The Press at Westminster—Theological Books—Character of Caxton's Press—
The Troy Book—The Game of the Chess.
The indications of the period at which Caxton first brought the art of
printing into England are not very exact. Several of his books, supposed
to have been amongst the earliest, are without date or place of
impression. The first in the title of which a date or a place is
mentioned is 'The Dictes and Sayinges of Philosophres,' translated by
the Earl of Rivers from the French. This bears upon the title "Enprynted
by me William Caxton, at Westminster, the yere of our Lord M.CCCC.
lxxvij." Another imprint, three years later, is more precise. It is in
the 'Chronicles of Englond,' which book the printer says was "Enprynted
by me, William Caxton, in thabbey of Westmynstre by london, &c., the v
day of Juyn, the yere of thincarnacion of our lord god M.CCCC. lxxx." In
1485, 'A Book of the Noble Hystoryes of Kynge Arthur,' was "by me
deuyded into xxi bookes chapytred and enprynted and fynysshed, in
thabbey Westmestre." The expression "in the Abbey of Westminster" leaves
no doubt that beneath the actual roof of some portion of the abbey
Caxton carried on his art. Stow, in his 'Survey of London,' says, "In
the Eleemosynary or Almonry at Westminster Abbey, now corruptly called
the Ambry, for that the alms of the abbey were there distributed to the
poor, John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, erected the first press of
book-printing that ever was in England, and Caxton was the first that
practised it in the said abbey." The careful historian of London here
committed one error; John Islip did not become Abbot of Westminster till
1500. John Esteney was made abbot in 1474, and remained such until his
death in 1498. His predecessor was Thomas Milling. In Dugdale's
'Monasticon' we find, speaking of Esteney, "It was in this abbot's time,
and not in that of Milling, or in that of Abbot Islip, that Caxton
exercised the art of printing at Westminster. He is said to have erected
his office in one of the side chapels of the abbey, supposed by some of
our historians to have been the Ambry or Eleemosynary." Oldys says,
"Whoever authorized Caxton, it is certain that he did there, at the
entrance of the abbey, exercise the art, from whence a printing-room is
to this day called a chapel." When we consider the large extent of
building that formed a portion of the abbey of Westminster, before the
house was shorn of its splendour by Henry the Eighth, we may readily
believe that Caxton might have been accommodated in a less sacred and
indeed less public place than a side chapel of the present church. There
were buildings attached to that church which were removed to make room
for the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. It has been conjectured that the
ancient Scriptorium of the Abbey, the place where books were
transcribed, might have been assigned to Caxton, to carry on an art
which was fast superseding that of the transcriber. Nor are there
wanting other examples of the encouragement afforded to printing by
great religious societies. As early as 1480, books were printed at St.
Alban's; and in 1525 there was a translation of Boetius printed in the
monastery of Tavistock, by Dan Thomas Richards, monk of the same
monastery. That the intercourse of Caxton with the Abbot of Westminster
was on a familiar footing we learn from his own statement, in 1490: "My
Lord Abbot of Westminster did shew to me late certain evidences written
in Old English, for to reduce it into our English now used."
Setting up his press in this sacred place, it is somewhat remarkable how
few of Caxton's books are distinctly of a religious character.[12] Not
more than five or six can be held strictly to pertain to theological
subjects. Bibles he could not print, as we shall presently notice.
There is no breviary or book of prayers found to have issued from his
press. The only book distinctly connected with the Church is 'Liber
Festivalis,' or Directions for keeping Feasts all the year. It is highly
probable that many of such books have perished. But what furnishes a
curious example of the accidents by which the smallest things may be
preserved, there is now existing, preserved in Mr. Douce's collection in
the Bodleian Library at Oxford, a handbill, precisely such as a
publisher of the present day might distribute, printed in Caxton's
largest type, inviting the people to come to his office and buy a
certain book regulating the church service. "If it plese any man
spirituel or temporel to bye ony Pyes of two and thre comemoracions of
Salisburi vse enprynted after the forme of this present lettre whiche
ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to Westmonester into the
Almonesrye at the reed pale and he shal have them good chepe. Supplico
stet cedula." The preface to the present Liturgy of the Church of
England explains what a Pye was: "The number and hardness of the rules
called the Pie, and the manifold changings of the service, was the
cause, that to turn the book only was so hard and intricate a matter,
that many times there was more business to find out what should be read,
than to read it when it was found out." It is a curious fact that
printers even at the present day call a confused heap of types Pie; and
whilst no one has attempted to explain the origin of the word, we may
venture to suggest that the intricacy of this Romish ordinal might lead
the printers to call a mass of confused and deranged letters by a
familiar expression of contempt derived from the Pie which they or their
predecessors in the art had been accustomed to work upon.
