the proofs should be produced; but as Heineken[III-72] has afforded the means of showing its utter falsity, it may perhaps be worth while to notice some of the facts produced by him respecting the family and proceedings of Gutemberg. [Footnote III-72: Nachrichten von Kunstlern und Kunst-Sachen, 1te. Theil, S. 286-293.] John Gænsfleisch the Elder, whom Meerman makes Gutemberg’s elder brother, was descended from a branch of the numerous family of Gænsfleisch, which was also known by the local names of zum Jungen, Gutenberg or Gutemberg, and Sorgenloch. This person, whom Meerman engages as a workman with Coster, was a man of property; and at the time that we are given to understand he was residing at Harlem, we have evidence of his being married and having children born to him at Mentz. This objection, however, could easily be answered by the ingenuity of a Dutch commentator, who, as he has made the husband a thief, would find no difficulty in providing him with a suitable wife. He would also be very likely to bring forward the presumed misconduct of the wife in support of his hypothesis of the husband being a thief. John Gænsfleisch the Elder was married to Ketgin, daughter of Nicholas Jostenhofer of Schenkenberg, on the Thursday after St. Agnes’s day, 1437. In 1439 his wife bore him a son named Michael; and in 1442 another son, who died in infancy. In 1441 we have evidence of his residing at Mentz; for in that year his relation Rudiger zum Landeck appeared before a judge to give Gænsfleisch an acknowledgment of his having properly discharged his duties as trustee, and of his having delivered up to the said Rudiger the property left to him by his father and mother. That John Gænsfleisch the Elder printed “Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,” and “Petri Hispani Tractatus,” at Mentz in 1442 with the types which he had stolen from Coster, is as improbable as every other part of the story. There is, in fact, not the slightest reason to believe that the works in question were printed at Mentz in 1442, or that any book was printed there with types until nearly eight years after that period. In opposition, however, to a host of historical evidence we have the assertion of Cornelius, who told the tale to Galius, who told it to Junius, who told it to the world. Meerman’s web of sophistry and fiction having been brushed away by Heineken, a modern advocate of Coster’s undertook to spin another, which has also been swept down by a German critic. Jacobus Koning,[III-73] town-clerk of Amsterdam, having learnt from a document printed by Fischer, that Gutemberg had a brother named Friele, sends him to Harlem to work with Coster, and makes him the thief who stole the types; thus copying Meerman’s plot, and merely substituting Gutemberg’s known brother for John Gænsfleisch the Elder. On this attempt of Koning’s to make the old sieve hold water by plastering it with his own mud, Lehne[III-74] makes the following remarks:--