COS'TER, LAURENS JANSZOON, according to the Dutch, the inventor of printing, was b. at Haarlem. about the year 1370. The time of the invention ascribed to him inurt have fallen between the years 1420 and 1426. 0.,-at first for his own amusement and the instruction of his grandchildren, eutlettersout of the bark of the beeeh•ree; Which '1 he inverted, and employed to print short sentences. Afterwards, he discovered a more glutinous kind of ink, which did not spread in using, and succeeded in printing with it entire pages, with cuts and characters. lie also replaced his wooden types by types cast out of metal, at first using lead for this purpose, but afterwards pewter, which he found harder and more suitable. C., for a time, worked in secret, because, he being a sacris tan, his art, if known, would have brought him into unpleasant collision with the manuscript-writing clergy, whose productions he tried to imitate. even to the abbrevia tions; thus his name aid not appear on the productions of his press. As custom increased, C. had to take apprentices; and one of them, a German, Johann. making use of the confusion occasioned by C.'s death in 1439, is said have purloined the greater part of his master's types and matrices, and to have tied to Mainz, where he brought the hidden art to light. This Johann was probably Johann GUnstleisch, a member of the Gutenberg family. Such, at least, is the history of the invention of printing as given by the Dutch, and which they support by the testimony of Hadrianus Junius, the his torian of the states of Holland, who, in his account of the discovery, states that, at the time he wrote, C.'s descendants were in possession of drinking-cups made out of the remains of the types which C. had used. Moreover, a celebrated printer of Cologne, Ulrich Zell, deceased about the year 1500, is said to have declared "that Gutenberg, his master, had derived his art from Holland, after the model of a Donatus printed there."
Now, a Donatus of C.'s time still exists; it was produced in 1740, by Johannes Enschede, also a celebrated printer of Haarlem; and no sooner had his discovery been made known in Meerinan's Origins Typographical, than fragments of the same work appeared in such quantities, that no one could any more aver that this early monument of imperfect typography, mostly printed from indisputably Dutch types, had been struck off from Gutenberg's press. Gutenberg's works, even now, are models of impression; those ascribed to C., at first printed on one side only, are the first proofs of a beginner. Then, all the characters of the oldest Dutch printed books resemble the Dutch handwriting of the first half of the 15th c., a proof of the independent nature of the attempts towards imitating manuscripts for sale. Other evidences are given by the Dutch that C. was the true inventor of printing; the most eminent advocates of his claims being Meerman, Koniug, Selieltema, Van Westtreenen van Tiellandt, De Vries, Schipke], Noordziek, Ebert, Leon de Laborde, Paul Lacroix, and Bernard. Yet the most thoroughgoing assault on the claims of C. and of Haarlem, as being founded on local legends. was made in 1870 by a Netherlander, A. von der Linde. In the town-house of Haarlem. the typo graphical remnants of the productions ascribed to C. are preserved. See PRINTING; and for the German account of the invention, GIITENDERG. As for C., his memory still is held in due honor by the town of his birth; the site of his house is still pointed out with pride; and monuments to his memory have been erected.