In the year just named--1473--Nycolaum Ketelaer and Gerard de Leempt produced Peter Comestor's _Historia Scholastica_ at Utrecht, and Alost and Louvain also started printing. The types of John Veldener, the first Louvain printer, have a great resemblance to those used by Caxton, and have led some to believe that Veldener supplied Caxton with the types he first used at Westminster. About the same time, Colard Mansion, noted for his association either as teacher or assistant with Caxton, is supposed to have introduced printing into Bruges. His first dated book was a _Boccaccio_ of 1476, and he continued to print until 1484, when he issued a fine edition, in French, of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. After this nothing more is known of him. Blades thinks that his printing brought him financial ruin, and suggests that he may have joined his old friend Caxton at Westminster, and helped him in his work, but this is only conjecture. We have already seen that it was from Colard Mansion's press that the first printed books in the English and French languages were produced. The first Brussels press was established by the Brethren of the Common Life, a community who had hitherto made a speciality of the production of manuscript books. At what date they began to print in Brussels is uncertain, but their first dated book, the _Gnotosolitos sive speculum conscientiae_, is of the year 1476. The Brethren also had an earlier press at Marienthal, near Mentz, and subsequently set up others at Rostock, Nuremberg, and Gouda. The Elzevirs belong to a somewhat later period than that with which we are concerned in these chapters, but a name so famous in bibliographical annals as theirs cannot well be passed over. The first of the Elzevirs was Louis, a native of Louvain, who in 1580 established a book-shop in Leyden, gained the patronage of the university, and opened an important trade with foreign countries. Certain of his sons and successors became printers as well as booksellers, and produced work of the highest excellence. Some of them opened shops or set up presses at Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, and also established agencies or branches elsewhere, and extended their trade all over Europe. The history of the partnerships between different members of the family, and of the sixteen hundred and odd publications which they printed or sold, is a complicated subject upon which there is no need to enter here. The last of the Elzevirs, a degenerate great-great-grandson of the first Louis Elzevir, was Abraham Elzevir of Leyden, who died in 1712, leaving no heir, and at whose decease the press and apparatus were sold. CHAPTER XI EARLY PRINTING IN ENGLAND