KOSTER, LAWRENCE, or LAURENT JANSZOON, a native of Haarlem in Holland, whom the Dutch consider as the true inventor of the art of printing. He is believed to have been born at Haarlem about 1370; and in after-life filled successively several minor offices In his native town, as, sacrietno, churchwarden, and treasurer of the church of St. Rayon. His name appears in the regitters of that church in the years 1423, 1926, 1432, and 1433. The time of his death is not mentioned. The following is the account given by Hadrian Junius, a Dutch writer of the 1Gth century, of Koster s claim to tho discovery of printing. Junius's 'Batavia ' was published in 1588, but the passage, the substance of which we here give, is believed from the context to have been written twenty years before. He relates, that about 128 years before he wrote, this Lawrence Koster resided in a large house, situated opposite the royal palace at Haarlem, which was still standing. That Koster, during his after noon walks in the vicinity of the city, began by amusing himself with cutting letters out of the bark of the beech-tree; and with these one after another, the letters being inverted, he printed small sentences for the instruction of his grandchildren. That being a man of genius and research, and finding the ink then commouly used apt to spread, he afterwards discovered, with the assistance of his son-in-law, Thomas the son of Peter (who, he tells us, left four children, most of whom afterwards enjoyed high offices in the state), a more glutiuous kind of iuk, with which he succeeded in printing entire pages, with cuts and characters. That he, Junius, had seen specimens of this kind, printed on one aide of the paper only, in a book entitled 'Speculum Nostrto Salutis, written by an anonymous writer in the Dutch language; the blank pages being pasted together, that the leaves might turn over, like those of an ordinary book, without showing the vacancies. That, afterwards, Koster made his letters of lead instead of wood ; and lastly of pewter, finding that metal harder, and conse quently more proper for the purpose ; and that various driukiug cups made of the remains of this old type, were still preserved in the aforesaid house, where, but a few years before, Koster's great-nepliew, or great-grandson, Gerard Thomas, had died at an advanced age. That the invention in question soon meeting with encouragement, it became necessary to augment the number of hands employed; which circumstance proved the first cause of disaster to the new establish ment; for that one of the workmen, named John (whom Junius suspects might be Fust, for he does not absolutely accuse him), as soon as he had made himself sufficient master of the art of casting the type, and joining the characters (notwithstanding he had given an oath of secrecy), took the earliest opportunity of robbing his master of the implements of his art; choosing, for the completion of his purpose, the night preceding the Feast of the Nativity, when the whole family, with the rest of the inhabitants of the city, were at church, hearing the midnight mass. That he escaped with his booty to
Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and lastly, that he took up his resi dence at Mainz, where he established his printing-press; from which within the following year, 1442, were issued two books, printed with the characters which had been before used by Lawrence Koster at Haarlem : the one entitled 'Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,' the other 'Petri Hispani Tractatus.' This account, Junius assures us, he had from several old gentle men, who had filled the most honourable offices of the city, and who themselves had received it from others of equal respectability and credit, as a well-founded tradition ; as a lighted torch, he says, passes from one band to another without being extinguished. He adds, that he well remembers Nicolas Gallus, the tutor of his youth, who was an old gentleman of very tenacious memory, used to relate that when he was a boy he had often heard one Cornelius, then an old man, upwards of eighty years of age, who had been a bookbinder, and in his youth had assisted in the printing-office of Koster, describe with great earnestness the 'various trials and experiments made by his master in the infancy of the invention : upon which occasious ho would even shed tears, especially when he carne to the robbery com mitted by one of the workmen, which he related with great vehemence; cursing those nights in which, as, he said, for some mouths he had slept in the same bed with so vile a miscreant, and protesting that he would with his own hands have hanged the thief if he had been still alive : which relation, as Junius teas us, corresponded with the account which Quirinus Talesius, the burgomaster, confessed to him he had heard from the mouth of the same old bookbinder.