Note 145 — The Cabinet.

The Origines Typographicæ of Meerman, which was published at the Hague in two handsome quarto volumes, 1765, (after the plan or prospectus had been published in 1761, 8vo.), secured its author a very general and rather splendid reputation, till the hypothesis advanced therein, concerning Laurence Coster, was refuted by Heinecken. The reader is referred to a note in the first volume of my new edition of the Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, p. xxxi. It is somewhat singular that, notwithstanding Meerman's hypothesis is now exploded by the most knowing bibliographers, his dissertation concerning the claims of Haerlem should have been reprinted in French, with useful notes, and an increased catalogue of all the books published in the Low Countries, during the 15th century. This latter work is entitled "De l'Invention de l'Imprimerie, ou analyse des deux ouvrages publiés sur cette matière par M. Meerman, &c.; suivi d'une notice chronologique et raisonnée des livres avec et sans date," Paris, 1809, 8vo. The author is Mons. Jansen. Prefixed there is an interesting account, of Meerman. Lysander might have noticed, with the encomium which it justly merits the Vindiciæ Typographicæ of Schoepflin, printed at Strasburg, in 1760, 4to.; where the claimes of Gutenburg (a native of the same city) to the invention of the typographic art are very forcibly and successfully maintained.