CAXTON'S ADVERTISEMENT
(see page [42])]
When the advertisement first came before the notice of writers on printing, the existence of the Ordinale was unknown, and it is amusing to read the various conjectures as to the buying of "pyes" hazarded by them. One of the most ingenious occurred in a letter from Henry Bradshaw to William Blades, which was that the syllable "co" had dropped out by accident, and that the word should read "copyes," and this appeared all the more probable, as the word "pyes" comes at the end of the first line, which is slightly shorter than the rest. This is the only specimen of an early English book advertisement known, though foreign examples are not uncommon.
The Propositio Johannis Russell is one of the very few pieces printed by Caxton dealing with current affairs or politics. It is the oration delivered at Ghent, early in 1470, on the occasion of the investiture of the Duke of Burgundy with the Order of the Garter. It has often been considered as one of Caxton's very earliest pieces,—perhaps printed at Bruges. Blades writes, rather vaguely: "To me it appears most likely that it was issued at Bruges at no long period after its delivery, and before Caxton's final departure for England. At that town, both with the subjects of the Duke of Burgundy and the 'English nation' there resident, it would secure a good circulation; not so if issued seven years after its delivery in another country."
It could not have been printed anywhere by Caxton before 1475, and everything seems to point to its having been printed at Westminster in 1476-1477, perhaps at the instance of the author himself, then Bishop of Rochester.
It is a little quarto tract of four leaves, and two copies only are known, one belonging to the Earl of Leicester at Holkham, the other, formerly in the Spencer Library, now at Manchester. This latter was originally bound up, apparently by mistake, amongst the blank leaves of a note-book used for miscellaneous manuscript treatises of the fifteenth century, which run on over the first and last blank pages of the tract itself. It appeared, unrecognized, at the Brand sale in 1807, and was described amongst the MSS., "A work on theology and religion, with five leaves at the end a very great curiosity, very early printed on wooden blocks, or type." It was bought by Lord Blandford for forty-five shillings, and purchased at his sale in 1819 by Lord Spencer for £126.
Blades speaks of it as in its original binding, a quite inexplicable mistake, for it was bound between the years 1807 and 1819 in resplendently gilt morocco, double, with gauffered gilt edges! The copy at Holkham, which used to be in an old vellum wrapper, has also been rebound, and the two inner leaves, by some unfortunate mistake, transposed.
Of the Infancia Salvatoris, a version of one of the smaller treatises among the apocryphal books of the New Testament, but one copy is known. It was in the celebrated Harleian Library, which was bought entire by Osborne in 1746. The Caxton collectors of the period seem to have passed it over, for it did not get sold, even at its very modest price, until three years later, when it was bought for the University Library of Göttingen. It is still in its old red morocco Harleian binding, with Osborne's price—15—on the fly-leaf. Another note records, "aus dem Katalogen Thomas Osborne in London d. 12 Maij 1749 (No 4179) erkauft." Blades, in his description of the book, which he had not examined, conjectured that it was made up in three quires, the first of eight leaves, the second and third of six each, making in all twenty leaves, including a blank both at beginning and end. An examination of the water-marks of the paper shows that this was not the case, and that it consisted of two quires, the first of eight leaves, the second of ten, and that there were no blank leaves.
This tract, and the Compassio lamentationis Beate Marie Virginis, are the only two unique Caxtons in libraries outside England.