32 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS, 
investigation, Mr. Blades concludes that Caxton printed his books, 
come down to our time, from eights fonts of types, of five separate 
cuttings, made after three somewhat different styles of letters; for 
chronological convenience, in his life of Caxton, they are designated 
by numbers from one to six, Twelve of Caxton’s books bear the 
imprint of his deviceand initials The device was formerly thought, 
by a fanciful arrangement of Arabic numerals, to designate the year 
1474; but similar characters have been found on the tomb of a 
member of the Mercers’ Guild, and among the contraction symbols 
- used in Doomsday Book. ‘The seal used by him during his mercan- 
tile Governorship at Bruges likely suggested its use, and may have 
resembled it. 
Of Caxton’s chief printed works, besides the Troy and Chess 
Books, may be named :—The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer ; Boe- 
thius; Reynard, the Fox; The Fables of ‘sop ; Chronicles of 
England ; Higden’s Polychronicon, and the Golden Legend. Al- 
together he printed in England, excluding his work at Bruges, 18,000 
pages, most of them of folio size ; and of these 4,500 pages were 
translated by his own pen. In his will Caxton bequeathed for the 
benefit of his parish church fifteen copies of the Golden Legend. 
These sold at an average price of six shillings and eight pence a 
copy, a sum equivalent to about $13.00 of modern money. That 
was not an exhorbitant sum for a large illustrated book printed—as 
each of his books was—in a small edition. A luxurious edition, 
limited to 300 copies, of the same book as originally printed by 
Caxton, has been recently printed at the Kelmscott press of the poet 
Mr. William Morris. The price for the set of three volumes is 
£10 10S, 
Caxton understood the French, Dutch and Latin languages, and 
wrote crisp, vigorous, idiomatic English. As first printer of English 
books, his work has received frequent comment, fair appreciation, and 
some criticism. In his address on history, Gibbon expresses regret 
that Caxton, forced to comply with the vicious taste of his readers, 
printed mawkish stories for the idle, and superstitious legends for 
the credulous; that the world is not indebted to England for a 
single first edition of a classic author; and that when the father of 
printing gave his patrons a work on history, instead of printing Hig- 
den’s Chronicle in Latin, as he should have done, he only ventured 
