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Title: The Old Printer and the Modern Press

Author: Charles Knight

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Language: English

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 THE
 OLD PRINTER
 AND THE
 MODERN PRESS.

 BY CHARLES KNIGHT.

  "Plus on lit, plus on lira; plus il faut, plus il faudra des livres."
  _Histoire des Français des divers états._

 LONDON:
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
 1854.

+
 LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
 AND CHARING CROSS.


 TO
 CHARLES DICKENS,
 ONE OF THE MOST EARNEST LABOURERS IN THAT POPULAR
 LITERATURE WHICH ELEVATES A PEOPLE,
 THIS VOLUME
 IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

 _April 13th, 1854._




In 1844 I wrote, and published in my series of 'The Weekly Volume,'
WILLIAM CAXTON, A BIOGRAPHY. That little work sold as largely as any of
the collection. It will not be reprinted, as I have cancelled the
stereotype plates.

In the present work I have remodelled that biography; rendering it a
more compact narrative of the state of knowledge before the invention of
printing, of the personal history of the man who brought the invention
to England, and of the nature of his efforts to diffuse information
amongst his countrymen. This account forms the FIRST PART of this volume.

The SECOND PART embraces a very broad view of the PROGRESS OF THE PRESS
to our own day, especially in relation to the important subject of CHEAP
POPULAR LITERATURE.

In treating of the remarkable revolution of our times in the prices of
books, I cannot avoid incidentally noticing some of my own labours in
that direction. I have done so as slightly as possible; and, I trust, in
the impartial spirit of an honest chronicler.




CONTENTS.


PART I.


CHAPTER I.

The Weald of Kent—Caxton's School-days—French disused—English taught
—Variations in English—Books before Printing—Libraries—Transcribers—
Books for the Great—Book Trade—No Books for the People—Changes
produced by Printing                                            Page 1


CHAPTER II.

The Mercer's Apprentice—His Book-knowledge—Commerce in Books—Schools
in London—City Apprentices—City Pageants—Spread of English Language—
English Writers—Chaucer—Gower—Lydgate—The Minstrels—National
Literature                                                           19


CHAPTER III.

Caxton abroad—Caxton's mercantile pursuits—Restrictions on Trade—
Caxton's Commission—Merchants' Marks—Beginnings of Printing—Playing
Cards—Wood-engraving—Block-books—Moveable Types—Guttenberg—
Guttenberg's Statue—Festival at Mentz                                44


CHAPTER IV.

The Court of Burgundy—Caxton a Translator—Literature of Chivalry—
Feudal Times—Caxton at the Ducal Court—Did Caxton print at Bruges—
Edward the Fugitive—The new Art                                      62


CHAPTER V.

Rapidity of Printing—Who the first English Printer—Caxton the first
English Printer—First English Printed Book—Difficulties of the first
Printers—Ancient Bookbinding—The Printer a Publisher—Conditions of
Cheapness in Books                                                   85


CHAPTER VI.

The Press at Westminster—Theological Books—Character of Caxton's
Press—The Troy Book—The Game of the Chess                            109


CHAPTER VII.

Female Manners—Lord Rivers—Popular History—Popular Science—Popular
Fables—Popular Translations—The Canterbury Tales—Statutes—Books of
Chivalry—Caxton's last days                                          125


CHAPTER VIII.

The Chapel—The Companions—Increase of Readers—Books make Readers—
Caxton's Types—Wynkyn's Dream—The first Paper-mill                   153


APPENDIX                                                             167


PART II.


CHAPTER I.

Cheap Popular Literature—Conditions of Cheapness—Popular Literature
of Elizabeth's reign—Who were the Readers                            179


CHAPTER II.

Imperfect Civilisation—Reading during the Civil Wars—Reading after
the Restoration—French Romances—First London Catalogue, 1680—Authors
and Booksellers—Subscription Books—Books in Numbers—The Canvassing
System                                                               197


CHAPTER III.

Periodical Literature—Prices of Books—18th Century—Two Classes of
Buyers—The Magazines—Collections of the Poets—The Circulating
Library—Cheap Book-Clubs                                             218


CHAPTER IV.

Continued dearness of Books—Useful Knowledge Society—Modern Epoch of
Cheapness—Demand and Supply—The Printing-machine—The Paper-machine—
Revival of Woodcutting                                               238


CHAPTER V.