Sir Thomas More has clearly shown the reason why Caxton could not
venture to print a Bible, although the people would have greedily bought
Wickliff's translation. There were translations of the Bible before
Wickliff, and that translation which goes by the name of this great
reformer was probably made up in some degree from those previous
translations. Wickliff's translation was interdicted, and thus More
says, "On account of the penalties ordered by Archbishop Arundel's
constitution, though the old translations that were before Wickliff's
days remained lawful and were in some folks' hands had and read, yet he
thought no printer would lightly be so hot to put any bible in print at
his own charge—and then hang upon a doubtful trial whether the first
copy of his translation was made before Wickliff's days or since. For if
it were made since, it must be approved before the printing." This was a
dilemma that Caxton would have been too prudent to encounter.
In the books printed by Caxton which treat of secular subjects, there is
constant evidence of the sincere and unpretending piety of this skilful
and laborious author and artisan. He lived in an age when the ancient
power of the church was somewhat waning; and far-sighted observers saw
the cloud no bigger than a man's hand which indicated the approaching
storm. One of his biographers, the Rev. Mr. Lewis, says of him that "he
expressed a great sense of religion, and wrote like one who lived in the
fear of God, and was very desirous of promoting his honour and glory."
It was in this spirit that he desired the religious teaching of the
people not to be formal and pedantic. The Preface to '_The Doctrinal of
Sapyence_,' which was translated out of French into English by Caxton,
contains a curious passage:—"This that is written in this little book
ought the priests to learn and teach to their parishes: and also it is
necessary for simple priests that understand not the Scriptures: and it
is made for simple people and put in English. And by cause that for to
hear examples stirreth and moveth the people, that ben simple, more to
devotion than to that great authority of science—as it appeareth by the
right reverend father and doctor Bede, priest, which saith, in the
Histories of England, that a bishop of Scotland, a subtle and a great
clerk, was sent by the clerks of Scotland into England for to preach the
Word of God; but by cause he used in his sermon subtle authorities, such
as [for] simple people had, nor took, no savour, he returned without
doing of any great good ne profit, wherefore they sent another of less
science: the which was more plain, and used commonly in his sermons
examples and parables, by which he profited much more unto the erudition
of the simple people than did that other."
But, in wishing the highest knowledge to be simplified and made popular,
the good old printer had no thought of rendering knowledge a light and
frivolous thing, to be taken up and laid down without earnestness. In
his truly beautiful exposition of the uses of knowledge, contained in
his prologue to the 'Mirror of the World,' he says, "Let us pray the
Maker and Creator of all creatures, God Almighty, that, at the beginning
of this book, it list him, of his most bounteous grace, to depart with
us of the same that we may learn; and that learned, to retain; and that
retained, to teach; that we may have so perfect science and knowledge of
God, that we may get thereby the health of our souls, and to be partners
of his glory, permanent, and without end, in heaven. Amen."
Gibbon, we think, has taken a somewhat severe view of the character of
the works which were produced by the father of English printing:—"It was
in the year 1474 that our first press was established in Westminster
Abbey, by William Caxton: but in the choice of his authors, that liberal
and industrious artist was reduced to comply with the vicious taste of
his readers; to gratify the nobles with treatises on heraldry, hawking,
and the game of chess, and to amuse the popular credulity with romances
of fabulous knights and legends of more fabulous saints." The historian,
however, notices with approbation the laudable desire which Caxton
expresses to elucidate the history of his country. But his censure of
the general character of the works of Caxton's press is somewhat too
sweeping. It appears to us that a more just as well as a more liberal
view of the use and tendency of these works is that of Thomas Warton,
which we may be excused in quoting somewhat at length:—"By means of
French translations, our countrymen, who understood French much better
than Latin, became acquainted with many useful books which they would
not otherwise have known. With such assistances, a commodious access to
the classics was opened, and the knowledge of ancient literature
facilitated and familiarised in England, at a much earlier period than
is imagined; and at a time when little more than the productions of
speculative monks and irrefragable doctors could be obtained or were
studied.... When these authors, therefore, appeared in a language almost
as intelligible as the English, they fell into the hands of illiterate
and common readers, and contributed to sow the seeds of a national
erudition, and to form a popular taste. Even the French versions of the
religious, philosophical, historical, and allegorical compositions of
those more enlightened Latin writers who flourished in the middle ages,
had their use, till better books came into vogue: pregnant as they were
with absurdities, they communicated instruction on various and new
subjects, enlarged the field of information, and promoted the love of
reading, by gratifying that growing literary curiosity which now began
to want materials for the exercise of its operations.... These French
versions enabled Caxton, our first printer, to enrich the state of
letters in this country with many valuable publications. He found it no
difficult task, either by himself or the help of his friends, to turn a
considerable number of these pieces into English, which he printed.
