Among other publications of Vautrollier was an English translation of _Ludovico Guicciardini's Description of the Low Countries_, originally printed in 1567. In this work is one of the earliest accounts of the invention of printing at Haarlem, which is thus described in the Batavia of Adrianus Junius, 1575. 'This person [Coster] during his afternoon walk, in the vicinity of Haarlem, amused himself with cutting letters out of the _bark_ of the beech tree, and with these, the _characters_ being inverted as in seals, he printed small sentences.' The idea is cleverly adapted by Orlando: these trees shall be my _books_, And in their _barks_ my thoughts I'll _character_. _As You Like It_, iii, 2. Lastly, it would be an interesting task to compare the Mad Folk of Shakspere, most of whom have the melancholy fit, with _A Treatise of Melancholie: containing the Causes thereof and Reasons of the Strange Effects it worketh in our Minds and Bodies._ _London_, 8vo., 1586. This was printed by Vautrollier, and probably read carefully for press by the youthful Poet. The disinclination of Shakspere to see his plays in print has often been noticed by his biographers, and is generally accounted for by the theory that reading the plays in print would diminish the desire to hear them at the theatre. This is a very unsatisfactory reason, and not so plausible as the supposition that, sickened with reading other people's proofs for a livelihood, he shrunk from the same task on his own behalf. His contemporaries do not appear to have shared in the same typographical aversion. The plays of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher were all printed in the life-time of their authors. Francis Quarles had the satisfaction and pride of seeing all his works in printed form, and showed his appreciation and knowledge of Typography by the following quaint lines, which we quote from the first edition, literatim: _On a Printing-house._ The _world's_ a _Printing-house_: our _words_, our _thoughts_, Our _deeds_, are _Characters_ of sev'rall sizes: Each _Soule_ is a Compos'ter; of whose faults The Levits are Correctors: Heav'n revises; _Death_ is the _common Press_; fro whence, being driven, W' are gathered _Sheet_ by _Sheet_, & bound for _Heaven_. From _Divine Fancies_, 1632, lib. iv, p. 164. II. THE TECHNICALITIES OF PRINTING, AS USED BY SHAKSPERE