146 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 96. 



country, who would feel proud to subscribe to such 

 a " Memorial." If anything of the kind should be 

 undertaken, the projectors might depend upon me 

 becoming a subscriber. Henry Rylett, 



Printer. 

 Horncastle, Aug. 18, 1851. 



The following letter, on the other hand, from a cor- 

 respoiident whose smallest suggestion deserves, as it 

 will be sure to receive, the respectful attention of all 

 who have the pleasure of knowing his higli personal 

 character and great ac(]uirements, although pointing at 

 what might be a fitting INIemorial of one of tlie greatest 

 of the Worthies of Westminster, clearly indicates that 

 if Mk. Cornev's scheme can be carried out it will have 

 the benefit of the writer's encouragement and support : 



Mr. Bolton Corney's letter is entitled to much 

 attention. It is satisfactory to learn that the 

 oriiiinal design has been abandoned. The fountain 

 and the illumination might be a very pretty idea, 

 but it would have sorely puzzled some of our 

 countrymen to connect that memorial in their 

 minds with the name and services of the first 

 Entrlish printer. 



Might not the funds that were raised bo advan- 

 tageously employed in founding a Caxton scholar- 

 ship at Westminster School; or in the building or 

 enlarging some school bearing Caxton's name, con- 

 nected with Westminster ? The sjjiritual wants 

 of that city are great. 



If the statue be raised, which should not present 

 a bona fide resemblance to our celebrated printer, 

 it would be worse than valueless — something like 

 an imposture; and it would have as little con- 

 nexion with Caxton as the statue in St. Peter's 

 bears to the great Apostle, though called by his 

 name. 



Mr. Cokney's proposal, of giving an impression 

 of Ca.xton's original compositions, would unques- 

 tionably be his most enduring and glorious monu- 

 ment. 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 indivi- 

 duals ; still, the funds already raised, if not other- 

 wise expended for educational purposes, as before 

 suggested, would serve as the foundation for ac- 

 complishing Me. Coeney's excellent sugijestion. 



^ J. II. M. 



Our present purpose, however, is to call attention to 

 a hint thrown out not only in the following Note 

 addressed to oursulves ( 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 : 



Chnucei- and Caxton. — " Not half" of the re- 

 quired 100/. "has yet been subscribed" for the 

 restoration of Ciiaiicer's monument. Chaucer was 

 an especial favourite of Caxton ; and as the first 

 English jirinter seems for awhile destined to re- 

 main without " light and fountain," as once uptm 

 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 suiiVages on the matter? 



Q. 



After alluding to the various proposals for the Cax- 

 ton Memorial, and the correspondence between Mil. 

 Bolton Corney and Mr. Beriah Botfield in "Notes 

 AND Queries," Sylvanus Urban proceeds : 



" But the dis(;ussion 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 hQ far short of the sum necessary 

 to erect a statue or to print the works; if so, why 

 not repair Chaucer's t(mib with it? Nothing 

 would be more agreeable to Caxton himself. He 

 not only printed Chaucer's works, and re-im- 

 printed 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 otiitum Caxton voluit le vivere, cura 

 Willelmi, Cliaucer clare poeta, tui. 



Nam tua, non solum, compressit opuscula formis, 

 Has quoque sed laudes jussit hie esse tuas.' 



" The epitaph, touching evidence of Caxton's 

 afTection for the poet, has disappeared. In a few 

 years the tomb itself will have submitted to in- 

 evitable fate. What better mode of keeping alive 

 the memory of both Chaucer and Caxton, or of 

 doing honour to the pious printer, than by showing 

 that even after the lapse of centuries his wishes 

 for the preservation of Chaucer's memory in that 

 place are not forgotten ? If the fund is more than 

 suflicient i'ov the purpose, the surplus might be 

 invested on trust to perform the wish of Caxton, 

 by keeping Chaucer's monument in repair for ever." 

 — Gentle/nun's Magazine, August, p. 167. 



Here we leave the matter for the present ; not, how- 

 ever, without the hope that the present age will do 



