A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. Henry Robert Plomer
being the lowercase 'w,' which is brought into prominence by large loops over the top. The 'h's' and 'l's' are also looped letters, the final 'm's' and 'n's' are finished with an angular stroke, and the only letter at all akin to those in type No. 1 is the final 'd,' which has the peculiar pump-handle finial seen in that fount. The Dictes and Sayinges is printed throughout in black ink, in long lines, twenty-nine to a page, with space left at the beginning of the chapters for the insertion of initial letters. It has no colophon, but at the end of the work is an Epilogue, which begins thus:—
'Here endeth the book named the dictes or sayengis | of the philosophers, enprynted, by me william | Caxton at Westmestre the yere of our lord ·M· | CCCC·LXXVij.'
Caxton followed The Dictes and Sayinges with an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a folio of 372 leaves. The size of the book makes it probable that it was put in hand simultaneously with its predecessor, and that the chief work of the poet, to whom Caxton paid more than one eloquent tribute, engaged his attention as soon as he set up his press in England. He also printed in the same type a Sarum Ordinale, known only by a fragment in the Bodleian, and a number of small quarto tracts, such as The Moral Proverbs of Christyne, which bears date the 20th of February; a Latin school-book called Stans Puer ad Mensam; two translations from the Distichs of Dionysius Cato, entitled respectively Parvus Catho and Magnus Catho, of which a second edition was speedily called for; Lydgate's fable of the Chorl and the Bird, a quarto of 10 leaves, which also soon went to a second edition; Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite, and two editions of Lydgate's The Horse, the Sheep, and the Goose.
During the first three years of Caxton's residence at Westminster he printed at least thirty books. In 1479 he recast type 2 (cited in its new form by Blades as type 2*), and this he continued to use until 1481. But about the same time he cast two other founts, Nos. 3 and 4. The first of these was a large black letter of Missal character, used chiefly for printing service books, but appearing in the books printed with type 2* for headlines. With it he printed Cordyale, or the Four Last Things, a folio of 78 leaves, the work being a translation by Earl Rivers of Les Quatre Derrenieres Choses Advenir, first printed in type 2 in the office of Colard Mansion. A second edition of The Dictes and Sayinges was also printed in this type, while to the year 1478 or 1479 must be ascribed the Rhetorica Nova of Friar Laurence of Savona, a folio of 124 leaves, long attributed to the press of Cambridge.
After 1479 Caxton began to space out his lines and to use signatures, customs that had been in vogue on the Continent for some years before he left. In 1480 he brought the new type 4 into use. This was modelled on type 2, but was much smaller, the body being most akin to modern English. Although its appearance was not so striking as that of the earlier fount, it was a much neater letter and more adapted to the printing of Indulgences, and it has been suggested that it was the arrival of John Lettou in London, and the neat look of his work, that induced Caxton to cut the fount in question. The most noticeable feature about it is the absence of the loop to the lowercase 'd,' so conspicuous a feature of the No. 2 type. With this type No. 4 he printed Kendale's indulgence and the first edition of The Chronicles of England, dated the 10th June 1480, a folio of 152 leaves. In the same year he printed with type 3 three service-books. Of one of these, the Horæ, William Blades found a few leaves, all that are known to exist, in the covers of a copy of Boethius, printed also by Caxton, which he discovered in a deplorable state from damp, in a cupboard of the St. Albans Grammar School. This was an uncut copy, in the original binding, and the covers yielded as many as fifty-six half sheets of printed matter, fragments of other books printed by Caxton. These proved the existence of three hitherto unknown examples of his press, the Horæ above noted, the Ordinale, and the Indulgence of Pope Sixtus IV., the remaining fragments yielding leaves from the History of Jason, printed in type 2, the first edition of the Chronicles, the Description of Britain; the second edition of the Dictes and Sayinges, the De Curia Sapientiæ, Cicero's De Senectute, and the Nativity of Our Lady, printed in the recast of type 4, known as type 4*.
The first book printed by Caxton with illustrations was the third edition of Parvus and Magnus Chato, printed without date, but probably in 1481. It contained two woodcuts, one showing five pupils kneeling before their tutor. These illustrations were very poor specimens of the wood-cutter's art.
To this period also belongs The History of Reynard the Fox and the second edition of The Game and Play of Chess, printed with type 2*, and distinguished from the earlier edition by the eight woodcuts, some of which, according to the economical fashion of the day, were used more than once.
In type 4, Caxton printed (finishing it on the 20th November 1481) The History of Godfrey of Bologne; or, the Conquest of Jerusalem, a folio of 144 leaves. In the following year (1482) appeared the second edition of the Chronicles, and another work of the same kind, the compilation of Roger of Chester and Ralph Higden, called Polychronicon. This work John of Trevisa had translated into English prose, bringing it down to the year 1387. Caxton now added a further continuation to the year 1460, the only original work ever undertaken by him. Another English author whom Caxton printed at this time was John Gower, an edition in small folio (222 leaves in double columns) of whose Confessio Amantis was finished on the 2nd September 1483. In this we see the first use of type 4*, the two founts being found in one instance on the same page. The first edition of the Golden Legend also belongs to 1483, being finished at Westminster on the 20th November. This was the largest book that Caxton printed, there being no less than 449 leaves in double columns, illustrated with as many as eighteen large and fifty-two small woodcuts. The text was in type 4*, the headlines, etc., in type 3. For the performance of this work Caxton received from the Earl of Arundel, to whom the book was dedicated, the gift of a buck in summer and a doe in winter, gifts probably exchanged for an annuity in money. Several copies of this book are still in existence, its large size serving as a safeguard against complete destruction, but none are perfect, most of them being made up from copies of the second edition. The insertions may be recognised by the type of the headlines, those in the second edition being in type 5. Other books printed in type 4* were Chaucer's Book of Fame, Chaucer's Troylus, the Lyf of Our Ladye, the Life of Saint Winifred, and the History of King Arthur, this last, finished on July 31, 1485, being almost as large a book as the Golden Legend.
No work dated 1486 has been traced to Caxton's press, but in 1487 he brought into use type 5, a smaller form of the black letter fount known as No. 3, with which he sometimes used a set of Lombardic capitals. With this he printed, between 1487 and 1489, several important books, among them the Royal Book, a folio of 162 leaves, illustrated with six small illustrations, the Book of Good Manners, the first edition of the Directorium Sacerdotum, and the Speculum Vitæ Christi. During 1487 also he had printed for him at Paris an edition of the Sarum Missal, from the press of George Maynyal, the first book in which he used his well-known device. The second edition of the Golden Legend is believed to have been published in 1488, and to about the same time belongs the Indulgence which Henry Bradshaw discovered in the University Library, Cambridge, and which seems to have been struck off in a hurry on the nearest piece of blank paper, which happened to be the last page of a copy of the Colloquium peccatoris et Crucifixi J. C., printed at Antwerp. This was not the only remarkable find which that master of the art of bibliography made in connection with Caxton. On a waste sheet of a copy of the Fifteen Oes, he noticed what appeared to be a set off of another book, and on closer inspection this turned out to be a page of a Book of Hours, of which no copy has ever been found. It appeared to have been printed in type 5, was surrounded by borders, and was no doubt the edition which Wynkyn de Worde reprinted in 1494.
In 1489 Caxton began to use another type known as No. 6, cast from the matrices of No.