There is one point which seems to me to argue strongly against the early date ascribed to the Costeriana. They were produced by ordinary typographic processes, such as would be used for printing any book, and there is little or no improvement observable in the latest compared with the earliest. Yet, during the thirty years to which these books are ascribed, no work of any size or importance was produced from this press. It can hardly be assumed that during these years there was no demand for books, when we consider that immediately after 1473 books of all kinds were produced in great number. Nor can we reasonably suppose that the great demand for the _Donatus_ and the _Doctrinale_ ceased about 1473. The printing of school-books did not require to be ornamental, for they had to be produced as cheaply as possible, so that this class of work naturally soon fell into the hands of the poorer printers. We see many examples of this in studying the history of printing in other places, and find the finest and the rudest work being produced side by side. Block-books and xylographic _Donatuses_ were printed in Germany up to the last years of the fifteenth century, as old in appearance as the productions of fifty years earlier. We may connect certain of these Costeriana with the years 1471-74, within which period printing presses were started at Utrecht and Alost; but why should all the rest be placed earlier? It is curious that, while we have no dates forcing us to fix them early, neither have we dates preventing us from fixing them late. Because certain of these books were written by Pius II., who became Pope in 1458, Mr. Hessels seizes on 1458 as one of the dates we may take as relating to their printing, and groups the Costeriana round that date. He might equally well have grouped others round the fourth century, when Ælius Donatus lived, or round 1207, when Alexander de Villa Dei finished his _Doctrinale_. The only date as regards the printing of a book that can be derived from the authorship is a date before which the book cannot have been printed. M. Dziatzko mentions one point which he considers conclusive as giving a late date to the Costeriana. In them is _wrongly_ used a particular form of the letter x, which is not found in Dutch manuscripts, and which was used at the first Mainz press for a special purpose. Putting aside, then, the useless mass of conjecture and sophistry that obscures the subject, the case stands thus. The first printed date in the Low Countries is 1473, and there are a group of undated books which may perhaps be placed before or round this date; beyond this we have no information whatever.