London Catalogue, 1816-1851—Annual Catalogues, 1828, 1853—Classes of
Books, 1816-1851—Periodicals, 1831, 1853—Aggregate amount of
Book-trade—Collections and Libraries—International Copyright—Readers
in the United States—Irish National School-books                     260


CHAPTER VI.

Cheap Fiction—Penny Periodicals                                      277


CHAPTER VII.

Degrees of Readers—General Improvement—Newspaper Press—Newspaper
Press National—Agricultural Readers—General desire for Amusement—
Supply of real Knowledge                                             286


CHAPTER VIII.

Free Libraries—In Towns—In Rural Districts—Influences of the
best Books                                                           303


[Illustration]




 PART I.
 THE OLD PRINTER.




CHAPTER I.

 The Weald of Kent—Caxton's School-days—French disused—English taught—
 Variations in English—Books before Printing—Libraries—Transcribers—
 Books for the Great—Book Trade—No Books for the People—Changes produced
 by Printing.


In the first book printed in the English language, the subject of which
was the 'Histories of Troy,' William Caxton, the translator of the work
from the French, in his prologue or preface, says, by way of apology for
his simpleness and imperfectness in the French and English languages,
"In France was I never, and was born and learned mine English in Kent,
in the Weald, where I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude English as
in any place of England." The Weald of Kent is now a fertile district,
rich in corn-land and pasture, with farm-houses and villages spread over
its surface, intersected by good roads, and a railway running through
the heart of it, bringing the scattered inhabitants closer and closer to
each other. But at the period when William Caxton was born, and learnt
his English in the Weald, it was a wild district with a scanty
population; its inhabitants had little intercourse with the towns, the
affairs of the busy world went on without their knowledge and
assistance, they were more separated from the great body of their
countrymen than a settler in Canada or Australia is at the present day.
It is easy to understand therefore why they should have spoken a "broad
and rude English" at the time of Caxton's boyhood, during the reign of
Henry V. and the beginning of that of Henry VI. William Lambarde, who
wrote a hundred and fifty years after this period, having published his
'Perambulation of Kent' in 1570, mentions as a common opinion touching
this Weald of Kent, "that it was a great while together in manner
nothing else but a desert and waste wilderness, not planted with towns
or peopled with men as the outsides of the shire were, but stored and
stuffed with herds of deer and droves of hogs only;" and he goes on to
say that, "although the property of the Weald was at the first belonging
to certain known owners, yet it was not then allotted into tenancies."
The Weald of Kent came to be taken, he says, "even as men were contented
to inhabit it, and by piecemeal to rid it of the wood, and to break it
up with the plough." In some lonely farm, then, of this wild district,
are we, upon the best of evidence, his own words, to fix the birth-place
and the earliest home of the first English printer.

The father of William Caxton was in all probability a proprietor of
land. At any rate, he desired to bestow upon his son all the advantages
of education which that age could furnish. The honest printer, many
years after his school-days, looks back upon that spring-time of his
life with feelings that make us honour the simple worth of his
character. In his 'Life of Charles the Great,' printed in 1485, he says,
"I have emprised [undertaken] and concluded in myself to reduce
[translate] this said book into our English, as all along and plainly ye
may read, hear, and see, in this book here following. Beseeching all
them that shall find fault in the same to correct and amend it, and also
to pardon me of the rude and simple reducing. And though so be there no
gay terms, nor subtle nor new eloquence, yet I hope that it shall be
understood, and to that intent I have specially reduced it after the
simple cunning that God hath lent to me, whereof I humbly and with all
my heart thank Him, and also am bounden to pray for my father's and
mother's souls, that in my youth set me to school, by which, by the
sufferance of God, I get my living I hope truly. And that I may so do
and continue, I beseech Him to grant me of His grace; and so to labour
and occupy myself virtuously, that I may come out of debt and deadly
sin, that after this life I may come to His bliss in heaven." Caxton
seems to have had the rare happiness to have had his father about him to
a late period of his life. According to a record in the accounts of the
churchwardens of the parish church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, in
which parish the first printer carried on his business, it appears that
one William Caxton, who is conjectured to have been the father, was
buried on the 18th of May, 1480.

