NATURE 



177 



THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1877 



THE CAXTON EXHIBITION 



THE exhibitirn just opened at South Kensington to 

 commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first 

 authentic pubHcation issued from an.Enghsh press, is one 

 that must appeal to all who can read, and possesses an 

 interest for the man of science from various points of view. 

 We need not repeat the many platitudes that have been 

 uttered and are now likely to be reiterated on the vast 

 importance of the invention of printing by means of 

 movable types. It was a gift to the people of Europe of 

 a pair of intellectual seven-leagued boots wherewith to 

 tread the path of culture ; progress during the last 400 

 years has been beyond all proportion more rapid than 

 during any previous period, and while no doubt other 

 causes have been at work, the strongest impulse has bsen 

 received from the invention so interestingly illustrated at 

 South Kensington. Mr. Gladstone, in his speech on 

 Saturday, stated that he did not think the invention of 

 movable types in itself anything very extraordinary, and 

 wondered that it had not been blundered on long before 

 the time of Gutenberg and Fust. But the same might be 

 said of most inventions in their first rude forms ; we who 

 are accustomed to locomotive engines and ocean-going 

 steamers, for example, are apt to wonder how the world 

 was so long in hitting on these applications of steam. 

 But the truth is that in art as in nature no stage is reached 

 by a leap ; it requires a collocation of many little circum- 

 stances before any new form is ripe for development. And 

 probably, if we could minutely trace the precedents of the 

 invention of printing, we might find that it was the most 

 natural thing possible that it should have taken place just 

 when it did and not before. Probably all the material condi- 

 tions or''enviro:iment" may have reached the proper stage 

 a century before the actual invention, but then there was no 

 Gutenberg or Fust (or whoever the genius was, for this is 

 no place to discuss the much-discussed question) v/ith the 

 requisite discernment to perceive this, and the practical 

 skill to proceed in the direction indicated by the condi- 

 tions. It is curious that all the extant remains of the 

 work of the earliest known printers are really wonderful 

 in beauty of execution, which makes one doubtful if we 

 have any of the very earliest specimens, and whether the 

 date of invention should not be pushed further back than 

 the accepted one. 



The exact date of the invention, however, has not been 

 satisfactorily ascertained. That it was complete by the 

 year 1450 there seems no doubt, and by the year 1500 

 printing-presses had been set up in 220 places in Europe, 

 and many books, mainly editions of the classical writers, 

 and religious books, were in circulation by their means. 

 Mainz was the city in which the new art reached its first 

 full development, spreading thence to Haarlem and 

 Strassburg, from Haarlem to Rome, 1466, by Sweynheym 

 and Pannartz, who are said to have been the first to make 

 use of Roman types, to Paris in 1469, to England about 

 1474, and to Spain in 1475. 



The exact date of the introduction of printing into 

 England is not certain ; it may have been I47i,it was not 

 Vol. XVI. — No. 401 



later than 1477, the date of the publication of Caxton's 

 " The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," the first 

 book certainly printed and published in England, at the 

 Almonry at Westminster Abbey, where Caxton set up his 

 press ; it is to commemorate this event that this year has 

 been chosen for the Caxton celebration. There is a story 

 that a press was set up at Oxford a few years before 

 Caxton's at Westminster ; but the evidence for this state- 

 ment is quite untrustworthy. The first English book 

 printed was by Caxton at Bruges, probably in the year 

 1474, "The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye." It was 

 at Bruges, where Caxton lived in his capacity of mercer, 

 a man of great importance, and in the retinue of the 

 Duchess of Burgundy, that he learned the new art of 

 printing from Colard Mansion ; when he brought the 

 invention to England he was probably about fifty years of 

 age, having been born in the Weald of Kent somewhere 

 about 1420 : nearly all dates connected with Caxton are 

 very uncertain. 



According to Oldys, the first book in wliich Caxton had 

 any hand is one which may very fairly be considered as 

 connected with natural science. Its title was " Bartho- 

 lonieu de Proprietatibus Rerum," said to have been 

 printed while Caxton was at Bruges in the retinue of the 

 Duchess of Burgundy. The work is a kind of natural 

 history, by Bartholomew Glanvill, a Franciscan friar, who 

 flourished about 1360, explaining more especially the 

 nature and properties of the beasts, birds, fishes, stones, 

 &c., mentioned in Scripture. The work had already oem 

 translated into English in 1398 by Jotin de Trevisa, and 

 the translation was printed in England, probably on the 

 first paper made in this country, by Wynkyn de VVorde, 

 after Caxton's death. It is only right to state, however 

 that according to Mr. Blades, the great authority on all 

 connected with Ca?.ton, no impression of the edition in 

 which Caxton is said to have had a hand, has ever been 

 found. 



Caxton, who died in 1491, although he published from 

 his press at Westminster a wonderfully large and varied 

 collection of works, docs not appear to have been attracted 

 to any bearing on science, strictly so called. Probably 

 Mr. Gladstone hit on the reason in his estimate of 

 Caxton's character when he spoke of him as a thoroughly 

 practical Englishman who went in only for what would 

 pay. The " Image or Mirror of the World," one of the 

 popular books Caxton translated from the French, treats, 

 however, of a vast variety of subjects after the imperfect 

 natural philosophy of the day. We have an account of 

 the seven liberal arts ; of nature, how she worketh ; and 

 how the earth holdeth him right in the middle of the 

 world. We have also much geographical information, 

 amongst which the wonders of the Inde occupy a con- 

 siderable space. Meteorology and astronomy take up 

 another large portion. The work concludes with an 

 account of the celestial paradise. There are twenty- 

 seven diagrams explanatory of some scientific principles 

 laid down in this book ; and eleven othtr cuts illustraiive 

 of other subjects treated in the work. The work was 

 translated by Caxton in 1481, but the first edition has 

 no printer's name, place, or date. The history of the 

 '• Mirror of the World " may be summed up thus : — 

 Before the middle of the thirteenth century an unknown 

 author wrote in Latin " Speculum vel Imago Mundi." In 



