Fournier’s discoveries with respect to the execution of the Speculum seem to have produced a complete change as to its origin in the opinions of Meerman; who, in 1757, the year before Fournier’s dissertation was printed, had expressed his belief, in a letter to his friend Wagenaar, that what was alleged in favour of Coster being the inventor of printing was mere gratuitous assertion; that the text of the Speculum was probably printed after the cuts, and subsequent to 1470; that there was not a single document, nor an iota of evidence, to show that Coster ever used moveable types; and lastly, that the Latin was prior to the Dutch edition of the Speculum, as was apparent from the Latin names engraved at the foot of the cuts, which certainly would have been in Dutch had the cuts been originally destined for a Dutch edition.[II-78] In the teeth of his own previous opinions, having apparently gained a new light from Fournier’s discoveries, Meerman, in his Origines Typographicæ, printed in 1765, endeavours to prove that the Dutch edition was the first, and that it was printed with moveable wooden types by Coster. The Latin edition in which the text is printed partly from moveable types and partly from wood-blocks he supposes to have been printed by Coster’s heirs after his decease, thus endeavouring to give credibility to the story of Coster having died of grief on account of his types being stolen, and to encourage the supposition that his heirs in this edition supplied the loss by having engraved on blocks of wood those pages which were not already printed. [Footnote II-78: A French translation of Meerman’s letter, which was originally written in Dutch, is given by Santander in his Dictionnaire Bibliographique, tom. i. pp. 14-18, 8vo. Bruxelles, 1805.] Fournier’s discoveries relative to the manner in which the Speculum was executed were: 1st, that the cuts and the text had been printed at separate times, and that the former had been printed by means of friction; 2d, that a portion of the text in one of the Latin editions had been printed from engraved wood-blocks.[II-79] Fournier, who was a type-founder and wood-engraver, imagined that the moveable types with which the Speculum was printed were of wood. He also asserted that Faust and Scheffer’s Psalter and an early edition of the Bible were printed with moveable wooden types. Such assertions are best answered by a simple negative, leaving the person who puts them forth to make out a probable case.