And patriotic Dutchmen in the nineteenth century, with a full reliance on the stability of the structure thus raised, have struck medals, put up tablets, and erected monuments, commemorative of the memory of the “immortal and incomparable Laurent Janssoen,” and the art he is alleged to have invented, with an enthusiasm strangely at variance with their utter ignorance of the man and his invention for upwards of a century after his death.[107] Of a very different opinion however was Erasmus, who, it may fairly be presumed, was not left unacquainted by his secretary, Talesius, with the tradition which assigned to Haarlem and Coster the origin of printing; but who shewed, by his public declarations assigning that honor to Mentz, that he deemed the tradition unworthy of belief, and destitute of even a basis of truth. Of a different opinion too, was Van Opmer, who must have been aware of the statements put forth in Coornhert’s edition of Cicero’s Offices, and had opportunity of judging of their truth; although Spiegel, living at the same time and in the same city with Opmer, adopted them, and asserted Laurentius to be the inventor of separable wooden types. Carl Van Mander, however, a later writer, pursuing his investigations in the city of Haarlem, while preparing the materials for his History of the Lives of Painters and Engravers, which was printed there about 1605, is as silent on the subject of Coster, as Prior Gerbrant. Notwithstanding all this, Meerman and the multitude who follow in his wake, cling to their faith in Junius. His assertions, contradictory as they have been shewn to be, to those of writers immediately preceding him, outweigh with them all other evidence. Enough for them the support he receives in the testimony of Ulric Zell and Mariangelus Accursius. The reader has that testimony before him, and can form his own estimate of its weight on the Costerian side of the balance. Zell is the only authority for the statement that Block-book Donatuses were first printed _in Holland_. Accursius but recapitulates Zell’s words, upon a Donatus which he states was printed by Faust at Mentz in 1450. Zell was a Fleming, and although he learned the art of printing at Mentz and carried it thence to Cologne, he had without doubt his national partialities; his account is not however borne out by that of Schœffer, given to Abbot Trithemius in 1484, although the two statements are not contradictory. Neither do they contradict the account of the origin of the art as stated by Bergel. Each may supplement the other. The first idea of printing may have occurred to Gutenberg from the impressions made in wax by his signet ring, and his cogitations upon the subject have been further confirmed by Block-books bought at Aix-la-Chapelle. It may therefore be admitted, that Block-book Donatuses were printed and sold in Holland, prior to 1436. But what then? Haarlem is not Holland, any more than Liverpool is England.