CATALOGUE OF A LOAN COLLECTION OF BOOKS. 47

belief that the greater part of all the stories relating to Coster are pure fabrications, and that the majority even of the block books, and probably also of the " Donatuses," were really produced at a later date than the Mazarin Bible and the ]rcntz Psalter."* The known fjicts respecting Gutenberg and his relations with Fust and Schoyfler are almost equally rare. It is curious that we derive our whole information as to the in- vention of printing by Gutenberg to three pieces of docu- mentary evidence, and that two of these three have recently failed us, whilst the third is not contemporary. I am indebted to Mr. Jlessels, late of the Cambridge tjniversity Library, for this note. The three sources mentioned were, first a book in the Strasburg Library, which gave an account of a law^suit in which Gutenberfj; was eno;af!;ed while living there : this has disappeared with the rest of that ill-fated collection, and it was at best but second-hand evidence, for it only purported to have been early copied from an older original. Secondly, there was a volume, the " Speculum Sacerdotum," in the Mentz Library, which contained a MS. inscription presenting it to the monastery b}^ " Johannes de Bono Monte." This book also has disappeared. The only copy of it now known to exist was among the Loan Collection. It belongs, like so many other unique books, to the Rev. J. Fuller Russell, F.S.A. Thirdly, and this is all that remains to us, in a very common book printed in or about 1.515, and written by Trithemius, the " Chronicon Spanheimcnse," the author under the year 14.50 refers to the invention of printing as having been made anew about that time by " one John Gutenberg." It is not easy to understand the word anew in this account ; but in another of the same writer's books, the " Compendium de Origine Francorum," printed by John Schoyffer in 1.515, there is a long colophon, describing the invention as having been made by the said John Schoyffer's father Peter, and his partner Fust ; and there is no mention of Gutenberg, although tlie colophon was in all probability written by Trithemius liiniself. After this date we liave numerous references to Gutenbirg ; but it is almost impossible to identify any book as his undoubted handiwork. In the following list I have placed under his name a number of almost uniijue books, which are usually attributed

• Ihcae lines were written before the appearance of Mr. HcsaeU's book.