(see page [70])]
LEGENDA AD USUM SARUM
(see page [71])]
Another question has been raised as to whether this device was cut in England or in France, but it has no resemblance to French work, and is almost certainly a native production. As Mr. Blades justly remarks: "Caxton, desirous of associating his press more directly with this issue than by the colophon only, which many people might overlook, probably designed his mark for the purpose of attracting attention. He no doubt stamped this device on the last blank page of the books after they had been received from abroad and before putting them into circulation."
It seems not improbable that besides the Missal, Maynial printed for Caxton another service-book, the Legenda according to the Salisbury use. The existence of this book is known only from a few odd leaves, for the most part rescued from old bindings and preserved in different libraries, but it agrees in every respect typographically with the Missal. The type is identical, the number of lines and size of page the same, and everything points to the same printer. Perhaps some day a copy with the colophon may be found and our doubts on the subject set at rest.
About 1488 appeared a new issue of the Golden Legend. It is not an entire reprint of the first, but only of certain parts of it. It contains 448 leaves, being one less than the first issue, and of these 256 are reprinted and 192 are of the original edition. It is difficult to explain this reprinting, but it was probably caused by the destruction of a large part of the stock of the original issue. Caxton took the opportunity to make two improvements in the reprint. He compressed the quires signed X and Y, which contained the awkward number of nine leaves, into a single quire X of eight leaves, and instead of having a blank leaf at the end of the book he added the life of St. Erasmus. The parts of the book which are of the second issue may be readily distinguished from the first by the head-lines. In the first issue they are in the larger type No. 3; in the second, in the smaller type No. 5.
On the 14th of July, 1489, Caxton finished printing a translation of the work of Christine de Pisan, entitled the Fayts of Arms and of Chivalry. This translation, as he tells us in the epilogue, he undertook at the express desire of Henry VII., who himself lent him the manuscript with the original French text. It is not improbable that the identical manuscript which Caxton used is one which is now in the British Museum, and which formed part of the old Royal collection. It was written for John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who died in 1453, and by whom it was presented to Queen Margaret, and it agrees very closely in every way with Caxton's English version.