The first of these books is a small folio of 96 leaves, and contains, besides the Life of St. Katherine of Siena, the Revelations of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The type used is a modification of Caxton's type No. 4*, recast on a slightly smaller body and with several new additions. Unlike Caxton's books which were made up in quires of eight leaves, this has been made up in quires of six. Another point which distinguishes it and the remaining books from Caxton's work is the introduction of several remarkable capital letters. These were obtained along with a fount of type and some wood-cuts from Godfried van Os, apparently about the year 1490, when he moved from Gouda to Copenhagen. The fount of type was not used until 1496, and then only for one book.
The Chastising of God's Children, a folio of 48 leaves, printed in Caxton's type No. 6, is notable as being the first book issued at the Westminster press with a genuine title-page. It is printed in three lines, and runs as follows: "The prouffytable boke for mannes soule, And right comfortable to the body, and specyally in adversitee and trybulacyon, whiche boke is called The Chastysing of goddes Chyldern."
Why so obvious an improvement as a title-page never commended itself to Caxton it is hard to say. It could not have been for want of examples, for, introduced in Germany as far back as the year 1468, they had at any rate during the last ten years of Caxton's life been in common use abroad. Even the London printer, William de Machlinia, had prefixed one to an edition of the Treatise on the Pestilence, by Canutus, Bishop of Aarhaus, which he printed about the year 1486. Of the Chastising, about twelve copies are known.
THE LYF OF SAINT KATHERIN
(see page [80])]
The Treatise of Love is also a folio of 48 leaves, and agrees typographically with the Chastising; indeed, the two were often bound together, and are quoted by Dibdin as two parts of one book. The introduction tells us that it was translated in 1493 from French into English by a person "unperfect in such work," but no mention is made either of the original author or the translator. It was most probably printed also in 1493, for at the end of that year De Worde introduced his own type and ceased the use of Caxton's for the text of his books. At the end his first device is found, consisting of Caxton's initials and mark, much reduced in size, in black on a white ground, and apparently engraved on metal. Blades quotes four copies of this book, all of them perfect, but does not mention the copy in the University Library at Göttingen, and there are probably at least two other copies in private libraries in England.
Of the Book of Courtesy, which, like the earlier editions, was in quarto, nothing now remains but two leaves printed on one side in the Douce collection at the Bodleian. These two leaves, which have been used at some time to line a binding, are waste proof of the beginning and end of the second and last quire of the book, which probably consisted, like the earlier edition, of 14 leaves. On the last page, under the colophon, "Here endeth a lytyll treatyse called the booke of curtesye or lytyll John. Enprynted atte westmoster," is De Worde's device printed upside down, the reason no doubt for the rejection of the sheet.