To account for these differences, Mr. Ottley has framed a theory which exactly fits the narrative given by Junius, viz:--that while the second edition (the first Dutch) was in progress and nearly finished, the original printer died and his types were stolen, which compelled his successor, who was unable to replace the original types, either to use some older discarded ones, or to avail himself of a supply of an inferior description in order to finish it; that while the first Dutch edition was in progress a second Latin one was demanded, to meet which, and to bring both the Dutch and the Latin out as quick as possible, the wood engraver was employed to make fac-similes of the texts of 20 pages; and that for the fourth edition, an old inferior fount was used. And upon this theory he says, (p. 298,) “I am of opinion that the concluding passage of his (Junius’s) narrative, wherein, upon the authority of Nicholas Galius and Quirinus Talesius, he relates the story of the robbery which they had formerly more than once heard from the mouth of Old Cornelius the book-binder, who in his youth had lived in the service of the printer who was robbed, merits to be considered as one of the best attested accounts that we possess respecting the early history of typography.”! But Messrs. Berjeau, Bernard,[116] Paiele,[117] and Humphreys, who have also made the _Speculum_ a special subject of study, do not admit the assumption that the text was printed before the cuts; they adduce good arguments to shew that the impressions of the cuts might have been, and probably were, rubbed off before the text was printed; and the character of the Gothic framework of the cuts that surmount the pages with solid text, being much plainer than that in those where moveable type is used, affords strong ground for the belief that the edition in which they occur was the first instead of the third; the first, that is, that was issued in a completed form; for there can be no doubt but that the splendid copy owned by the late J. B. Inglis, Esq., was the first as regards the impression of the cuts,--the body of some of the scrolls in that copy having been left untouched by the wood engraver, while in all others it is cut away. This peculiarity it was that led Mr. Ottley to the belief that it was the first completed edition, both as regards cuts and texts; while Mr. Humphreys, with more reason on his side, considers that the edition with the twenty pages of xylographic text was the first. “The execution of the subjects,” he says, (p. 60,) “is not equal to those of some of the pages with the typographic text, and there is no foliage in the architectural spandrils. This may serve to prove that the entirely xylographic pages were older than the typographic ones; and that only a few of the best of them were used in the edition which has typographic texts to most of the illustrations.”[118] The conclusion to which these writers have come, upsets Mr.