Some time before the period of Caxton's boyhood, a great change had
taken place in the general system of education in England. In the time
of Edward III., about half a century before the period of which we
speak, the children in the grammar-schools were not taught English at
all. It was the policy of the first Norman kings, long continued by
their successors, to get rid of the old English or Saxon language
altogether; and to make the people familiar with the Norman French, the
language of the conquerors. The new statutes of the realm were written
in French; so were the decisions of the judges, and the commentaries on
the laws in general. Ralph Higden, in a sort of chronicle which Caxton
printed, says, "Children in schools, against the usage and manner of all
other nations, be compelled for to leave their own language, and for to
construe their lessons and their things in French; and so they have
since Normans came first into England. Also gentlemen be taught for to
speak French from the time that they rocked in their cradle, and can
speak and play with a child's brooch [stick or other toy], and uplandish
men [countrymen] will liken themselves to gentlemen, and delight with
great business for to speak French, to be told of." John de Trevisa, the
translator of Higden's 'Polychronicon,' writing some forty years later,
"This manner was much used before the Great Plague, and is since some
deal changed; for Sir John Cornewaile, a master of grammar, changed the
teaching in grammar-schools, and construction in French; and other
schoolmasters use the same way now, in the year of our Lord 1385, the
ninth year of King Richard II., and leave all French in schools, and use
all construction in English. Wherein they have advantage one way:—that
is, that they learn the sooner their grammar; and in another,
disadvantage, for now they learn no French, which is hurt for them that
shall pass the sea." It was this change of system, operating upon his
early instruction, which caused Caxton, as a translator, to be so
diffident of his own capacity to render faithfully what was before him
out of French into English. Indeed from his earliest youth to the close
of his literary career, the English language was constantly varying,
through the introduction of new words and phrases; and there was a
marked distinction between the courtly dialect and that of the
commonalty. We have seen how he speaks of the broad and rude English of
his native Weald. But towards the close of his life, in a book printed
by him in 1490, he mentions the difficulty he had in pleasing "some
gentlemen, which late blamed me, saying, that in my translations I had
over curious terms, which could not be understood of common people, and
desired me to use old and homely terms in my translations. And fain
would I satisfy every man; and so to do, took an old book and read
therein; and certainly the English was so rude and broad that I could
not well understand it. And also my Lord Abbot of Westminster did show
to me late certain evidences written in old English, for to reduce it
into our English now used, and certainly it was written in such wise
that it was more like to Dutch than English; I could not reduce nor
bring it to be understood. And certainly our language now used varieth
far from that which was used and spoken when I was born: for we
Englishmen be born under the domination of the moon, which is never
stedfast, but ever wavering, waxing one season, and waneth and
decreaseth another season; and that common English that is spoken in one
shire varieth from another. Insomuch that in my days happened that
certain merchants were in a ship in Thames, for to have sailed over the
sea into Zealand, and for lack of wind they tarried at Foreland, and
went to land for to refresh them; and one of them named Sheffelde, a
mercer, came into an house and asked for meat, and especially he asked
after _eggs_; and the good wife answered, that she could speak no
French; and the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French,
but would have had eggs, and she understood him not. And then at last,
another said that he would have _eyren_; then the good wife said that
she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write,
_eggs_ or _eyren_? certainly it is hard to please every man, by cause of
diversity and change of language. For in these days, every man that is
in any reputation in his country will utter his communication and
matters in such manners and terms that few men shall understand them.
And some honest and good clerks have been with me, and desired me to
write the most curious terms that I could find. And thus between plain,
rude, and curious, I stand abashed; but in my judgment, the common terms
that be daily used be lighter [easier] to be understood than the old and
ancient English." In these days, when the same language with very slight
variations is spoken from one end of the land to the other, it is
difficult to imagine a state of things such as Caxton describes, in
which the "common English which is spoken in one shire varieth from
another," and there was a marked distinction between plain terms and
curious terms. Easy and rapid communication, and above all the
circulation of books, newspapers, and other periodical works, all free
from provincial expressions, have made the "over curious terms which
could not be understood of common people" more familiar to them than the
"old and homely terms" which their forefathers used in their several
counties, according to the restricted meanings which they retained in
their local use. When there were no books amongst the community in
general, there could be no universality of language. Of this want of
books we may properly exhibit some details, chiefly to show one of the
most remarkable differences which the lapse of four centuries has
produced in our country.

