It must be remembered, however, that De Vinne’s work was written nearly forty years ago. Just before he wrote, Dr. Van der Linde had published a voluminous work in which the theory of the Gutenberg invention was supported at great length and with great show of scholarship. This was later followed by other volumes of similar purport. For a considerable time Van der Linde’s books were considered as settling the question. De Vinne, as may clearly be seen from his preface, wrote under the spell of Van der Linde’s influence. Later investigations, however, have shown that Van der Linde’s scholarship was largely show, that he was not only uncritical but unskillful in his use of authorities, and that his voluminous works are written with the sole purpose of bolstering up a preconceived theory. Most of this investigation had not been conducted when De Vinne wrote. The discussion cannot be said to have swung the balance of probability to the other side until after De Vinne’s literary activities ceased. The knowledge we now possess, however, has forced the present writer to abandon the De Vinne position and to base the historical part of this series of text-books on acceptance of the belief that typographic printing was discovered by Coster, of Haarlem, in Holland. CHAPTER I CONDITIONS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY As was briefly indicated in the preceding volume in this series, the conditions existing in the world of letters at the middle of the fifteenth century were such as to demand imperatively some new method of making books. The slow march of civilization had gone on with many setbacks and interruptions through the centuries, but was now proceeding with a swiftness hitherto unknown. The demands of the human mind were pressing hard against the physical boundaries to progress created by the methods of book-making then in use. It must be remembered that men were still making books just as they had done for nearly two thousand years. A vast store of knowledge had been accumulated and additions were being made with tremendous rapidity, but there was no adequate means of getting this knowledge before the people. At the same time there were more people intensely eager for knowledge than ever before.