Eytzinger, in his work on the topography of the Low Countries, printed in 1583, and Braunius of Cologne, in his _Civitates Orbis Terrarum_, printed in 1570-1588, assign to Haarlem the origin of the art. These authors had before them the statement already quoted from Coornhert, as well as that of Ulric Zell, which says that Block-book Donatuses were originally printed in Holland; and they assume that to be a fact which Guicciardini will go no further than to repeat as a tradition, for the truthfulness of which he will not vouch. We now come to the account given by Hadrian Junius,[84] in his work entitled _Batavia_, printed in 1588, thirteen years after his death. This account[85] is supposed, from the context, to have been written in the year 1568, and in it the name of Coster appears for the first time. “About a hundred and twenty eight years ago,” he says, “Laurentius Janssoen Coster inhabited a decent and fashionable house in the city of Haarlem, situated in the market place opposite the royal palace. The name of Coster was assumed, and inherited from his ancestors, who had long enjoyed the honorable and lucrative office of Coster or Sexton to the church. This man deserves to be restored to the honor of being the first inventor of printing, of which he has been unjustly deprived by others, who have enjoyed the praises due to him alone. As he was walking in the wood contiguous to the city, which was the general custom of the richer citizens and men of leisure, in the afternoon and on holidays he began at first to cut some letters upon the rind of a beech tree; which for fancy’s sake, being impressed on paper, he printed one or two lines as a specimen for his grand-children (the sons of his daughter) to follow. This having happily succeeded, he meditated greater things (as he was a man of ingenuity and judgment); and first of all with his son-in-law Thomas Peter (who by the way left three sons, who all attained the consular dignity), invented a more glutinous writing ink, because he found the common ink sunk and spread; and then formed whole pages of wood, with letters cut upon them;--of which sort I have seen some essays in an anonymous work, printed only on one side, entitled _Speculum nostræ salutis_: in which it is remarkable, that in the infancy of printing (as nothing is complete at its first invention), the back sides of the pages were pasted together, that they might not by their nakedness betray their deformity.--These beechen letters he afterwards changed for leaden ones, and these again for a mixture of tin and lead, as a less flexible and more solid and durable substance. Of the remains of which types, when they were turned to waste metal, those old wine-pots were cast, that are still preserved in the family house which looks into the market-place, inhabited afterwards by his great-grandson Gerard Thomas, a gentleman of reputation, whom I mention for the honor of the family, and who died a few years since.