Such then were some of the scenes in the midst of which the young citizen grew up, and which supplied him with many ideas beyond those of his shop wares and his reckonings. Sometimes he passed over to France or Flanders to procure his stores of silks and velvets, or fine Paris thread; and on such occasions, book collectors, like Duke Humphrey, or Tiptoft of Worcester, did not disdain to employ the services of an intelligent merchant to procure them choice copies of foreign works. Treaties of commerce were generally negotiated by merchants, who were thus brought into contact with courtiers and politicians, and not unfrequently the commercial treaty was but the veil to conceal more profound political intrigues. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find a commission issued by Edward IV., in 1464, to Richard Whitehill and William Caxton, conferring on them the quality of ambassadors at the court of Burgundy, to reopen the trade with that country, which had been suspended in consequence of certain prohibitive decrees issued by Philip the Good. All that we know of Caxton up to this time was, that he had begun his education in a poor school of the weald of Kent, and had probably perfected it in some one of the London grammar-schools; that he had been apprenticed to Master Robert Large, a mercer of Cheapside, who became Lord Mayor in 1440, and dying the next year, left the sum of twenty marks to his servant William Caxton. Then he appears as a travelling agent of the London mercers in Brabant, and Holland, and Flanders, in which countries he spent thirty years of his life, and at last we find him at the court of Burgundy, to which the Flemish provinces were then subject. When his mission was ended, he continued to reside at the court, and was at Bruges in 1468, when the marriage took place between Duke Charles the Bold and Margaret Plantagenet, sister to Edward IV. He probably received some office in the household of the Duchess, but he seems to have had little to do, and to fill up his time the English mercer took to literary pursuits; considering, as he says, that every man is bounden by the counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness. He therefore resolved to translate into English the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,” by Raoul de Fevre, wherein he had great delight, both for the novelty of the same, and the fair language of the French; and having concluded to begin this work, he forthwith took pen and ink, and set to work; but after writing five or six quires, fell into despair over his task and put it aside. Duchess Margaret, however, at this juncture came to his aid: she had heard of his proposed translation, and required the quires to be brought to her for inspection; praised them, found fault with the English here and there, and finally commanded the translator to continue and make an end.
“I might not disobey her dreadful command,” says Caxton, “seeing that I was a servant of her Grace, and received of her yearly fee.” Dibdin, in his “Typographical Antiquities,” endeavours to prove that Caxton had printed the original French book before translating it into English; but this is mere conjecture, and there seem no satisfactory grounds for supposing him to have turned his attention to the new art of printing before the year 1471, when his English translation of the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye” was printed by him at Cologne. We are not told how he acquired a knowledge of the art, which had then been in operation for about twenty years, but the motive which led to his first applying himself to it was, as he tells us, the desire to multiply copies of his book, which was in request with divers gentlemen. Three years later he returned to England and set up the first English printing-press in the Almonry of Westminster Abbey, the learned abbot Millyng being his first patron, and evincing a lively interest in his success. Caxton’s earliest works were mostly his own translations; “The Game and Play of Chess” was the first production of his Westminster press, and its second edition was adorned with woodcuts. Another was “The Doctrine of Sapience,” also translated by him from the French, and intended “for the use of parish priests, and for the erudition of simple people.” “The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers” was a translation from the pen of his accomplished friend Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who had so high an opinion of his printer’s literary powers that he permitted him to overlook and correct the sheets. This accomplished nobleman, the chosen “champion” of the English ladies, the best scholar, the best poet, and the best jouster of King Edward’s court, helped to set the types with his own hand, and afterwards presented both the book and the printer to his royal brother-in-law.
Caxton did not altogether pursue his art in the spirit of a tradesman. He evidently had it much at heart to provide his countrymen with good and useful books, and took considerable pains in their selection. In spite of Gibbon’s sneer at the number of saints’ legends[305] and romances that issued from his press, we have every reason to admire the variety of subjects to be found in the sixty-four works which he lived to publish. They embrace religion history, poetry, law, ritual, and romance. No original work of the Latin classics appears on the list, which does not argue much for the scholarship of the English reading public at that time, and offers a striking contrast to the state of things in Italy, where the first works printed at the Subiaco press were “Lactantius,” St. Augustine’s “City of God,” and Cicero’s “Rhetoric;” and these were followed a little later by twenty-three editions of ancient Latin authors. But in England, though a few individuals had shown an interest in the classic revival, the nation at large was, at this time, wholly indifferent to the subject, and Caxton had to consult their taste, at the same time that he attempted to raise and refine it. He himself was no classical scholar; nevertheless, he chose a certain number of French versions of ancient authors for translation into English, such as the Treatise “De Senectute” of Cicero, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”[306] Boethius’ “De Consolatione,” the “Fables of Æsop,” and Cato’s “Morals.” The last he recommended as the best book that could be used by children in schools. He likewise translated a French narrative of Virgil’s “Æneid;” and contemptible as this sort of literature may appear to scholars, it helped to give his readers a certain acquaintance with the names and subjects of classical authors, and prepared the way for the study of the originals.
