THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 33 
on the English translation by Trevisa. Such criticism from Gibbon 
startled his readers, but did not change regard for Malory’s Legends 
and Chaucer’s Tales. It is singular that Gibbon should have under 
estimated Caxton’s contributions to English literature, or the relative 
importance of his mother tongue. But the brightest mirror has 
some fleck, the human eye itself has its tiny blind spot; and 
Gibbon, to whom the secrets of the past stood revealed, so 
dimly foresaw the future of his own language, that, but for 
Hume, he would have written his history in French and not 
in English. The literary taste of our day is not that of the 
time of Gibbon. Our censors and guides think it singularly fitting 
that Caxton preferred his mother tongue, and did not turn his back 
on the perfect portraiture of English life and character furnished by 
Chancer’s Canterbury Pilgrims. German, Italian and French 
printers surpassed Caxton’s work in mechanical niceties of the 
printer’s art; but his shortcomings in those particulars were more 
than made up by special merit in other branches of his calling. He 
worked with persistent varied industry ; and his books, printed in 
the everyday speech of the people, have become the corner stone of 
the foundation for a great literature. When his services are fairly 
appraised, none of his contemporaries in the printing art will be 
found to surpass him in merit. His name is interwoven with his 
country’s history; and in his own words: ‘Other monuments 
** distributed in divers changes endure but for ashort time or season ; 
‘but the value of history diffused and spread by the universal world, 
‘“‘ hath time, which consumeth all other things, as conservatrice and 
‘and keeper of her work.” 
In the 126 years from the time Caxton printed the Troy Book 
to the year 1600 there were 365 printers in England and Scotland, 
or foreign printers who supplied England with books. During that 
time they printed ten thousand distinct works, an average of nearly 
80 books a year. But the acorn, if slow to germinate, became a 
sturdy oak. The art ‘‘which has conferred immortality on the works 
of man” has grown with the spread of knowledge, kept in perfect 
touch with industrial invention, and has made art, chemistry, and 
mechanical science its handmaidens, ministering to its progress. In 
1892, six thousand two hundred and fifty-four works were published in 
England ; an average every four days of the number issued each year 
of the XVIth century. Inthe great libraries of the world books are 
