That Lourens Coster kept a tavern may also be inferred from the fact that the house he lived in was always known as a tavern. The engraving of this house on the following page shows how the edifice appeared in 1740. Junius said that it was a house of some pretension in 1568, and that it stood on the market-place near the royal palace; but Van Zuren had previously noticed it as a house falling to decay. In 1628, Scriverius said that the house had been “changed and was divided among three masters:” the part supposed to be the Coster residence was called _The Golden Bunch of Grapes_, and it was even then used as a tavern. When John Bagford first saw the house, in 1706, it was a cheese shop. In 1761, Moses Van Hulkenroy, a printer, lived in part of it, and the other part was occupied as an inn, then known as _The Golden Fleece_. In 1813, the centre building was used as a public house. It fell into ruins on the 13th of May, 1818, but it has since been rebuilt, and a tablet inserted in memory of Coster. It is probable that this house was an inn when Junius wrote _Batavia_, and that he refrained from mentioning this circumstance lest it might degrade Coster. But we now know that Coster, and Pieter Thomaszoon, his son-in-law, who succeeded him in business, and that Gerrit Thomaszoon, the author of the pedigree, were all innkeepers. The wine-flagons, to which [p371] Junius points so triumphantly, were a proper portion of the furnishings of an inn. To the modern reader, who has been informed that a part of this house has always been a drinking tavern for the refreshment of the men of Haarlem, these pewter mugs, or flagons, as Junius names them, are not, as he would have us believe, indisputable evidence that their first owner must have been a printer. [Illustration: The House of Coster. [From Seiz.]] [Illustration: Laurens Janszoon Coster. [From Maittaire.]] The falsity of the legend is abundantly established by the dissimilarity of the many engraved likenesses, which from time to time have been presented as portraits of Coster. The earliest representation of the alleged inventor was published by Scriverius,[219] not quite two centuries after Coster is said to have died. The only attest to the accuracy of the portrait is Scriverius himself, and it need not be said that he is not a trustworthy witness. There have been many variations of this well-known engraving. Van der Linde suggests that this engraving by Scriverius may be a portrait of Gerrit Thomaszoon, appropriated for the exigency. There is a peculiarity in the engraving which plainly proves that the portrait could not have been painted during the lifetime of Coster. The “true effigies of Laurenz” carries in his right hand a matrix of the letter A of the Roman form, but letters of Roman form were not used at Haarlem in 1440. Books attributed to Coster have letters in the Gothic style. [p372]