We shall find it, we think, a more agreeable, as well as more
instructive course, to look at the general subject of the supply of
books in connexion with the orders of people who were to use them,
rather than presenting a number of scattered facts, to exhibit the
relative prices and scarcity of books in what are called the middle
ages. We will first take the clergy, the scholars of those days. The
mode in which books were multiplied by transcribers in the monasteries
is clearly described by Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, in his
'Philobiblon,' a treatise on the love of books, written by him in Latin
in 1344:—"As it is necessary for a state to provide military arms, and
prepare plentiful stores of provisions for soldiers who are about to
fight, so it is evidently worth the labour of the church militant to
fortify itself against the attacks of pagans and heretics with a
multitude of sound books. But because everything that is serviceable to
mortals suffers the waste of mortality through lapse of time, it is
necessary for volumes corroded by age to be restored by renovated
successors, that perpetuity, repugnant to the nature of the individual,
may be conceded to the species. Hence it is that Ecclesiastes
significantly says, in the 12th chapter, 'There is no end of making many
books.' For as the bodies of books suffer continual detriment from a
combined mixture of contraries in their composition, so a remedy is
found out by the prudence of clerks, by which a holy book paying the
debt of nature may obtain an hereditary substitute, and a seed may be
raised up like to the most holy deceased, and that saying of
Ecclesiasticus, chapter 30, be verified, 'The father is dead, and as it
were not dead, for he hath left behind him a son like unto himself.'"
The invention of paper, about a century and a half before Richard de
Bury wrote, and its general employment instead of vellum for manuscripts
in ordinary use, was a great step towards the multiplication of books.
Transcribers necessarily became more numerous; but for a long period
they wholly belonged to the monastic orders, and the books were
essentially for the use of the clergy. Richard de Bury says, with the
most supreme contempt for all others, whatever be their rank, "Laymen,
to whom it matters not whether they look at a book turned wrong side
upwards or spread before them in its natural order, are altogether
unworthy of any communion with books." But even to the privileged
classes he is not sparing of his reproach as to the misuse of books. He
reprobates the unwashed hands, the dirty nails, the greasy elbows
leaning upon the volume, the munching of fruit and cheese over the open
leaves, which were the marks of careless and idle readers. With a solemn
reverence for a book at which we may smile, but with a smile of respect,
he says, "Let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of
volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor
thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed." The good
bishop bestowed certain portions of his valuable library upon a company
of scholars residing in a Hall at Oxford; and one of his chapters is
entitled 'A provident arrangement by which books may be lent to
strangers,' meaning, by strangers, students of Oxford not belonging to
that Hall. One of these arrangements is as follows:—"Five of the
scholars dwelling in the aforesaid Hall are to be appointed by the
master of the same Hall, to whom the custody of the books is to be
deputed. Of which five, three, and in no case fewer, shall be competent
to lend any books for inspection and use only; but for copying and
transcribing we will not allow any book to pass without the walls of the
house. Therefore, when any scholar, whether secular or religious, whom
we have deemed qualified for the present favour, shall demand the loan
of a book, the keepers must carefully consider whether they have a
duplicate of that book; and if so, they may lend it to him, taking a
security which in their opinion shall exceed in value the book
delivered." Anthony Wood, who in the seventeenth century wrote the lives
of eminent Oxford men, speaks of this library which was given to Durham
College (now Trinity College) as containing more books than all the
bishops of England had then in their custody. He adds, "After they had
been received they were for many years kept in chests, under the custody
of several scholars deputed for that purpose." In the time of Henry IV.
a library was built in that college, and then, says Wood, "the said
books were put into pews, or studies, and chained to them." The statutes
of St. Mary's College, Oxford, in the reign of Henry VI., are quoted by
Warton, in his 'History of English Poetry,' as furnishing a remarkable
instance of the inconveniences and impediments to study which must have
been produced by a scarcity of books: "Let no scholar occupy a book in
the library above one hour, or two hours at most, so that others shall
be hindered from the use of the same." This certainly shows the scarcity
of books; but not such a scarcity as at an early period of the Church,
when one book was given out by the librarian to each of a religious
fraternity at the beginning of Lent, to be read diligently during the
year, and to be returned, the following Lent. The original practice of
keeping the books in chests would seem to indicate that they could not
be very frequently changed by the readers; and the subsequent plan of
chaining them to the desks gives the notion that, like many other things
tempting by their rarity, they could not be safely trusted in the hands
of those who might rather covet the possession than the use. It was a
very common thing to write in the first leaf of a book, "Cursed be he
who shall steal or tear out the leaves, or in any way injure this book."

[Illustration: Transcriber at Work.]

