Junius describes this pretended invention of typography, not as he knew it was done, but as he thought it should have been done. Ignorant of the necessity for that strict accuracy of body, which is the vital principle of typography, and which can be secured only by the most ingenious mechanism, he thought, as thousands have thought, that the merit of the invention consisted in the conception of the idea. The construction of the mechanism he has skipped over as a little matter of mechanical detail entirely unworthy of notice. He tells us nothing about it. He shows the extent of his reading and the weakness of his judgment, by treading in the footsteps of German authors who attempted to describe the German invention of typography, not from positive knowledge, but through the exercise of a lively imagination. He makes Coster follow the road which they say was taken by Gutenberg: first, the types of wood; then, engraved letters on blocks of wood; next, types of lead; lastly, types of tin.[196] The artful insinuation that John Fust was the false workman is discreditable. Junius does not unequivocally say that Fust was the thief, but his language authorizes the calumny. That John Fust of Mentz could not have stolen the implements of Coster will be positively established by records of [p341] the highest authority. The Dutch historians of typography who defend the story of Junius, say that Junius did not know the name of the real thief, but that the name of Fust is properly inserted, because Fust was honored as the inventor of typography in Mentz; that there was, probably, a complicity between Fust and the false workman, and that Fust was, for that reason, properly mentioned as the real offender.[197] The determination of Junius to fasten this theft on Fust is shown in his statement that the thief regained or returned to Mentz, as to “the altar of safety.” At that time Paris, Rome and Venice had more schools and scholars, more book-readers and buyers than Mentz, and offered greater inducements for the founding of a printing office. These were the cities to which printers from Mentz subsequently went, and to which a thievish printer from Haarlem should have gone. But Junius finds it necessary to send him to Mentz to explain the introduction of typography in Germany. The charge of theft is not corroborated by the discoveries of bibliographers. The two books which Junius says were printed in Mentz in 1442, with the types of Coster, cannot be traced to Mentz. Fragments of a copy of the _Doctrinal_ of Alexander Gallus, the work of some unknown printer, have been found, not in Mentz, but in the Netherlands. The types [p342] of this book resemble those of the _Speculum_, but they are sufficiently unlike to establish the fact that they could not have been cast from the matrices used for the _Speculum_. This edition of the _Doctrinal_ could not have been printed at Mentz.