Now, a rather singular circumstance comes to corroborate what was said by Adrian Junius. A Latin edition of the “Speculum,” an in-folio of sixty-three leaves, with wood engravings in two compartments at the head of each leaf, consists of a mixture of twenty xylographic leaves, and of forty-one leaves printed with movable type, but very imperfect, and cast in moulds which were probably made of baked earth: an edition of a Dutch “Speculum,” in folio, has also two pages in a type smaller and closer than the rest of the text. How are we to explain these anomalies? On the one hand, a mixture of xylography and typography; on the other, a combination of two different kinds of movable type. My hypothesis is, if indeed the details given by Junius, open to suspicion as they are, be correct, that the dishonest workman who, according to his own account, stole the implements [Illustration: Fig. 390.--Fac-simile of a Page of the most ancient Xylographie “Donatus” (Chapter on Prepositions), printed at Mayence, by Fust and Gutenberg, about 1450.] employed in the workshop of Laurent Coster, and who must have acted with a certain amount of precipitation, contented himself with carrying off some forms of the “Speculum” just ready for the press. The type employed for twenty or twenty-two pages was sufficient to serve as models for a counterfeit edition, and also for a book of small extent, such as the “Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,” and the “Petri Hispani Tractatus.” It is probable that the Latin and Dutch editions of the “Speculum” were both entirely composed, set up, and prepared for the text to be struck off, when the thief took at hazard the twenty-two forms, which he determined to turn to account, at any rate as a model for the counterfeit edition he intended to publish. In cast-iron type, these forms could not have weighed more than sixty pounds; in wooden type, not half as much; if we add to these the composing-sticks, the pincers, the galleys, and other indispensable elements of the trade, we shall find that the booty was not beyond the strength of a man to carry easily on his shoulders. As for the press, about that there could be no question, since the impressions produced at Haarlem were made with a pad and by hand, as is still the case with playing-cards and prints. [Illustration: Fig. 391.--Portrait of Gutenberg, from an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century. (Imperial Library of Paris, Print Room.)] It remains now to discover who was this John who appropriated the secret of printing, and took it from Haarlem to Mayence. Was it John Fust or Faust, as Adrian Junius suspected? Was it John Gutenberg, as many Dutch writers have alleged? or was it not rather John Gensfleisch the elder, a relation of Gutenberg, as, from a very explicit passage of the learned Joseph Wimpfeling, his contemporary, the latest defenders of the Haarlem tradition think? The question is still undecided. The “Speculum,” however, is not the only book of the kind which