Meerman, writing to his correspondent Wagenaar in 1757, expresses his utter disbelief in the story of Coster being the inventor of typography, which, he observes, was daily losing credit: whatever historical evidence Seiz had brought forward in favour of Coster was gratuitously assumed; in short, the whole story of the invention was a fiction.[III-70] After the publication of Schœpflin’s Vindiciæ Typographicæ in 1760, giving proofs of Gutemberg having been engaged in 1438 with some invention relating to _printing_, and in which a _press_ was employed, Meerman appears to have received a new light; for in 1765 he published his own work in support of the very story which he had previously declared to be undeserving of credit. The mere change, however, of a writer’s opinions cannot alter the immutable character of truth; and the guesses and assumptions with which he may endeavour to gloss a fiction can never give to it the solidity of fact. What he has said of the work of Seiz in support of Coster’s claims may with equal truth be applied to his own arguments in the same cause: “Whatever historical evidence he has brought forward in favour of Coster has been gratuitously assumed.” Meerman’s work, like the story which it was written to support, “is daily losing credit.” It is a dangerous book for an advocate of Coster to quote; for he has scarcely advanced an argument in favour of Coster, and in proof of his stolen types being the foundation of typography at Mentz, but what is contradicted by a positive fact. [Footnote III-70: Santander has published a French translation of this letter in his Dictionnaire Bibliographique, tom. i. pp. 14-18.] In order to make the documentary evidence produced by Schœpflin in favour of Gutemberg in some degree correspond with the story of Cornelius, Junius’s authority, he has assumed that Gutemberg had an elder brother also called John; and that he was known as Gænsfleisch the elder, while his younger brother was called by way of distinction Gutemberg. In support of this assumption he refers to Wimpheling,[III-71] who in one place has called the inventor Gænsfleisch, and in another Gutemberg; and he also supposes that the two epitaphs which have been given at page 144, relate to two different persons. The first, inscribed by Adam Gelthaus to the memory of John _Gænsfleisch_, he concludes to have been intended for the elder brother. The second, inscribed by Ivo Wittich to the memory of John _Gutemberg_, he supposes to relate to the younger brother, and to have been erected from a feeling of envy. The fact of Gutemberg being also named Gænsfleisch in several contemporary documents, is not allowed to stand in the way of Meerman’s hypothesis of the two “brother Johns,” which has been supposed to be corroborated by the fact of a John Gænsfleisch the Elder being actually the contemporary of John Gænsfleisch called also Gutemberg.