Two editions of Mirk’s Liber Festivalis, each known from a single copy, one in the Pepysian Library, the other in the University Library, belong probably to this time. The various changes in the book are interesting to trace. In the earliest editions there are no references to, or additional chapters for, the new feasts which were then coming into use; then come editions with the extra feasts printed together at the end as a kind of supplement to the book, and finally we get the editions with these extra feasts put into their proper places in the body of the book. The edition in the Pepysian Library is without these extra feasts, while that in the University Library has them as a supplement of ten leaves at the end. In the next edition, which was printed about the end of 1493 by W. de Worde, the feasts have been incorporated into their proper places.
In 1494 Pynson reverted to his earlier types and issued a translation by Lidgate from Boccaccio called the Falle of Princes, remarkable for its charming woodcuts. In this book, for the first time, Pynson used his second device, a large woodcut containing his initials on a black shield with a helmet above on which is perched a small bird. This I imagine is meant for a finch, a punning allusion to his name, since pynson is the Norman name for a finch. Round the whole is a border of flowering branches, in which are birds and grotesque beasts. This device supplies us later with a most useful date test, for the edge split in 1496 and the piece broke off entirely towards the end of 1497. After 1498 the use of this device was discontinued but it was not destroyed, and it made a solitary reappearance, in a sadly mutilated state in an edition of a grammar of Whitinton in 1515. Probably in this year (1494) Pynson issued his edition of the Speculum vitae Christi, of which an almost perfect copy is in King’s library. It is illustrated with a large number of neat woodcuts, which are copied more or less from Caxton’s illustrations to the same book, though they are by no means identical with them, as has been often stated. As a general rule Pynson’s cuts are of very much better execution and design than either Caxton’s or De Worde’s, and though not in all cases good, as for instance in the Canterbury Tales, yet they never sink to the very bad drawing and engraving so often found in the works of the other two printers.
An edition of the Hecyra of Terence bears the date January 20, 1495, but no other dated book of this year is known, and 1496 was hardly better, having only the two grammars, the Liber Synonymorum and Liber Equivocorum, the latter usually wrongly attributed to Joannes de Garlandia; but many undated books of very considerable interest appeared about this time. Two of these, the Epitaph of Jasper, Duke of Bedford, and the Foundation of Our Lady’s Chapel at Walsingham are to be found in the Pepysian Library. Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, and half-brother of Henry VI, died on December 21, 1495, and the book must have been printed early in 1496. It is ostensibly written by one Smarte, the keeper of the hawks to the Duke, and begins as follows:—
Rydynge al alone with sorrowe sore encombred
In a frosty fornone, faste by Severnes syde
The wordil beholdynge, whereat much I wondred
To se the see and sonne to kepe both tyme and tyde.
The ayre ouer my hede so wonderfully to glyde
And how Saturne by circumference borne is aboute
Whiche thynges to beholde, clerely me notyfyde