We have abundant evidence, whatever be the scarcity of books as compared
with the growth of scholarship, that the ecclesiastics laboured most
diligently to multiply books for their own establishments. In every
great abbey there was a room called the Scriptorium, where boys and
novices were constantly employed in multiplying the service-books of the
choir, and the less valuable books for the library; whilst the monks
themselves laboured in their cells upon bibles and missals. Equal pains
were taken in providing books for those who received a liberal education
in collegiate establishments. Warton says, "At the foundation of
Winchester College, one or more transcribers were hired and employed by
the founder to make books for the library. They transcribed and took
their commons within the college, as appears by computations of expenses
on their account now remaining." But there are several indications that
even kings and nobles had not the advantages of scholars by profession;
and, possessing few books of their own, had sometimes to borrow of their
more favoured subjects. We find it recorded that the Prior of Christ
Church, Canterbury, had lent to King Henry V. the works of St. Gregory,
and he complains that after the king's death the book had been detained
by the Prior of Shene. The same king had borrowed from the Lady
Westmoreland two books that had not been returned, and a petition is
still extant in which she begs his successors in authority to let her
have them back again. Lewis XI. of France wishing to borrow a book from
the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, they would not allow the king to have
it till he had deposited a quantity of valuable plate in pledge, and
given a joint bond with one of his nobles for its due return. The books
that were to be found in the palaces of the great, a little while before
the invention of printing, were for the most part highly illuminated
manuscripts, and bound in the most expensive style. In the wardrobe
accounts of King Edward IV. we find that Piers Bauduyn is paid for
"binding, gilding, and dressing" of two books, twenty shillings each,
and of four books, sixteen shillings each. Now twenty shillings in those
days would have bought an ox. But the cost of this binding and
garnishing does not stop here; for there were delivered to the binder
six yards of velvet, six yards of silk, laces, tassels, copper and gilt
clasps, and gilt nails. The price of velvet and silk in those days was
enormous. We may reasonably conclude that these royal books were as much
for show as for use. One of the books thus garnished by Edward IV.'s
binder is called 'Le Bible Historiaux' (The Historical Bible), and there
are several copies of the same book in manuscript in the British Museum.
In one of them the following paragraph is written in French: "This book
was taken from the King of France at the battle of Poitiers; and the
good Count of Salisbury, William Mountague, bought it for a hundred
marks, and gave it to his lady Elizabeth, the good Countess.... Which
book the said Countess assigned to her executors to sell for forty
livres." We learn from another source that the great not only procured
books by purchase, but employed transcribers to make them for their
libraries. We find, from the manuscript account of the expenses of Sir
John Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, that in 1467 Thomas Lympnor,
that is, Thomas the Limner, of Bury, was paid the sum of fifty shillings
and twopence for a book which he had transcribed and ornamented,
including the vellum and binding. The Limner's bill is made up of a
number of items,—for whole vignettes, and half vignettes, and capital
letters, and flourishing, and plain writing. This curious account is
printed in the 'Paston Letters.' A letter of Sir John Paston, who is
writing to his mother in 1474, shows how scarce money was in those days
for the purchase of luxuries like books. He says, "As for the books that
were Sir James's (the Priest's), if it like you that I may have them, I
am not able to buy them, but somewhat would I give, and the remainder,
with a good devout heart, by my troth, I will pray for his soul.... If
any of them are claimed hereafter, in faith I will restore it." The
custom of borrowing books and not returning them was as old, we see, as
the days of the Red and White Roses. John Paston left an inventory of
his books, eleven in number, although some of the eleven contained
various little tracts bound together. One of the items in this catalogue
is, "A Book of Troilus, which William B—— hath had near ten years, and
lent it to Dame Wingfeld, and there I saw it."

But, even in the days before printing, there was a small book-trade; and
schemes were devised for making books of some general use. In Paris, in
the middle of the 14th century, the booksellers were commanded to keep
books for hire; and, in a register of the University of Paris,
Chevillier found a list of the books so circulated, and the price of
reading each. The hire of a Bible was ten sous. That the ecclesiastics
and lawyers constituted the great bulk of readers, and that the addition
of a book, even to the private library of a student, was a rare
occurrence, is evident from the absolute necessity for manuscript books
being dear. If the number of readers had increased—if there had been
more candidates for the learned professions—if the nobility had
discovered the shame of their ignorance—if learning had made its way to
the franklin's hall—manuscript books could never have been cheap. But
from the hour when a first large expense of transferring the letters,
syllables, words, and sentences of a manuscript to moveable type was
ascertained to be the means of multiplying copies to the extent of any
demand, then the greater the demand the greater the cheapness.

