596 PROTOTYPOGRAPHY. 



dangling on one side. (For the instructive story of Caxton's cliild- 

 hood in the Weald of Kent, and his youth and early manhood in 

 the city of London, I must refer you to the books which are in 

 every one's hands.) 



It is hardly necessary to add that the Caxtoniana of Lord Lytton 

 are only remotely connected with our Caxton. They are a series of 

 pleasant essays, whose subjects were suggested to the writer from 

 time to time during the composition of The Gaxtons and My Novel. 

 The supposed author of these fine fictions, Pisistratus Caxton, nar- 

 rates, we shall remember, the very serious differences between his 

 father Austin and his uncle Roland, on the unsettled point as to 

 whether they came from the branch of the ancient Caxtons whence 

 the great printer sprung, ' or from that to which Sir William de 

 Caxton belonged, slain in the battle of Bos worth field, fighting 

 for Richard III. Considering the wide range of the Imaginary 

 Conversations of Walter Savage Landor, it is singular that among 

 the interlocutors none of the prototypographers are to be met with. 

 With his great dramatic insight, and perfect mastery of precise, 

 accurate English, Landor, had he chosen, might have constructed 

 much admirable discourse between Gutenberg and Adolphus of 

 Nassau, for example, or between Colard Mansion and the Seigneur 

 de la Gruthuyse, or between Caxton and Earl Rivers, or Caxton and 

 Abbot Esteney. Charles Knight, at the close of his Memoir of 

 Caxton, presents us with a scene, not badly conceived, in which 

 Wynkyn de Worde, Richard Pynson, William Machlinia and Lettou 

 are the dramatis personse. 



Caxton's foreman, Wynkyn de Worde, succeeded to the establish- 

 ment in King Street, Westminster, and carr-ied on printing operations 

 there until 1497, when he removed to Fleet Street, at the sign of the 

 Golden Sun. He was a native of Holland, and had accompanied 

 Caxton from. Bruges. He improved on his master's style and 

 adopted the Roman type. The issues of his press were numerous 

 aiid multifarious, including even the Koran " of the false necromancel* 

 Mahomet," as the phrase is on the title page. The first edition of 

 Sir John Maundeville's Travels was also issued by him. Four 

 hundred and ten works or editions are enumerated as coming from 

 Wynkyn de Worde's press. He put forth repeated editions of the 

 Scala Perfectionis, or Ladder of Perfection, a religious book printed 

 at " the command of Margaret Beaufort of Lancaster, the King's 



