PROTOTTPOGRAPHT. 589 



commercial venture he must have seen the probability of its success. 

 The capabilities of the novel invention for the rapid multiplication of 

 books in request among the learned were self-evident, and he would 

 feel sure of the royal countenance and the patronage of influential 

 friends in the enterprise. But first it was expedient that he should 

 make himself in some degi'ee practically acquainted with the art, 

 and with the economy of a printing establishment. Many intelligent 

 men had, to his knowledge, passed over with comparative ease from 

 other avocations to that of the printer. Why should not hel While 

 yet acting as British agent, he had been in the habit of utilizing his 

 intervals of leisure by translating into English a French work, 

 entitled Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes, a paraphrase of the 

 leading passages of the Iliad, written by Raoul le Fevre, formerly 

 chaplain and secretary to Philip the Good, and probably a personal 

 friend of the translator. After various interruptions he at length 

 completed his English version of the work, encouraged in his under- 

 taking by the Princess Margaret, "his redoubted ladye," who deigned 

 to suggest some improvements in the phraseology. It was begun at 

 Bruges, he tells the reader, continued in Ghent, and finished in 

 Cologne. And farther he more specifically states : "It was finished 

 in the time of the troublous world, and of the great divisions being 

 and reigning as well in the realms of England and France, as in other 

 places universally throughout the world, that is to wit : in the year 

 of our Lord one thousand four hundred and seventy-one." Of the 

 translation thus continued and ended in the midst of inauspicious 

 surroundings, Caxton proceeded to supply copies in manuscript to his 

 mistress the princess, and his other English-speaking friends. And 

 it was while personally engaged in this rather wearisome employment 

 that his plans for the future took definite shape, and the resolution 

 was formed to master for himself the new art of printing, and to issue 

 by means of it an edition of the English version of the Recueil for 

 the English market. 



At this juncture we become acquainted with Colard Mansion, a 

 Frenchman settled at Bruges. Colard Mansion was a clever engraver, 

 caligrapher and illuminator, who had been in the pay of Duke Philip 

 the Good, but who had betaken himself to the practice of the new- 

 art, and had set up a press in a small room over the porch of the 

 church of St. Donatus at Bruges. Here also he manufactured with. 

 3 . 



