On the 20th of November, in the same year, appeared another romance, The History of Godfrey of Bologne, or The Conquest of Jerusalem, translated by Caxton from the French. Almost every copy known of this book is imperfect, but there is a beautiful example in the possession of Colonel Holford. It was Edward the Fourth's own copy, and at the end of the fifteenth century had come by some means into the possession of Roger Thorney, a mercer of London and a patron of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde, who printed, at his request, his edition of the Polycronicon. After various changes of ownership, it came into the possession of a noted collector, Richard Smith, and at his auction in 1682 was bought by the Earl of Peterborough for the not excessive sum of eighteen shillings and two pence.
THE GAME AND PLAYE OF THE CHESSE
(see page [53])]
About this time two more illustrated books were issued, a third edition of Burgh's Cato parvus et magnus, and a second edition of the Game of Chess.
The Cato contains two wood-cuts out of the set made for the Mirror of the World. It is a folio of 28 leaves, of which the first was blank, and is wanting in the two known copies, those in St. John's College, Oxford, and the Spencer collection.
The Game of Chess contains twenty-four illustrations, but the wood-cuts used number only sixteen, for many served their purpose twice. The first cut is of the son of Nebuchadnezzar, named Evilmerodach, described in the text as "a jolly man without justice, who did do hew his father his body into three hundred pieces." Most of the remainder are pictures of the various pieces.
The suggestion which has sometimes been made that Caxton's wood-cuts were engraved abroad is quite without foundation. They are very often copied from those in foreign books, but their very clumsy execution would be well within the capacity of the veriest tyro in wood-engraving. Mr. Linton suggested that they might have been cut in soft metal, but as the blocks when found in later books often have marks clearly showing that they had been injured by worm-holes, this conjecture is untenable.