THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 31 
Mansion, afterwards without Caxton’s co-operation, printed in French 
the ‘Troy Book,” ‘‘ Jason,” and the ‘‘ Meditacions,” with similar 
types used for Caxton’stwo books. About 1476 a new font of types 
of slightly different character was brought into use by Mansion, and 
before Caxton took them with his printing outfit to England, they 
were tested by printing with them ‘‘ The Quatre Derrenieres Choses.” 
A year later Caxton had established an office in England. The 
‘*Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers” were printed by him at 
Westminster in 1477. — It is the first book in which Caxton directly 
and plainly gives time and place of printing, and many think it is 
the first book he printed in England. Caxton’s advertisement of 
‘““ pyes,” or guides to the Easter Feast and Saints’ Days, has been 
preserved. It was issued soon after his arrival in England. In 
modern spelling it reads: ‘If it pleases any man, spiritual or 
‘temporal, to buy any ‘ pyes’ of two or three commemorations of 
‘Salisbury use, printed after the form of this present letter, which is 
‘‘well and truly correct, let him come to Westminster in to the 
‘“Almonry of the Red Pale and he shall have them good cheap.’ 
The words “‘ Red Pale,” beyond doubt, refer to the sign at his print- 
ing office; as their heraldic meaning is a vertical red band painted 
down the middle of a shield a third of its width, and many of the 
early printers took some heraldic device for a sign. 
From 1476 till his death in 1492, for fifteen years, Caxton 
translated and printed books in England. Including his work on 
the Continent, he was engaged in printing less than twenty years. 
During that time, according to. Knight, he printed sixty four books ; 
but Blades, with fuller information, places the number of his works, 
including reprints, leaflets and small books at ninety-nine, with- 
out reckoning two or three that are doubtful. Many books 
printed by Caxton have no doubt been lost. Of those remaining, 
seven are fragments ; and of thirty-one, but a single copy of each is 
left. ‘‘ The Polychronicon ” and ‘“‘ The Golden Legend ” are the two 
books from Caxton’s press less rare than the rest; of these, thirty 
copies of the one are preserved and thirty-one of the other. The 
British Museum possesses eighty-five Caxtons, more, as is seemly, 
than are in any other collection ; but twenty-five of these are dupli- 
cates, and the fifty-six Caxtons collected by Earl Spencer are held 
to be the best and nearest complete collection made. After patient 
