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Where and when was this book printed? Conjectural dates have been given to it ranging from 1410 to 1470. The earliest date that can be absolutely connected with it is 1471-73. Certainly there is nothing in its printing which would point to its having been executed earlier than 1470. Its being printed only on the one side of the leaf was a matter of necessity on account of the cuts, and is not a sign of remote age, while the printing of two pages at a time argues an advance of knowledge in the printer, and consequently a later date. About 1480-81 the blocks which had been used for the four editions of the Speculum passed into the hands of John Veldener. This Veldener printed in Louvain between 1475 and 1477, and he was not then in possession of the blocks. ‘At the end of 1478 he began work at Utrecht, still, however, without this set of blocks. For his second edition of the Fasciculus temporum, published 14th February 1480, he had a few new blocks made, some of which were copied from Speculum cuts. At last, on the 19th April 1481, he published an Epistles and Gospels in Dutch, and into that he introduced two cut-up portions of the real old Speculum blocks. This was the last book Veldener is known to have printed at Utrecht. For two years we hear nothing more of him, and then he reappears at Kuilenburg, whither he removed his presses. There, on the 27th September 1483, he printed a quarto edition of the Speculum in Dutch. For it he cut up all the original blocks into their separate compartments, and thus suited them to fit into the upper portion of a quarto page. He had, moreover, twelve new cuts made in imitation of these severed portions of the old set, and he printed them along with the rest. Once more, in 1484 he employed a couple of the old set in the Dutch Herbarius, which was the last book known to have been issued by him at Kuilenburg. Thenceforward the Speculum cuts appear no more.’ssss1

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