[List of Notes & Queries volumes and pages]
Notes.
A CAXTON MEMORIAL SUGGESTED.
After Caxton had slept with his fathers for three centuries, remembered only by a few antiquaries, it was deemed fit that a public monument should record his merits.
The Roxburghe club, much to the honour of its members, undertook to bear the cost of it, and to superintend its execution. With regard to its location, there was no question as to the paramount claims of Westminster. It was proposed, in the first instance, to place it in the collegiate church of St. Peter, within the precincts of which church Caxton had exercised his art. The want of a convenient space was rather an obstacle to that plan: a more serious obstacle was the amount of fees demanded on such occasions. It was then decided, and perhaps with more propriety, that it should be placed in the parish church of St. Margaret; and the execution of the monument, which was to be of the tablet form, was entrusted to the younger Westmacott.[1] An engraving of it has been published.[2] The inscription is
"To the memory
of William Caxton
who first introduced into Great Britain
the art of printing
and who A.D. 1477 or earlier