THE CAXTON COFFER.
The biographers of Caxton may be divided into two classes; those who wrote before the publication of the Typographical antiquities, A.D. 1749, and those who wrote after that date. The same distinction may be made with regard to those who have incidentally noticed his life or publications.
The principal writers of the first period are Leland, Bale, Stow, Pits, Fuller, Nicolson, Middleton, Birch, Oldys, Lewis and Tanner. At the present moment, I must content myself with a critical remark on the mode in which Leland has been so often quoted. The first passage contains the expression to which I allude.
(1.) "Gulielmus Caxodunus, Angliæ prototypographus, hæc, aut similia his, Anglice refert" etc.
(2.) "Quanquam priusquam id, quod modo sum pollicitus, præstitero, non alienum meo erit instituto palam facere Gulielmum Caxodunum, hominem nec indiligentem, nec indoctum, et quem constat primum LONDINI artem exercuisse typographicam, Chauceri opera, quotquot vel pretio vel precibus comparare potuit, in unum volumen collegisse."
The incidental expression Angliæ prototypographus has been considered as a proof that Leland discredited the typographical claims of Oxford. The second quotation conveys an opposite notion. I tax no one, however, with unfairness, but ascribe the oversight to reliance on the Index scriptorum à Joanne Lelando laudatorum, which refers only to the first quotation.
BOLTON CORNEY.