Ancient learning had as yet made too little progress among us to
encourage this enterprising and industrious artist to publish the Roman
authors in their original language: and had not the French furnished him
with these materials, it is not likely that Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and
many other good writers would by the means of his press have been
circulated in the English tongue so early as the close of the fifteenth
century." Warton adds in a note, "It was a circumstance favourable at
least to English literature, owing indeed to the general illiteracy of
the times, that our first printers were so little employed on books
written in the learned languages. Almost all Caxton's books are English.
The multiplication of English copies multiplied English readers, and
these again produced new vernacular writers. The existence of a press
induced many persons to turn authors who were only qualified to write in
their native tongue." Having thus given the somewhat different views of
two most able and accomplished scholars, viewing as they did the same
objects through different media, we shall proceed to notice some of the
more remarkable characteristics of the books issued from Caxton's press,
rather regarding them as illustrations of the state of knowledge and the
manners of his time, than as mere bibliographical curiosities.
_The Histories of Troy_ is a book with which our readers must now be
tolerably familiar. A writer in the century succeeding Caxton, one
Robert Braham, is very severe upon the old printer for this his work:
"If a man studious of that history [the Trojan war] should seek to find
the same in the doings of William Caxton, in his lewd [idle] 'Recueil of
Troye,' what should he then find, think ye? Assuredly none other thing
but a long, tedious, and brainless babbling, tending to no end, nor
having any certain beginning; but proceeding therein as an idiot in his
folly, that cannot make an end till he be bidden. Much like the foolish
and unsavoury doings of Orestes, whom Juvenal remembereth—which Caxton's
'Recueil,' who so list with judgment peruse, shall rather think his
doings worthy to be numbered amongst the trifling tales and barren
lewderies of Robin Hood and Bevis of Hampton, than remain as a monument
of so worthy an history." We have no sympathy with writers, old or
modern, who are severe upon "trifling tales and barren lewderies"—the
stories and ballads which are the charm of childhood and the solace of
age. It is somewhat hard that Caxton should be thus maltreated for
having made the English familiar with that romance of the Trojan war
with which all Europe was enamoured in some language or another. The
authority which Le Fevre partly followed was the Troy Book of Guido di
Colonna; and he is traced to have translated his book from a
Norman-French poet of the time of Edward the Second; and the Norman is
to be traced to Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, the supposed
authors of two ancient works on the History of Troy, but which histories
are held to have been manufactured by an Englishman of the twelfth
century. Guido di Colonna constructed the most captivating of the
romances of chivalry upon these supposititious tales of Troy. Hector and
Achilles are surrounded by him with all the attributes of
knight-errantry; and the Grecian manners are Gothicised with all the
peculiarities of the civilization of the middle ages. Lydgate
constructed upon this romance his poem of the Troy Book; and Chaucer
availed himself of it in his poem of 'Troilus and Cressida.' Shakspere,
in his wonderful play upon the same part of the Trojan story of the
middle ages, has used Chaucer, Lydgate, and Caxton; and several passages
show that our great dramatic poet was perfectly familiar with the
translation of our old printer, which was so popular that by Shakspere's
time it had passed through six editions, and continued to be read even
in the last century.
'_The Book of the whole Life of Jason_,' printed by Caxton in 1475, is
another of these middle-age romances, founded upon the supposititious
histories of Dares and Dictys.
Of '_The Game and Play of the Chess_' Caxton printed two editions, which
he translated himself from the French. The first was finished on the
last day of March, 1474; and it is supposed to have been the first book
which he printed in England. Bagford says, "Caxton's first book in the
Abbey was 'The Game of Chess;' a book in those times much in use with
all sorts of people, and in all likelihood first desired by the abbot,
and the rest of his friends and masters." It was a book that Caxton
clearly intended for the diffusion of knowledge amongst all ranks of
people; for in his second edition he says, in not very complimentary
phrase, "The noble clerks have written and compiled many notable works
and histories," that they might come "to the knowledge and understanding
of such as be ignorant, of which the number is infinite." And he adds,
with still plainer speech, that, according to Solomon, "the number of
fools is infinite." He says that amongst these noble clerks there was an
excellent doctor of divinity in the kingdom of France, which "hath made
a book of the chess moralised, which at such a time as I was resident in
Bruges came into my hands."
