In the prologue to the 'Golden Legend' Caxton recites several of the works which he had previously "translated out of French into English at the request of certain lords, ladies, and gentlemen." Those recited are the 'Recueil of Troy,' the 'Book of the Chess,' 'Jason,' the 'Mirror of the World,' Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' and 'Godfrey of Boulogne.' It is remarkable that no printed copy exists of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses;' but in the library of Magdalen College, Cambridge, there is a manuscript containing five books of the 'Metamorphoses,' which purport to be translated by Caxton. It was evidently a part of his plan for the encouragement of liberal education, to present a portion of the people with translations of the classics through the ready means that were open to him of re-translation from the French. Many translators in later times have availed themselves of such aids, without the honesty to indicate the immediate sources of their versions. Caxton printed 'The Book of Tully of Old Age,' and 'Tullius his Book of Friendship.' He seems to have had great difficulty in obtaining a copy of an old translation of 'Tullius de Senectute.' The Book 'De Amicitia' was translated by John, Earl of Worcester, the celebrated adherent of the house of York, who was beheaded in 1470. Caxton, we think somewhat unnecessarily, limits the perusal of the treatise on Old Age. "This book is not requisite nor eke convenient for every rude and simple man, which understandeth not of science nor cunning, and for such as have not heard of the noble policy and prudence of the Romans; but for noble, wise, and great lords, gentlemen, and merchants, that have been and daily be occupied in matter touching the public weal: and in especial unto them that been passed their green age, and eke their middle age, called virility, and been approached unto senectute, called old and ancient age. Wherein they may see how to suffer and bear the same patiently; and what surety and virtue been in the same, and have also cause to be joyous and glad that they have escaped and passed the manifold perils and doubteous adventures that been in juvente and youth, as in this said book here following ye may more plainly see."
'The Book of Eneydos,' compiled from Virgil, is not a translation of Virgil's great epic, but a sort of historical narrative formed upon the course of the poet's great story. The most remarkable passage of this book is that of Caxton's preface, in which he complains of the unstedfastness of our language, and the difficulty that he found between plain, rude, and curious terms. (See page 5.) In this translation he again limits his work to a particular class of persons; as if he felt, which was probably a prejudice of his time, that the inferior members of the laity ought not to touch anything that pertained to scholastic learning. He says, "Forasmuch as this present book is not for a rude uplandish man to labour therein, nor read it, but only for a clerk and a noble gentleman that feeleth and understandeth in faits of arms, in love, and in noble chivalry: therefore, in mean between both, I have reduced and translated this said book into our English, not over rude nor curious, but in such terms as shall be understanden, by God's grace, according to my copy."
'The book called Cathon' (Cato's Morals) was destined by Caxton for a wider circulation:—"In my judgment it is the best book for to be taught to young children in schools, and also to people of every age it is full convenient if it be well understanden."
Dr. Dibdin, in his 'Typographical Antiquities,' says of Caxton, "Exclusively of the labours attached to the working of his press as a new art, our typographer contrived, though well stricken in years, to translate not fewer than five thousand closely printed folio pages. As a translator, therefore, he ranks among the most laborious, and, I would hope, not the least successful, of his tribe. The foregoing conclusion is the result of a careful enumeration of all the books translated as well as printed by him; which [the translated books], if published in the modern fashion, would extend to nearly twenty-five octavo volumes!" The exact nature of his labours seems, as might well be imagined, to have been often determined by very accidental circumstances. One noble lord requests him to produce this book, and one worshipful gentleman urges him to translate that. He says himself of his Virgil, "After divers works made, translated, and achieved, having no work in hand, I, sitting in my study whereas lay many divers pamphlets and books, happened that to my hand came a little book in French, which late was translated out of Latin by some noble clerk of France, which book is named Eneydos, made in Latin by that noble poet and great clerk Virgil." Some books, indeed, he would be determined to print by their existing popularity. Such were his two editions of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' which we may be sure, from his sound criticism, he felt the necessity of promulgating to a much wider circle than had been reached by the transcribers. (See page 31.) Caxton was especially the devoted printer of Chaucer. His truly honourable conduct in venturing upon a new edition of the 'Canterbury Tales,' when he found his first was incorrect, exhibits an example in the first printer and the first publisher which the printers and publishers of all subsequent times ought to reverence and imitate. The early printers, English and foreign, were indeed a high and noble race. They did not set themselves up to be the patrons of letters; they did not dispense their dole to scholars grudgingly and thanklessly; they worked with them; they encountered with them the risks of profit and of fame; they were scholars themselves; they felt the deep responsibility of their office; they carried on the highest of all commerce in an elevated temper; they were not mere hucksters and chafferers. It was in no spirit of pride, it was in the spirit of duty, that Caxton raised a table of verses to Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. In his edition of Boetius, which he gives us to understand was translated by Master Geoffrey Chaucer, he says, "And furthermore I desire and require you, that of your charity ye would pray for the soul of the said worshipful man Geoffrey Chaucer, first translator of this said book into English, and embellisher in making the said language ornate and fair, which shall endure perpetually, and therefore he ought eternally to be remembered; of whom the body and corps lieth buried in the Abbey of Westminster, beside London, to fore the chapel of Saint Benet, by whose sepulture is written on a table, hanging on a pillar, his epitaph made by a poet-laureate, whereof the copy followeth." The writer of the Life of Chaucer, in the 'Biographia Britannica,' says, "It is very probable he lay beneath a large stone of gray marble in the pavement where the monument to Mr. Dryden now stands, which is in the front of that chapel [St. Benet's], upon the erecting of which [Dryden's monument] this stone was taken up, and sawed in pieces to made good the pavement. At least this seems best to answer the description of the place given by Caxton." There appears, according to the ancient editors of Chaucer's works, to have been two Latin lines upon his tombstone previous to the epitaph set up upon a pillar by Caxton. That epitaph was written by Stephanus Suriganius, poet-laureate of Milan. The monument of Chaucer, which still remains in the Abbey, around which the ashes of Spenser, and Beaumont, and Drayton, and Jonson, and Cowley, and Dryden, have clustered, was erected by an Oxford student in 1555. There might have been worse things preserved, and yet to be looked upon, in that Abbey, than honest old Caxton's epitaph upon him whom he calls "the worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English."
As the popularity of Chaucer demanded various impressions of his works from Caxton's press, so did he print an apparently cheap edition of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' in small type. Two of Lydgate's works were also printed by him. The more fugitive poetry which issued from his press has probably all perished. In one of the volumes of Old Ballads in the British Museum is a fragment of a poem, of which nothing further is known, telling the story of some heroine that lived a life of unvaried solitude:—
"From her childhood I find that she fled
Office of woman, and to wood she went,
And many a wild harte's blood she shed
With arrows broad that she to them sent."