“The harvest of history on the field of typography concerning Haarlem may be scanty; it does not yield _anything_, as far as xylography goes. There existed there already very early a Lucasguild, like that at Antwerp, and like the Johannesgild at Bruges; but, however rich in painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths, the Haarlem Corporation may have been, it produces, notwithstanding the most patient researches, not a single _prenter_ (_briefprenter_) or xylographer. The manufacture, therefore, of a whole series of blockbooks of the 15th century, ascribed, two, three, and four centuries afterwards, without any shadow of evidence, to a Haarlem innkeeper, has to be referred to the empire of fiction.” Mr. Hessels (a native of Haarlem, as is also Dr. Van Der Linde) says, in his very able Introduction: (p. vii.) “Whatever may be said about the discrepancies and absurdities of the Coster-legend, now that we possess a full knowledge of it, there is one circumstance which has given, and will give, an air of probability to the story, even now that it is deprived of its hero, so long as this circumstance cannot be sufficiently accounted for. I mean the existence of a comparatively large number of works--blockbooks and incunabula--which are of an incontestably early, and Dutch origin, and which cannot, even at present, be ascribed to any known printer, but of which it is certain that they belong to the printer who produced the four editions of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_, the book referred to by Junius.” He then gives, on pages xi. to xvi., a classified list of the Costeriana as far as known, amounting in all to 43 separate works and editions, distinguishing seven different types used in their production. “The earliest date (he says) we can assign for the present to the Costeriana is 1471-74. Mr. Holtrop tells us on p. 31 of his Monuments, that the Hague copy of the Saliceto (No. 25 of his list) contains two MS. annotations: 1st, ‘Hunc librum emit dominus Conrardus abbas hujus loci XXXIII., qui obiit anno MCCCCLXXIIII, in profesto exaltationis sanctae crucis, postquam profuisset annis fere tribus.’ Another inscription indicates that this copy had belonged to the convent of St. James, at Lille. Now, the abbat Conrad, who bought this book for his convent, was Conrad du Moulin, who was abbat only from 1471 to 1474. “This is the only date we can use at present. It is, as Mr. Bradshaw observes in his ‘List,’ mentioned above, ‘a singular circumstance that this one fact should compel us to place the printer of the Speculum at the head of the Dutch printers, though it only just allows him to take precedence of Ketelaer and De Leempt,’ from whom we have the date 1473, found in Peter Comestor, Scholastica hystoria.”--pp. xvii.-xviii.