On the other hand, the number of English works which he produced, and the care he expended on presenting them to his readers in clear and simple language, “casting away the chaff of superfluity, and showing the picked gram of sentence,” gave a powerful stimulus to his native literature. His own favourite author was Chaucer, in printing whose works he grudged neither care nor expense: and he incidentally gives us to understand that the English gentry of that period had, like himself, a marvellous love for their great poet. He had no slight difficulty in getting a correct MS. to print from, and his first edition of Chaucer’s poems was, therefore, full of inaccuracies. A young gentleman criticised its defects, and offered, if he would print another edition, to supply him with a certain very correct copy, which was in the possession of his father, who loved it much, and would not willingly part with it. Caxton agreed to the proposal, by which, of course, he lost considerably as a tradesman, but gained in the esteem of the learned: and one is glad to find that the young gentleman, in fulfilment of his part of the bargain, did not purloin the book from his father but “got it from him full gently,” and delivered it to the careful custody of the honest printer.
Not content with the labour of printing and translating, which he carried on with so much eagerness that, as he tells us, his eyes were half blinded with continual looking at the white paper, the indefatigable old man undertook, at the age of seventy, to compose his “Chronicles of England,” and “Description of Britain,” which books he intended to convey to English readers a certain amount of information about the history and geography of their own country. He had plenty of critics while engaged on these works; some wanted him to use only “old and homely” terms; others, who were finer clerks, begged him to write the most curious words he could find. Caxton good humouredly complains of the difficulty he found in pleasing everybody, and remarks on the variable character of the English language, which gives ground for supposing that the English people must be born under the domination of the moon, never steadfast, but ever wavering. His own good sense, however, decided that the best English for any writer to use is that common phraseology which is more readily understood than what is antique or curious. He never assumed the airs of a scholar, and in his preface to a modernised version of Higden’s “Polychronicon,” calls himself “William Caxton, a simple person,” and modestly apologises for his attempt to render the rude old English of his author into more intelligible language.
One of his translations from the French, entitled “The Mirror of the World,” gives an outline of as much natural philosophy as was at that time known. This book was printed at the request, and at the cost, of Hugh Brice, a London alderman, and the choice speaks well for the intelligence of that worthy citizen. Caxton seems to have taken considerable pains over it, and says he has made it so plain, that every reasonable man may understand it, and begs his readers’ indulgence if there be found any fault in the measurements of the sun, moon, or firmament. To assist the intelligence of his “reasonable” readers, he added twenty-seven diagrams explanatory of scientific principles, and woodcuts representing the seven liberal arts. In these woodcuts we observe that the schoolmaster generally appears seated, while his scholars kneel before him. The grammar-master is furnished with a rod, which need not cause dismay, for perhaps it was but the ferule, part of the academic insignia of a master of arts. The logician’s book rests on a reading-desk, and he is expounding its contents to his kneeling pupils.
Dibdin calculates that Caxton’s translations alone would fill twenty-five octavo volumes, and that they extend to over 5000 closely-printed pages. His biographer Lewis bears witness to the fact that in his original writings he constantly expresses himself as “a man who lived in the fear of God, and desired much to promote His honour and glory.” But he thinks it necessary to regret that he should have been carried away by the superstitions of his times so far as to print saints’ legends, advocate pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and proclaim himself an enthusiastic admirer of the Crusades. Mercer and printer as he was, Caxton was indeed thoroughly informed with the spirit of chivalry. It was this that directed his choice of “The History of Godfrey de Bouillon,” “The Book of Chivalry,” and the “Histories of King Arthur.” In his preface to the first, the venerable printer makes an appeal to all Christian princes to establish peace and amity one with another and unite for the recovery of the Holy City, where our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ redeemed us with His Precious Blood; to encourage them to which “he emprised to translate his book.” In the second he utters a lament for the good days when the knights of England were really knights, “when each man knew his horse, and his horse knew him.” And in the third he confesses his conviction that Arthur was no fabulous character, but a real man; and exhorts his readers to study his noble deeds, “for herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good, and leave the evil undone, and it shall bring you good fame and honour.”
Lewis informs us that the progress of printing terribly alarmed the ignorant and illiterate monks, who saw in the advancement of learning their own impending ruin. If so, they took a very strange way of expressing their alarm, for they were the first to patronise the new invention; so that in a very few years after Caxton had set up his press in Westminster Abbey, other printing-presses were at work in the monasteries of St. Alban’s, Worcester, Bury, and others. The monk who first introduced printing at St. Alban’s was the schoolmaster; his name is not known, though Sir H. Chauncey styles him “Insomuch.” Bale and Pits tell us that he was a reader in history, and say that he had collected materials for a history of England, but died before it was completed, that his papers fell into Caxton’s hands, who printed them under his own name. But this is evidently incorrect. The St. Alban’s printer was still working his press in 1486; and Caxton’s chronicles were printed six years earlier. Before the death of Caxton, several other printers, both English and foreign, were established in London, and among the latter was the celebrated Fleming Wynkyn de Worde. An Oxford press was at work so early as 1478, and seven years later the Latin translation of the Epistles of Phalaris issued from the press, to which is affixed a Latin couplet, boasting that the English who had been wont in former times to be indebted to the Venetians for their books, now themselves exported books to foreign countries:—
Celatos, Veneti, nobis transmittere libros
Cedite; nos aliis vendimus, O Veneti.