a later day.

There is a story current, dependent on the authority of Junius, that
Koster's principal workman, assumed to be Hans or John Faust--and some,
to reconcile improbabilities, even say John Gutenberg--who had been sworn
to secrecy, decamped one Christmas Eve, after the death of Koster, while
the family were at church, taking with him types and printing apparatus
and, after short sojourns at Amsterdam and Cologne, got to Mainz or
Mayence with them, and there introduced printing. He is said by Junius
to have printed, about the year 1442--that is, two years after Koster's
death--the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus and the _Tracts_ of Peter of
Spain, with the very types which Koster made use of in Haarlem; but as no
volume of this kind has ever been discovered, nor any trace of one, the
entire story is generally regarded as apocryphal. Laurence Koster died
in 1440, at the age of seventy; therefore any printing attributed to him
must be within that period.

What has hitherto been advanced proves only that mankind had walked for
many centuries on the borders of the two great inventions, chalcography
and typography, without having fully and practically discovered either of
them.

We now come to the great epoch of printing--I mean the complete
introduction, if not actually the first invention, of movable metal
or fusile types. This took place at Mainz, in or before 1450, and the
general consent of Europe assigns the credit of it to Gutenberg. Of a man
who has conferred such vast obligations on all succeeding ages, it may be
desirable to say a few words.

John Gutenberg was born at Mainz in 1397, of a patrician and rather