of Armes' and also The Order of Chivalry,' in the preface to which he deplores the decay into which the custom and usage of chivalry are fallen and calls on the Knights of England to leave their dicing and read the noble volumes of the Saint Graal, of Lancelot, Galahad, Tristram, Perceforest, Percival, Gawayn, and the rest; of Richard Coeur du Lion, Edward the First and the Third and his noble sons; of Sir Robert Knollys, Sir John Hawkwood, Sir John Chandos, and Sir Walter Manny, as set forth by Froissart; of Harry the Fifth and Salisbury and Montagu, 'and many others whose names shine gloriously.' It is plain that the capture of Constantinople and the siege of Rhodes, the history of which was printed by an unknown press shortly after Caxton's death, had stirred him deeply, and he elsewhere urges the King or the Duke of York to deserve the tenth place among the Christian conquerors by enterprising the recovery of the city of Jerusalem. His friend and patron, Lord Rivers, did indeed make preparations for a crusade.

Here without doubt we have Caxton's chief delight in letters-the trumpet note of chivalrous romance. In this field lies the glory of Caxton's output, Malory's beautiful and heroic version of 'Morte Darthur,' wherein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, vertue and sin.' From this field also is absent the one work which we might have expected and could have wished him to print, Froissart's Chronicles.' Why, when he urged his public to read him, did he not print him? It is hard to say. The preface to 'The Order of Chivalry' was written in the reign of Richard the Third. He had yet time to print many more books, besides 'The Morte Darthur,' among them several other chivalrous romances, The Life of Charles the Great,' Paris and Vienne,' 'Blanchardyn and Eglantine,' and 'The Four Sons of Aymon.' He had already printed 'Godfrey of Boloyne,' a book in a much more historical vein (when he is once clear of Eracles) than these others, so that the great romantic cycles of the age are well represented. Caxton's versions are spirited and not overlong. The medieval way of telling an heroic tale is not perhaps our way, but Caxton could hardly have made a better

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choice. His successor, Wynkyn de Worde, followed on with 'Bevis of Hampton,' 'Sir Eglamour,' 'Guy of Warwick,' and 'Robin Hood.' Among romances, too, and not classical literature, we may reckon, though Caxton hardly so meant it, 'The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,' which gives that knightly view of Sir Hector and Sir Troilus which even Shakespeare did not outlive, and also that portion of Guido de Colonna's and Le Fevre's books which he presented in separate form as 'The Boke of Jason.' 'The Recuyell' was the first book he translated, before ever he turned printer, for literature and not the printing press was his earliest and his true love, and it was because of the popularity of this book that, despairing of making enough copies for all his friends by hand, he turned to the new mechanical method. Finally, we may include here his prose version of 'The Eneid,' of which Gavin Douglas complained that it was as like Vergil as the devil was like St Austin, and Ovid's Bokes of the Metamorphoses.' Of this last work it is commonly asserted that none of it was ever printed till almost our own day. The latest editors of the surviving portion-Mr Gaselee and Mr Brett-Smith-are of this opinion. But Caxton speaks of it, as 'performed and accomplished,' in a list of half a dozen books, whereof we have all the others in print. He did not know, therefore, what work to begin and put forth after the said works tofore made.' So to avoid idleness he sets to work on 'The Golden Legend.' In the face of this I cannot believe that 'Ovid' was never printed.

It may be frankly acknowledged that Caxton knew nothing of the Greek or Roman classics. He thinks Homer a prejudiced writer, whose views must be counterbalanced by a study of the rival narratives of Dares and Dictys, and he interpolates some very unclassical material in his 'Ovid.' But there were probably not half a dozen men in England in 1475 who knew any better, and it is foolish to rebuke Caxton, as Gibbon does, for not printing editiones principes of the classics. It took more than a printing press to produce those. A good supply of manuscripts, as well as great erudition, was required, and Caxton had neither. He had instead an enthusiasm for literature and a desire to see the English language made the vehicle, and a fit vehicle, for literary

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Who shall say that his purpose was a less worthy one, or less fully attained, than that of any Aldus Manutius or Henricus Stephanus? The trend of English letters was to be predominantly towards the romantic and the vernacular. How easily might our great Elizabethans have been led into Latin compositions, like Buchanan, the glory of contemporary Scotland, or at any rate into an excessively 'aureate' style and a rigid imitation of classical models! Something of this there inevitably was, but the taste of the general was already formed on the English models which Caxton and Copland set before it in the early days of our national press.

But the whole contribution of Caxton to this end has by no means been considered. The history of England, which through the channel of Holinshed was later to water so much of our dramatic soil, is represented by two large books, to both of which Caxton made original contributions in order to bring them up to date. These are Trevisa's well-known translation of Higden's 'Polychronicon' and 'The Chronicles of England.' 'The Description of Britain' is a separate reprint of portions of the latter. Caxton also says that he wrote a life of Robert Earl of Oxford, but of this nothing remains.