If the nobles, the higher gentry, and even the lawyers and
ecclesiastics, were indifferently provided with books, we cannot expect
that the yeomen had any books whatever. The merchants and citizens were
probably somewhat better provided. The labourers, who were scarcely yet
fully established in their freedom from bondage to one lord, were
probably, as a class, wholly unable to use books at all. Shakspere, in
all likelihood, did not much exaggerate the feelings of ignorant men,
who at the same time were oppressed men, when he put these words in the
mouth of Jack Cade when addressing Lord Say: "Thou hast most
traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm, in erecting a
grammar-school: and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books
but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and,
contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a
paper-mill." The poet has a little deranged the exact order of events,
as poets are justified in doing, who look at history not with
chronological accuracy, but with a broad view of the connexion between
events and principles. The insurrection of Cade preceded the
introduction of printing and paper-mills into England. Although during
four centuries we have yet to lament that the people have not had the
full benefit which the art of printing is calculated to bestow upon
them, we may be sure that during its progress the general amelioration
of society has been certain, though gradual. There can no longer be any
necessary exclusiveness in the possession of books, and in the
advantages which the knowledge of books is calculated to bestow on all
men. The late Mr. Southey, a just and liberal thinker, but, like many
others of ardent feelings, sometimes mistaken and oftener
misrepresented, has truly pointed out the difference between the state
of society when William Caxton was raised up to do his work amongst us
and the present state. The following is an extract from his 'Colloquies
on the Progress and Prospects of Society:' "One of the first effects of
printing was to make proud men look upon learning as disgraced, by being
thus brought within reach of the common people. Till that time learning,
such as it was, had been confined to courts and convents, the low birth
of the clergy being overlooked, because they were privileged by their
order. But when laymen in humble life were enabled to procure books, the
pride of aristocracy took an absurd course, insomuch that at one time it
was deemed derogatory for a nobleman if he could read or write. Even
scholars themselves complained that the reputation of learning, and the
respect due to it, and its rewards, were lowered when it was thrown open
to all men; and it was seriously proposed to prohibit the printing of
any book that could be afforded for sale below the price of three soldi.
This base and invidious feeling was perhaps never so directly avowed in
other countries as in Italy, the land where literature was first
restored; and yet in this more liberal island ignorance was for some
generations considered to be a mark of distinction by which a man of
gentle birth chose, not unfrequently, to make it apparent that he was no
more obliged to live by the toil of his brain, than by the sweat of his
brow. The same changes in society, which rendered it no longer possible
for this class of men to pass their lives in idleness, have completely
put an end to this barbarous pride. It is as obsolete as the fashion of
long finger-nails, which in some parts of the East are still the
distinctive mark of those who labour not with their hands. All classes
are now brought within the reach of your current literature,—that
literature which, like a moral atmosphere, is, as it were, the medium of
intellectual life, and on the quality of which, according as it may be
salubrious or noxious, the health of the public mind depends."




CHAPTER II.

 The Mercer's Apprentice—His Book-knowledge—Commerce in Books—Schools in
 London—City Apprentices—City Pageants—Spread of English Language—
 English Writers—Chaucer—Gower—Lydgate—The Minstrels—National Literature.


