Might not the funds that were raised be advantageously employed in founding a Caxton scholarship at Westminster School; or in the building or enlarging some school bearing Caxton's name, connected with Westminster? The spiritual wants of that city are great.
If the statue be raised, which should not present a bonâ fide resemblance to our celebrated printer, it would be worse than valueless—something like an imposture and it would have as little connexion with Caxton as the statue in St. Peter's bears to the great Apostle, though called by his name.
MR. CORNEY'S proposal, of giving an impression of Caxton's original compositions, would unquestionably be his most enduring and glorious monument. These reprints would be dear, not only to the bibliographer, but to the philologist and men of letters generally. But the work would be an expensive one, and the editors should be far more liberally recompensed than by merely receiving a limited number of copies. As the subscription would probably be very limited, the work should be undertaken by the nation, and not by individuals; still, the funds already raised, if not otherwise expended for educational purposes, as before suggested, would serve as the foundation for accomplishing MR. CORNEY'S excellent suggestion.
J. H. M.
Our present purpose, however, is to call attention to a hint thrown out not only in the following Note addressed to ourselves (which, be it observed, has been in type for several weeks), but also in the pages of our learned and able contemporary the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, in an article from which we extract the most important passage, namely, that in the event of the failure of the projected Caxton Memorial, the funds subscribed might with propriety and good effect be applied (the consent of the subscribers being of course first obtained) to an object with which Caxton himself would so surely have sympathised, namely, the restoration of the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer:
Chaucer and Caxton.—"Not half" of the required 100l. "has yet been subscribed" for the restoration of Chaucer's monument. Chaucer was an especial favourite of Caxton; and as the first English printer seems for awhile destined to remain without "light and fountain," as once upon a time suggested by Dr. Milman, treasurer of the Caxton fund, possibly the subscribers to that fund would not object to the transmission of the sum required by the old monument of the poet, from the no monument of the printer? Will the Dean of St. Paul's ask for suffrages on the matter?
Q.
After alluding to the various proposals for the Caxton Memorial, and the correspondence between MR. BOLTON CORNEY and MR. BERIAH BOTFIELD in "NOTES AND QUERIES," Sylvanus Urban proceeds:
"But the discussion will do good. If neither proposal can be carried out, we shall probably have a better suggestion than either. The money in hand is said to be far short of the sum necessary to erect a statue or to print the works; if so, why not repair Chaucer's tomb with it? Nothing would be more agreeable to Caxton himself. He not only printed Chaucer's works, and re-imprinted them merely to get rid of errors; but, feeling that the great poet 'ought eternally to be remembered' in the place where he lies buried, he hung up an epitaph to his memory over that tomb which is now mouldering to decay.
"'Post obitum Caxton voluit te vivere, cura