Last, but not least, come Caxton's editions of the English poets. Of three of these he printed large portions, and his choice has been endorsed by posterity. With the exception of Piers Plowman, he could not have found better verse writings in England, and Piers Plowman must even then have seemed archaic. His praise of Chaucer is generous and judicious, and of him he printed The Canterbury Tales' in two editions, so anxious was he to give the best possible text of so noble a poet, Troilus and Cressida,' which I am tempted to call the parent of the modern novel, The House of Fame,''The Parlement of Fowles,'' Queen Anelida and the False Arcyte,' and some short pieces, together with the 'Boethius' already mentioned. He wrote several times in praise of Chaucer, not only for his stories, his wisdom and his mirth, but for his language. His praise reminds one of Dryden's at a later date, and he honoured him more than Dryden did, in that his one care was to Vol. 248.-No. 491.

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print him as exactly as he could, which was far from Dryden's method. To select wisely, to praise judiciously, and to print accurately, are not these the cardinal virtues of an editor?

The second poet whom he fostered was 'moral' John Gower, who, along very often with Lydgate, is commonly associated with Chaucer in the estimation of the times. Gower is an excellent teller of tales in verse and a skilful metrist, essentially a poet of his own age and, therefore, not in the same universal class as Chaucer. But there is no poet in England, other than Chaucer, to be preferred to him before Spenser's day, and Caxton says nothing to suggest that he regarded him as Chaucer's peer; wherein he has the advantage over most of his contemporaries, even Dunbar, who do not discriminate so clearly as Caxton implicitly does between the merits of the two. Gower wrote considerable poems in three languages, Latin, French, and English: Caxton, exercising a wise and consistent judgment, printed only the English poem, 'Confessio Amantis.'

The third of the trio is Lydgate, who also, though longo intervallo, may be said to deserve his place. Though the Troy Book wins from Caxton the commendation that he is not worthy to bear the penner and inkhorn after its author, yet he printed neither it nor 'The Fall of Princes,' but only a number of his shorter pieces. As Lydgate is generally charged with 'copious and tiresome prolixity,' who shall say that Caxton did not again deserve well of his readers? His disciple, Pynson, did, however, print The Fall of the Princes' in 1494. Of still living poets Caxton praises Skelton-again, the best voice in an untuneful choir-and Wynkyn de Worde, a foreigner with no personal literary skill, printed him only a few years after his master's death. Only one important class of book is not represented in Caxton's list, Travel. But again Wynkyn de Worde, in 1499, filled the gap by giving 'Sir John Mandeville' to the world. Few publishers can claim to have backed so few wrong horses, or missed so few winners, as Caxton.

There remains to be considered briefly Caxton's influence on the English language. It was necessarily

t very great, and it was undoubtedly for good. The great factor here was his admiration for Chaucer. Like him, he chose to write neither modernised Anglo-Saxon, nor debased French, nor yet Latin, but English, a standardised tongue that was to be the common literary vehicle of all sections of the community, north as well as south of the Tweed, whatever dialects or tongues they might choose to speak or write in addition. Caxton was quite aware of the existence of dialects: he tells us, in a famous passage in the preface to the Eneydos,' that 'common English that is spoken in one shire varieth from another. In so much that in my days happened that certayn merchants were in a ship in Thames for to have sailed over the sea in Zeeland and for lack of wine they tarried at the foreland.' Who, to cut the story short, asked for eggs and were accused of speaking French by a good wife who herself called them 'eyren.' He then goes on to praise Skelton, 'poet-laureat in the university of Oxenford,' with, I think, a touch of satire, because he has 'not written in rude and olde language but in polyysshed and ornate terms; I suppose he hath dronken of Elycons well.' Caxton's own predilection was evidently for something a little less ornate. His native speech, he tells us elsewhere, was 'as broad and rude English as in any place of England,' but long foreign residence and association with all classes of men had well fitted him, as Chaucer also had been fitted, to establish a mean between these various ways of speech, a tongue which though there be no gay terms, nor subtle nor new eloquence, yet I hope that it shall be understood.' From the other extreme, of rude and incongruous speech, Chaucer had already saved the language, by teaching the use of short, quick and high sentences, eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity and showing the picked grain of sentence, -uttered by crafty and sugared eloquence.' So in Caxton's Preface to the 'Canterbury Tales.' Again, he says, in the Epilogue to the Boke of Fame,' he writeth no void words, but all his matter is full of high and quick sentence.' Caxton plainly envisages the path of English prose as leading, as in due time it did, to Dryden, who, with Spenser, also regarded Chaucer as the 'pure well of English undefiled,' though the manner of Bacon could hardly be surpassed