No chronicler of them all, commonplace or painstaking as he might be, has so planted the image of the crooked Richard III. in men’s minds as Shakespeare: though it is to be feared that he used somewhat too much blood in the coloring; and doubtful if the hump-backed king was quite the monster which Garrick, Booth, and Macready have made of him.
Caxton and First English Printing.
In the midst of those draggling, dreary, dismal war-times, when no poet lifted his voice in song, when no chronicler who has a worthy name wrote any story of the years, there came into vogue in Europe and in England, a trade—which in its issues had more to do with the life and spread of good literature, than any poet, or any ten poets could accomplish. You will guess at once what the trade was; it was the trade of Printing.
Bosworth field dates in 1485: in the middle of the century (or 1444) John Gutenberg began the printing of a Bible; and a little after, Faust began to dispose of wonderful copies of books, which the royal buyers thought to be manuscripts: and Faust did not perhaps undeceive them: yet copies were so wonderfully alike—one to the other—that book lovers were puzzled, and pushed inquiry, and so the truth of the method came out.
In 1477 William Caxton set up the first English printing press—in an old building, close upon Westminster Abbey—a building, which, if tradition is to be trusted, was standing down to near the middle of the present century; and on its demolition in 1846 its timbers were converted into snuff-boxes and the like, as mementos of the first printer. It was in 1477 that William Caxton issued the first book, printed with a date, in England.[64]
This Caxton was a man worth knowing about on many counts: he was a typical Englishman, born in Kent; was apprenticed to a well-to-do mercer in the Old Jewry, London, at a time when, he says, many poor were a-hungered for bread made of fern roots;—he went over (while yet apprentice) to the low countries of Flanders, perhaps to represent his master’s interests; abode there; throve there; came to be Governor of the Company of English merchant adventurers, in the ancient town of Bruges: knew the great, rich Flemings[65] who were patrons of letters;—became friend and protégé of that English Princess Margaret who married Charles Duke of Burgundy; did work in translating old books for that great lady; studied the new printing art, which had crept into Bruges, and finally, after thirty odd years of life in the busy Flemish city sailed away for London, and set up a press which he had brought with him, under the shadow of Westminster towers. Fifteen years and more he wrought on there, at his printer’s craft—counting up a hundred issues of books; making much of his own copy, both translation and original, and dying over seventy in 1492. A good tag to tie to this date is—the Discovery of America; Columbus being over seas on that early voyage of his, while the first English printer lay dying.
And what were the books, pray, which Master Caxton—who, for a wonder, was a shrewd business man, as well as inclined to literary ways—thought it worth his while to set before the world? Among them we find A Sequell of the Historie of Troie—The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers—a history of Jason, the Game and Plays of Chesse, Mallory’s King Arthur (to which I have previously alluded), a Book of Courtesie, translations from Ovid, Virgil and Cicero—also the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (of whom he was great admirer)—coupling with these latter, poems by Lydgate and Gower; many people in those days seeming to rank these men on a level with Chaucer—just as we yoke writers together now in newspaper mention, who will most certainly be unyoked in the days that are to come.
The editions of the first English books ranged at about two hundred copies: the type was what we call black letter, of which four varieties were used on the Caxton press, and the punctuation—if any—was of the crudest. An occasional sample of his work appears from time to time on the market even now; but not at prices which are inviting to the most of us. Thus in 1862, there was sold in England, a little Latin tractate printed by Caxton—of only ten leaves quarto, with twenty-four lines to the page, for £200; and I observe upon the catalogue of a recent date of Mr. Quaritch (the London bibliopole) a copy of Godefroi de Bouloyne, of the Caxton imprint, offered at the modest price of £1,000.
Very shortly after the planting of this first press at Westminster, others were established at Oxford and also at the great monastery of St. Albans. Among the early books printed at this latter place—say within ten years after Caxton’s first—was a booklet written by a certain Dame Juliana Barnes;[66] it is the first work we have encountered written by a woman; and what do you think may have been its subject? Religion—poesy—love—embroidery? Not one of these; but some twenty odd pages of crude verse “upon the maner of huntyng for all maner of bestys” (men—not being included); and she writes with the gusto and particularity of a man proud of his falcons and his dogs. Warton says blandly: “The barbarism of the times strongly appears in the indelicate expressions which she often uses; and which are equally incompatible with her sex and profession.” The allusion to her “profession” has reference to her supposed position as prioress of a convent; this, however, is matter of grave doubt.