Ghesquiere, who successfully refuted the opinion of Desroches that typography was known at Antwerp in 1442, was himself induced to suppose that it was practised at Bruges in 1445, and that printed books were then neither very scarce nor very dear in that city.[III-5] In an old manuscript journal or memorandum book of Jean-le-Robèrt, abbot of St. Aubert in the diocese of Cambray, he observed an entry stating that the said abbot had purchased at Bruges, in January 1446, a “_Doctrinale gette en mole_” for the use of his nephew. The words “gette en mole” he conceives to mean, “printed in type;” and he thinks that the Doctrinale mentioned was the work which was subsequently printed at Geneva, in 1478, under the title of Le Doctrinal de Sapience, and at Westminster by Caxton, in 1489, under the title of The Doctrinal of Sapyence. The Abbé Mercier de St. Leger, who wrote a reply to the observations of Ghesquiere, with greater probability supposes that the book was printed from engraved wood-blocks, and that it was the “Doctrinale Alexandri Galli,” a short grammatical treatise in monkish rhyme, which at that period was almost as popular as the “Donatus,” and of which odd leaves, printed on both sides, are still to be seen in libraries which are rich in early specimens of printing. [Footnote III-5: Reflexions sur deux pièces relatives à l’Hist. de l’Imprimerie. Nivelles, 1780.--Lambinet, Recherches, p. 394.] Although there is every reason to believe that the early Printers of Antwerp and Bruges were not acquainted with the use of moveable types, yet the mention of such persons at so early a period, and the notice of the makers “of cards and printed figures” at Venice in 1441, sufficiently declare that, though wood engraving might be first established as a profession in Suabia, it was known, and practised to a considerable extent, in other countries previous to 1450.