English Literature for Boys and Girls

by H. E. Marshall

For fourteen years Caxton lived a busy life, translating, editing, and printing. Besides that he must have led a busy social life, for he was a favorite with Edward IV, and with his successors Richard III and Henry VII too. Great nobles visited his workshop, sent him gifts, and eagerly bought and read his books. The wealthy merchants, his old companions in trade, were glad still to claim him as a friend. Great ladies courted, flattered, and encouraged him. He married, too, and had children, though we known nothing of his home life. Altogether his days were full and busy, and we may believe that he was happy.

But at length Caxton's useful, busy life came to an end. On the last day of it he was still translating a book from French. He finished it only a few hours before he died. We know this, although we do not know the exact date of his death. For his pupil and follower, who carried on his work afterwards, says on the title-page of this book that it was "finished at the last day of his life."

Caxton was buried in the church near which he had worked—St. Margaret's, Westminster. He was laid to rest with some ceremony as a man of importance, for in the account-books of the parish we find these entries:—

"At burying of William Caxton for four torches 6s. 8d.
For the bell at same burying 6d."

This was much more than was usually spent at the burial of ordinary people in those days.

Among the many books which Caxton printed we must not forget Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, which we spoke of out of its place in following the story of Arthur in Chapter VIII. Perhaps you would like to turn back and read it over again now.

As we have said, Caxton was not merely a printer. He was an author too. But although he translated books both from French and Dutch, it is perhaps to his delightful prefaces more than to anything else that he owes his title of author. Yet it must be owned that sometimes they are not all quite his own, but parts are taken wholesale from other men's works or are translated from the French. We are apt to look upon a preface as something dull which may be left unread. But when you come to read Caxton's books, you may perhaps like his prefaces as much as anything else about them. In one he tells of his difficulties about the language, because different people spoke it so differently. He tells how once he began to translate a book, but "when I saw the fair and strange terms therein, I doubted that it should not please some gentlemen which late blamed me, saying that in my translation I had over curious terms, which could not be understood by common people, and desired me to use old and homely terms in my translations. And fain would I satisfy every man. And so to do I took an old book and read therein, and certainly the English was so rude and broad that I could not well understand it. . . . And certainly our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was born. . . . And that common English that is spoken in one shire varyeth from another. In-so-much that in my days it happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames, for to have sailed over the sea into Zealand. For lack of wind they tarried at Foreland, and went to land for to refresh them.

"And one of them, named Sheffield, a mercer, came into a house and asked for meat. And especially he asked for eggs. And the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but would have had eggs, and she understood him not.

"And then at last another said that he would have eyren. Then the good wife said that she understood him well. So what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren? Certainly it is hard to please every man by cause of diversity and change of language. . . .

"And some honest and great clerks have been with me, and desired me to write the most curious terms that I could find. And thus between plain, rude, and curious I stand abashed. But in my judgement the common terms that be daily used, be lighter to be understood than the old and ancient English."