It would seem to be an ingenious device of the reverend writer of the
book of chess which Caxton translated, to associate with very correct
instructions as to the mode of playing the game, such moralisations as
would enable him therewith to teach the people "to understand wisdom and
virtue." Caxton readily adopts the same notion. He dedicates the book to
the Duke of Clarence: "Forasmuch as I have understood and known that you
are inclined unto the commonweal of the king, our said sovereign lord,
his nobles, lords, and common people of his noble realm of England, and
that ye saw gladly the inhabitants of the same informed in good,
virtuous, profitable, and honest manners." This book contains
authorities, sayings, and stories, "applied unto the morality of the
public weal, as well of the nobles and of the common people, after the
game and play of chess;" and Caxton trusts that "other, of what estate
or degree he or they stand in, may see in this little book that they
govern themselves as they ought to do." This book of chess contains four
treatises. The first describes the invention of the game in the time of
a king of Babylon, Emsmerodach, a cruel king, the son of Nebuchadnezzar,
to whom a philosopher showed the game for the purpose of exhibiting "the
manners and condition of a king, of the nobles, and of the common people
and their offices, and how they should be touched and drawn, and how he
should amend himself and become virtuous." This is a bold fable, and
takes us farther back than Sir William Jones, who says that chess was
imported from the west of India, in the sixth century, and known
immemorially in Hindustan by the name of Chaturanga, or the four members
of an army, namely, elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers. The
second treatise in Caxton's book describes, first, the office of a king:
by this name the principal piece was always known. Secondly, of the
queen; this name would seem to belong to the time of Caxton, for Chaucer
and Lydgate call the piece Fers or Feers, a noble, a general,—hence
Peer. Thirdly, of the Alphyns: this is the same as the present bishop;
the French called this personage the Fou, and Rabelais calls him the
Archer. Fourthly, the knight, who was always called by this name, in
English and French chess. The rook, the fifth dignified piece, is from
the Eastern name Ruc. Caxton goes on to inform us that the third
treatise is of the offices of the common people. This treatise relates
to the pawns; and a curious thing it is that the eight pawns of the
board are taken by him each to represent large classes of the
commonalty. The denominations of these classes somewhat vary in the two
editions, but their general arrangement is the same. We have, in the
first class, labourers and tillers of the earth; in the second, smiths
and other workers in iron and metal; in the third, notaries, advocates,
scriveners, drapers, and makers of cloth; in the fourth, merchants and
changers; in the fifth, physicians, leeches, spicers, and apothecaries;
in the sixth, taverners, hostelers, and victuallers; in the seventh,
guards of the cities, receivers of custom, and tollers; and lastly,
messengers, couriers, ribalds, and players at the dice.
The second edition of 'The Game of the Chess,' which is without date or
place, was the first book printed in the English language which
contained woodcuts. We give a fac-simile of the figure of the knight in
Caxton's volume.
[Illustration]
The original art of engraving on wood, and the production of
block-books, gradually merged, as we have seen, into the art of printing
from moveable types. From that time woodcuts became a secondary part of
books, used, indeed, very often by the early printers, but by no means
forming an indispensable branch of typography. Imitating the manuscript
books, the first printers chiefly employed the wood-engraver upon
initial letters; and sometimes the pages of their works were surrounded
by borders, which contained white lines or sprigs of foliage upon a
black ground. If a figure, or group of figures, was introduced, little
more than the outline was first attempted. By degrees, however,
endeavours were made to represent gradations of shadow; and a few light
hatchings, or white dots, were employed. All cross-hatchings, such as
characterize a line-engraving upon metal, were carefully avoided by the
early woodcutters, on account of the difficulty in the process. Mr.
Ottley, in his 'History of Engraving,' says that an engraver on wood, of
the name of Wohlgemuth (who flourished at Nuremburg about 1480),
"perceived that, though difficult, this was not impossible;" and, in the
cuts of the 'Nuremburg Chronicle,' a "successful attempt was first made
to imitate the bold hatchings of a pen-drawing." Albert Durer, an artist
of extraordinary talent, became the pupil of Wohlgemuth; and by him, and
many others, wood-engraving was carried to a perfection which it
subsequently lost till its revival in our own country.
[Footnote 12: See the list in Appendix.]
[Illustration: Lord Rivers presenting his book to Edward IV.]