In a book which Caxton printed in 1483, 'The Booke callyd Cathon,' he
says in his prologue or preface, "Unto the noble, ancient, and renowned
city, the city of London in England, I, William Caxton, citizen and
conjury [sworn fellow] of the same, and of the fraternity and fellowship
of the Mercery, owe of right my service and good will; and of very duty
am bounden naturally to assist, aid, and counsel, as farforth as I can
to my power, as to my mother of whom I have received my nurture and
living; and shall pray for the good prosperity and policy of the same
during my life. For as me seemeth it is of great need, by cause I have
known it in my young age much more wealthy, prosperous, and richer than
it is at this day; and the cause is, that there is almost none that
intendeth to the common weal, but only every man for his singular
profit." It is the usual habit of the aged to look back upon the days of
their youth as a period of higher prosperity and more exalted virtue,
public and private, than they witness in their declining years. This is
in most cases merely the mind's own colouring of the picture. But it is
very possible that London, in the first year of Richard III., when
Caxton wrote this preface, was really less prosperous, and its citizens
less devoted to the public good, than half a century earlier, when
Caxton was a blithe apprentice within its walls. The country had passed
through the terrible convulsion of the wars of the Roses; and it is the
nature of civil wars, especially, not only to waste the substance and
destroy the means of existence of every man, but to render all men
selfish, grasping at temporary good, suspicious, faithless. The master
of Caxton was Robert Large, a member of the Mercers' Company, who was
one of the Sheriffs in 1430, and Lord Mayor in 1439-40. The date of
Caxton's apprenticeship has not been ascertained; but it is considered
by several of his biographers to have commenced about 1428. At this
period, the sixth of Henry VI., a law was on the statute-book, and
rigorously enforced, whose object was to prevent the sons of labourers
in husbandry, and indeed of the poorer classes of the yeomanry, from
rising out of the condition in which they were born, by participating in
the higher gains of trade and handicraft. A law of the seventh of Henry
IV., about two-and-twenty years before this conjectural period of
Caxton's apprenticeship, recites that, according to ancient statutes,
those who labour at the plough or cart, or other service of husbandry,
till at the age of twelve years, should continue to abide at such
labour, and not to be put to any mystery or handicraft;—notwithstanding
which statutes, says the law of Henry IV., country people whose fathers
and mothers have no land or rent are put apprentices to divers crafts
within the cities and boroughs, so that there is great scarcity of
labourers and other servants of husbandry. The law then declares, "That
no man nor woman, of what estate or condition they be, shall put their
son or daughtor, of whatsoever age he or she be, to serve as apprentice
to no craft or other labour within any city or borough in the realm,
except he have land or rent to the value of twenty shillings by the year
at least, but they shall be put to other labours as their estates doth
require, upon pain of one year's imprisonment." This iniquitous law was
necessarily as demoralizing and as injurious to the national prosperity
as the institution of castes in India. Yet, by a most extraordinary
blindness to cause and consequence, the makers of the law provided in
the most direct way for its overthrow; for the statute goes on to say,
that, although the husbandry labourer is always to be a labourer, "every
man or woman, of what estate or condition they be, shall be free to set
their son or daughter to take learning at any manner school that
pleaseth them within the realm." The citizens of London, much to their
honour, procured a repeal of this act in the eighth of Henry VI., about
the period when Caxton was apprenticed. The probability is, that he
would not have been affected by the exclusive character of this law; for
his master was a rich and distinguished mercer—a member of that
association which has always had pre-eminence amongst the livery
companies of London. The dignified gravity, the prudence, and the
prosperity of the citizens of that day have been well described by
Chaucer:—

  "A Merchant was there with a forkéd beard;
  In motley, and high on horse he sat,
  And on his head a Flaundrish beaver hat.
  His bootes claspéd fair and fetisly;[1]
  His reasons spake he full solemnély,
  Sounding alway the increase of his winning:
  He would the sea were kept[2] for any thing,
  Betwixen Middleburgh and Orewell.
  Well could he in exchanges shieldies[3] sell,
  This worthy man full well his wit beset;[4]
  There wiste no wight that he was in debt,
  So stedfastly did he his governance
  With his bargains, and with his chevisance.[5]"

