20 Typography and Bibliography. 



ftill earlier " Life of Jafon ; " fo that we had better at once remove the 

 whole Weftminfter prefs, dated and undated, to St. Albans, if fuch an 

 argument is to have any force. Thefe fragments, indeed, can only 

 point to the fadl that the copy of Boethius was bound in the printing 

 office, as was commonly the cafe with the books from Caxton's prefs. 



Again, Mr. Scott draws attention to the fadl that a page of the 

 St. Albans' Book, i486, has been copied by a contemporary writer 

 on to the blank leaves of one of Caxton's earlieft books. 'Tis true ; 

 but this copying of part of one book into another, printed ten years 

 before, has no typographical bearing whatever. Laftly, the name 

 Caufton appears in an old St. Albans' Regifter of the early part of the 

 fifteenth century. But this, again, means pofitively nothing. Caxton's 

 name was not at all uncommon ; there were Cauftons or Caxtons in 

 nearly every Englifh county, and I have quite a long lift of them. 



It is highly probable that Caxton, while at Weftminfter, in the 

 van of all the literature of his day, would have communications 

 of fome fort with the important town of St. Albans ; but that the 

 two printers affifted one another in the produ<5lion of books, is, fo far 

 as any evidence goes, a pure fiction. 



Let us now glance at the bibliographical afpe6l of the book. 



The work itfelf has no title. It is difficult in our time, accuftomed 

 as we are to " teeming millions " of books, each with its own title- 

 page, to conceive a period when the prefs fent out works without 

 even the fhadow of a title-page. Before the invention of printing, 

 the author fimply headed his firft page with the name of the work, 

 as " Here begins the Confeffio Amantis," or " Hie incipit Parvus 

 Catho," and, without preface or more ado, the text commenced. 

 Sometimes even this little notification was omitted, and, as in 

 Caxton's "Jafon," "The Chefs Book," "Tulle," and many other 

 fifteenth-century books, the fubjedl of the work had to be learned 

 by reading the text. So it is with the book now under review; 

 it comprifes four diftindl works, but to one only is there any 

 heading, and that has the bare line "Incipit liber armorum." 



