In body they are precisely the same, and in most of the letters they are to all appearance identical; and the fact of their making their appearance about the same time in the Lectura super institutionibus of Angelus de Aretio, printed at Louvain by Veldener, and in the Quatre derrenieres choses, printed at Bruges by Caxton, would certainly appear to point to some connexion between the two printers.
Furnished with a press and two founts of type, both of the West Flanders kind and cut in imitation of the ordinary book-hand, William Caxton and Colard Mansion started on their career as printers.
Unlike all other early printers, Caxton looked to his own country and his own language for a model, and although in a foreign country, issued as his first work the first printed book in the English language. Other countries had been content to be ruled by the new laws forced upon them by the revival of learning. Caxton then, as through his life, spent his best energies in the service of our English tongue. The Recuyell of the Hystoryes of Troye, a translation by Caxton from the French of Raoul Le Fevre, who in his turn had adapted it from earlier writers on the Trojan war, was the first book to be issued.
The prologue to the first part and the epilogues to the second and third contain a few interesting details of Caxton's life. That to the third contains some remarks about the printing. "Therefore I have practysed and lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said booke in prynte after the maner and forme as ye may here see, and it is not wreton with penne and ynke as other bokes ben to thende that every man may have them attones. For all the bookes of this storye named the recule of the historyes of troyes thus enprynted as ye here see were begonne in oon day, and also fynysshed in oon day."
The wording of this sentence, which is perhaps slightly ambiguous, has caused several writers to fall into a curious error in supposing that Caxton meant to assert that the printed books were begun and finished in one day. His real meaning, of course, was, that while in written books the whole of a volume was finished before another was begun, in printed books the beginnings of all the copies of which the edition was to consist were printed off in one day, so also the last sheet of all the copies would be printed off in one day, and the whole edition finished simultaneously.
The Recuyell is a small folio of 352 leaves, the first being blank, and each page contains 31 lines, spaced out in a very uneven manner. The second leaf, on which the book begins, contains Caxton's prologue, printed in red ink. The book is without signatures, headlines, numbers to the pages, or catchwords.
Although a considerable number of copies—some twenty in all—are still in existence, almost every one is imperfect. The very interesting copy bought by the Duke of Devonshire at the Roxburghe sale in 1812 for £1,060 10s. which had at one time belonged to Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV., wanted the last leaf; Lord Spencer's wanted the introduction. Blades, it should be noticed, in his lists of existing copies of Caxton's books, uses the word "perfect" in a misleading way, often taking no notice of the blank leaves being missing, which are essential to a perfect copy, and often also omitting to distinguish between a made-up copy and one in genuine original condition.
