 353 



junr. about Holland and the statue of Coster; he told me he had seen the 

 same in Holland, and that it was in the Haarlemar-street in Leyden. This 

 very much run in my mind, to be further satisfied that it should be in Leyden 

 and not Haarlem, although asserted by several of our modern travellers. 



At my last being in Holland, for my further satisfaction, though I had got 

 Mr. Ball to make the inscription forme the year before, in June 1705, having 

 an opportunity in the company of my good friend Walter Clavel, Esq. on 

 Wednesday the 23d of October, 1 706. We took boat for Leyden, where we 

 arrived about six the same day, and next day in the morning, in the company 

 of Mr, Bovell, a student, I saw at Leyden, in the Haarlemer-street, so called 

 because it leads to Haarlem, over the door of a glazier's house, the figure of 

 Coster cut in wood, and painted with an inscription. This statue was set up 

 by a private person, the owner of the house, perhaps for the name and sake 

 of the street; and I suppose is not older than about l630. This statue is 

 done after the graved print in the book at Haarlem, or the painting over 

 the door of Laurence Johnson Coster, where they say he first practised the 

 art of printing; but I rather take it, that he lived in this house in his old age, 

 and was church-keeper, or sexton ; for so the word signifies both in the 

 German and Dutch language. 



Some days after leaving Leyden, I went to Haarlem, to compare and collate 

 the book which Mr. Bullord had procured for me, with one of the same im- 

 pression. The title of the book at the latter end runs thus : 



This book was finished in the good city of Culenburgh, by me John Vel- 

 dener, in the year of our Lord 1483, on the Saturday after St. Matthew's day ; 

 with the device of the printer hanging on the bough or snag of a tree, a 

 custom they much used in those days, as may be seen by ancient monuments 

 cut on grave stones, not only in the great church at Haarlem, but also in 

 several other cities in Holland : which device I will insert. 



The title of the book, in low Dutch, (the language in which it is printed,) 

 is, De Spiegel onser Behondenise, i. e. The Mirrour of our Salvation. On 

 the chest where this book was kept at Haarlem, in the prince's garden, the 

 date l6l8, was inlaid in the wood. On collating it with the other we brought 

 from Amsterdam, we found it to agree both in the words of the text, and 

 also the pictures ; they only differed in this, the Haarlem copy being in folio, 

 with two pictures in a page, and the words column-wise, with 25 lines in a 

 column, containing 6o pages, and printed only on one side, and not pasted 

 together, as those at Oxford and Cambridge are. At the entrance into the 

 garden, at the upper end of the summer-house, on the right-hand, was 

 Coster's statue, leaning with his left-hand on the inscription, which bore date 



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