24 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
—became his partner. This servant, after being taught, under oath, 
the secrets of the printing art, one Christmas Eve, when the Coster 
family were all at church, stole the whole of his master’s printing 
apparatus, fled to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and finally estab- 
lished a printing office at Mainz, where he printed with his stolen 
types a grammar called Doctrinale Alexandri Galli, and the tracts of 
Hispanus. Junius adds that he writes what aged people worthy of 
credence told him; and that Galius, his tutor, and Taresius, who, it 
seems, was some time secretary to Erasmus, also informed him that 
one Cornelis, a bookbinder of Haarlem, eighty years old, also told 
them the same story. Few statements are on record for which such 
an array of names could be cited in censure or in commendation ; 
and its appraisal runs the complete scale from historical fact to idle 
fiction. The records of Haarlem show the name of Cornelis, a 
bookbinder of that date, and two different families have had thrust 
on them the honor of Coster’s lineage. The first Laurence, an 
innkeeper, it was found, died in 1439. His claim has been given 
up; but since 1870 the career of another Coster, of Haarlem, has 
been found to fit in part into the account by Junius, though Mr. 
Hessels admits some parts of that account are yet to be explained. 
Chief interest in the Junius statement centres in the book 
Coster is said to have printed ; and in the two books Junius says 
Coster’s servant printed with the stolen types. The Speculum Hu- 
manae Salvationis, credited to the Coster press, as its name implies, 
is a mirror shewing the Fall and Redemption of man. ‘There are 
four early-printed editions of this book, two in Latin and two in 
Dutch. There is but little difference in these four editions; each 
contains a short introduction and fifty-eight leaves of wood cuts and 
text, printed only on one side of each leaf. Each engraving forms 
two pictures, comprising in all more than four hundred figures. The 
picture takes up the upper half of each leaf, and the text is printed 
in two columns beneath it. In one edition, twenty-four pages of 
both text and pictures are engraved ; otherwise the engravings are 
on wood, and the printing is from movable metallic types. All the 
engravings are printed with brown ink, but in three of the four 
editions the text was separately printed in black ink. In all four 
editions the types are the same. Of the books said to have been 
printed with the stolen types, as yet no copy of the Hispanus Tracts 
