592 PROTOTYPOGRAPHY. 



No room is left for doubt as to the place of issue of the next 

 volume of Caxton's wliich I have to notice, The Dictes and Sayings 

 of Philosophers. He had now for certain severed the ties which 

 bound him to Flanders and the Rhineland, after a residence there of 

 over thirty years ; and had transferred himself to the neighbourhood 

 of the great city where his youth had been spent. Undeterred by 

 the approaches of age, he resolved on a new career, and brought with 

 him from abroad a full equipment as printer, his founts of type being 

 cut and cast for him, as their appearance sufficiently proves, by 

 Colard Mansion at Bruges. With him also came a staff of experi- 

 enced assistants. On the title page of the Dictes and Sayings we 

 read : " Imprinted by me, William Caxton, at Westminster, in the 

 year of our Lord mcccclxxvii." Here at last we have the three 

 desiderated elements of certainty, and the tangible date is supplied, 

 by means of which the present year, 1877, has been distinguished as 

 the four hundredth anniversary of the introduction of printing into 

 England. The author or translator of the volume now issued was no 

 less a personage than the Queen's brother, Lord Antony Woodville, 

 Earl Kivers, governor, as we have already seen, of the Prince of 

 Wales. The astute printer contrives to keep in the sphere to which 

 he had become habituated at Bruges. By cultivating the good 

 graces of the higher powers he secures their patronage, and anti- 

 cipates, doiibtless, the solid advantages likely to accrue therefrom to 

 his several ventures. In 1484 we have him dedicating a work to 

 Richard III., who had then obtained possession of the throne — The 

 Book of the Order of Chivalry. In the preceding year he had put 

 forth the Legeiida Aurea, or Golden Legend, a work probably known 

 to be acceptable to Richard. In the life of St. George of England 

 in this book, he says that in the Chapel of St. George, at Windsor, 

 the heart of St. George is preserved, a precious relic presented to 

 Henry V. by. the Emperor Sigismund. 



In 1485, Henry YII. assumed the crown, and Caxton takes an 

 early opportunity of presenting to him in person a copy of the latest 

 product of his press, the History of Charlemagne. In this year he 

 prints Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d' Arthur, a compliment, we may 

 be sure, to the Tudors, who prided themselves on their descent from 

 Arthur through the Welsh princes. In 1489, he translates and prints 

 at Henry's express desire, the Feats of Arms and Chivalry, a work 



