192
HISTORY OF PRINTING.
most likely and able to encourage kim were sel- dom free from alarm for their own safety, their time much occupied, and their means necessarily reduced by the distracted and wasted state of the country ; and when little attention or money could be spared for literature; we must gire Caxton great credit for having done so much ; for having in the midst of confusion persevered in his labours, and succeeded in establishing the art of printing in his native land. That Eng- land at this period was much behind France in literature, is proved by the fact that Caxton was obliged to have recourse to the French language for most of the works which he printed. He thus, it may be supposed, employed his press profitably to himself, and certainly with advantage to our literature; for, as Mr. Warton truly observes, " had not the French furnished him those materials, it is not likely that Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and many other good writers, would, by means of his press, have been circu- lated in the English tongue, so early as the close of the fifteenth century."
There was, perhaps, at that time, no man in England, whose talents, habits, and character, were so well fitted to introduce and establish the ait of printing as those of William Caxton : to have succeeded in this enteiprise, the benefits of which, in a national point of view, we may even now be enjoying, is praise enough ; for it is the praise of having been a useful citizen of the state and member of society, — ^the highest that man can bestow or receive. At the period of Caxton's birth learning of all kinds was at a much lower ebb in England than in most of the continental states of Europe; in consequence, principally, of the civil wars in which the nation was embroiled, the habits of restlessness thus produced, and the constant pre-occupation of men's time and thoughts in promoting the cause they espoused, and in protecting their lives and property. Under these circumstances the most plain and common education was often neglected. Caxton's parents, however, performed their duty to him : " I am bounden," he says, " to pray for my father and mother's souls, that in my youth sent me to school, by which, by the sufiierance of God, I get my living, I hope truly."
Caxton's printing is inferior, in many respects, to the printing executed on the continent during the same period. The t^s emploved in the latter have a squareness, fineness, and brilliancy not in those of Caxton ; the paper and press- work are much superior ; the order and symme- try of the press-work are qualities which appear in very few of his productions. He seems not to have been able to procure, or to have rejected, the roman letter, even after it had been employed with excellent efiect by the continental printers. On the other hand, as Mr. Dibdin remarks, "whenever we meet with good copies of his books, his type has a bold and rich eflfect, which renders their perusal less painful than that of many foreign productions, where the angular sharpness of the letters somewhat dazzles and hurts the eye." His ink is of an inferior qua-
litT ; his paper is fine and good, resembling the thm vellum on which manuscripts were then generally written ; his letter is a mixtnte of secretary and Gothic, also resembling that used in manuscripts at that period; his leaves axe seldom numbered, his pages never. When the impression was finished, Caxton revised a single copy, and corrected the faults with red ink ; the copy thus corrected was then given to a proper person to correct the whole impression ; as he was extremely exact, this operation occasioned him much troublesome and minute labour. He used two devices in his printing, one of which is here given, and another much smaller, having a different border, and a flourish inserted above and below the letters.
The device itself consists of the initials W. C. within an upper and lower border of rude foliage and lozenges, upon black and white ground. Between the letters is an arbitrary sign meant to convey the date 74, as 1474 is usually sup- posed to have been the year when Caxton com- menced printing in England. The earliest im- pression of the large device now known, is in the copy of The Dictes and Sayinges of the PhUo- sophres, 1477, preserved in the Lambeth Library, wnere it occurs on the recto of the first leaf.
Mr. Dibdiii, in his Typographical Antiquities, and Bibliographical Decameron, has shewn, that most of the portraits of the early English printers may be considered as spurious. The portrait of Caxton has been copied from a head introduced in La Zucca, of A. F. Doni, to illustrate a par- ticular kind of cap and streamer, which has b«en supposed to represent the Italian poet, Burehiello Domenico: as the same engrav- ing is to be found in the early editions of his works. This portrait was originally engraved by W. Faithorne, for Sir Hans Sloane, as the head of W. Caxton ; it was then re-copied on a copper-plate, with some alterations, for the Rev. John Lewis's life of that printer, and afterward.^ by Maruhand, Ames, ano Herbert. The Rev.
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