Note 91 — Early Typography. CHAPTER IV.

The writer of these verses was one of the correctors of the press employed by Schœffer, though his name does not appear. He concludes with the expression of a desire, which to this day finds a responsive echo in the bosom of every author and printer whose soul has been vexed by the blunders of copyists and compositors:—“Oh!” is his pathetic exclamation,—“if they could succeed in purging the texts of all their faults!—those who arrange the characters, as well as those who read the proofs; the friends of literature would then infallibly award to them a crown of glory, who thus come in aid by their books to thousands of seats of learning.” It is not at all unlikely that these verses were the origin of Junius’s assertion, that the name of the workman who stole Coster’s types and implements, and carried them off to Mentz, was John.