The last book, the Golden Legend, is a small, thick folio of 436 leaves, with a number of illustrations which had been used in previous editions. The colophon is reprinted verbatim from the first edition, with the simple alteration of the date and regnal year. It ends, as do those of the preceding editions, "By me William Caxton," a circumstance which gives Blades the opportunity of remarking on the carelessness of Wynkyn de Worde. "This is only another instance," he writes, "of the utter disregard of accuracy by Wynken de Worde, who has here reprinted Caxton's colophon, with the date only altered, and thus caused what might have been a puzzling anomaly."
This is, I think, hardly fair criticism. The book is the largest which Caxton translated, and the words "By me William Caxton" may apply quite as much to the translation as to the printing, and it is no doubt that De Worde retained it as applying to the former. As Caxton was but recently dead, and well known to every one, he could not possibly have intended to signify that he was the printer.
One point in connexion with this book is curious. How was it that this third edition was printed when the stock of the earlier edition was not exhausted? Caxton, by his will, bequeathed a certain number to the churchwardens of St. Margaret's, to be sold for the benefit of the church, but these were not exhausted even by 1498, when a fourth edition was printed. In 1496 Caxton's son-in-law received twenty, and a number still remained in possession of his daughter.
A solution of this difficulty has occurred to me, which, though it may be considered as improbable, is by no means impossible. This is, that the "legends" mentioned in the various documents were not copies of the Golden Legend at all, but were copies of the Legenda of Salisbury use, which, as pointed out on page [71], were probably printed for Caxton. Being a book printed specially for the use of the clergy in church, such a bequest would be very suitable. In 1496 these "legends" were valued in the law-court at thirteen shillings and four pence apiece, but the twelve copies sold by the churchwardens of Westminster between 1496 and 1500 gradually decreased in price from six shillings and eight pence in the first year to five shillings in the last.
THE METAMORPHOSES OF OVID
(see page [83])]