When we look at William Caxton as the apprentice to a London mercer, his
position does not at first sight appear very favourable to that
cultivation of a literary taste, and that love of books, which was
originally the solace, and afterwards the business, of his life. Yet a
closer insight into the mercantile arrangements of those days will show
us that he could not have been more favourably placed for attaining some
practical acquaintance with books, in the way of his ordinary
occupation. When books were so costly and so inaccessible to the great
body of the people, there was necessarily no special trade of
bookselling. There were indeed stationers, who had books for sale, or
more probably executed orders for transcribing books. Their occupation
is thus described by Mr. Hallam, in his 'Literature of Europe:'—"These
dealers were denominated stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls at
which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word
for a shop, in low Latin. They appear by the old statutes of the
university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon
commission; and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from
the librarii; a word which, having originally been confined to the
copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them.
They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which, with us,
though, as far as I know, nowhere else, have retained the name of
stationery, and naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding
and decorating. They probably employed transcribers." The mercer in
those days was not a dealer in small wares generally, as at an earlier
period; nor was his trade confined to silken goods—such an one as
Shakspere describes, "Master Threepile, the mercer," who had thrown a
man into prison for "some four suits of peach-coloured satin." The
mercer of the fifteenth century was essentially a merchant. The mercers
in the time of Edward III. were the great wool-dealers of the country.
They were the merchants of the Staple, in the early days of our woollen
manufacture; and the merchant adventurers of a later period were
principally of their body. In their traffic with other lands, and
especially with the Low Countries, they were the agents by which
valuable manuscripts found their way into England; and in this respect
they were something like the great merchant princes of Italy, whose
ships not unfrequently contained a cargo of Indian spices and of Greek
manuscripts. John Bagford, who wrote a slight Life of Caxton about 1714,
which is in manuscript in the British Museum, says, "Kings, queens, and
noblemen had their particular merchants, who, when they were ready for
their voyage into foreign parts, sent their servants to know what they
wanted, and among the rest of their choice many times books were
demanded, and there to buy them in those parts where they were going."
Caxton tells us in the 'Book of Good Manners,' which he translated from
the French and printed in 1487, that the original French work was
delivered to him by a "special friend, a mercer of London, named William
Praat." This commerce of books could not have been very great; but it
might have been so far carried on by Robert Large, the wealthy master of
Caxton, that a lad of ability might thus possess opportunities
for improvement which were denied to the great body of his
fellow-apprentices. At this particular period there appear to have been
but few opportunities even for the sons of parents of some substance to
obtain the rudiments of knowledge. There is a petition presented to
parliament in the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., 1446, which exhorts
the Commons "to consider the great number of grammar-schools that
sometime were in divers parts of this realm, besides those that were in
London, and how few there are in these days." The petitioners, who are
four clergymen of the city, go on to say that London is the common
concourse of this land, and that many persons, for lack of schoolmasters
in their own country, resort there to be informed of grammar; and then
they proceed thus: "Wherefore it were expedient that in London were a
sufficient number of schools and good informers in grammar; and not, for
the singular avail of two or three persons, grievously to hurt the
multitude of young people of all this land. For where there is great
number of learners and few teachers, and all the learners be compelled
to go to the few teachers, and to none others, the masters wax rich of
money, and the learners poorer in cunning, as experience openly showeth,
against all virtue and order of weal public." These benevolent clergymen
accomplished the object of their petition, which was that in each of
their parishes they might "ordain, create, establish, and set a person
sufficiently learned in grammar to hold and exercise a school in the
same science of grammar, and there to teach to all that will learn." One
of the schools thus established exists to this day, in connexion with
the Mercers' Company, and is commonly known as the Mercers' School. We
are a little anticipating the period of our narrative, for this petition
belongs to Caxton's mature life; but we mention it as an evidence of the
extreme difficulty which must have existed in those days for the
children of the middle classes to obtain the rudiments of knowledge. It
is evident that Caxton belonged to the more fortunate portion, upon whom
the blessings of education fell like prizes in a lottery. The evil has
not been wholly corrected even during four centuries; but it is devoutly
to be hoped that the time is not far distant when, to use the words of
the benevolent clergymen who knew the value of knowledge at that
comparatively dark period, there shall be in every place a school, and a
competent person "there to teach to all that will learn."

Oldys, the writer of the Life of Caxton in the 'Biographia Britannica,'
says, speaking of Robert Large, the master of Caxton, "The same
magistrate held his mayoralty in that which had been the mansion-house
of Robert Fitzwalter, anciently called the Jews' Synagogue, at the north
corner of the Old Jewry." This Old Jewry appears to have been in earlier
times an accustomed place of residence for the mercers; for there are
records still extant of legal proceedings in the time of Henry III.
against four mercers of that place, for a violent assault upon two
Lombard merchants, whom they regarded as rivals in trade. In the days of
their retail dealings they occupied a portion of Cheapside which went by
the name of the Mercery. In the fourteenth century their shops were
little better than sheds, and Cheapside, or more properly Cheap, was a
sort of market, where various trades collected round the old Cross,
which remained there till the time of the Long Parliament. When the
mercers became large wholesale dealers in woollen cloths and silk, the
haberdashers took up their standing in the same place. In the ballad of
'London Lickpenny,' written in the time of Henry VI., the scene in the
Cheap is thus described:—

  "Then to the Cheap I began me drawn,
    Where much people I saw for to stand;
  One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn,
    Another he taketh me by the hand,
  'Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land.'"

The city apprentice in the days of Caxton was a staid sober youth, who,
although of gentle blood (as the regulations for the admittance of
freemen required him to be), was meanly clothed, and subjected to the
performance of even household drudgery. We learn from a tract called the
'City's Advocate,' printed in 1628, that the ancient habit of the
apprentices was a flat round cap, hair close cut, narrow falling bands,
coarse side-coats (long coats), close hose, close stockings, and other
such severe apparel. They walked before their masters and mistresses at
night, bearing a lantern, and wearing a long club on their necks. But
the mercer's apprentice had some exceptions which set him above his
fellows: "Anciently it was the general use and custom of all apprentices
in London (mercers only excepted, being commonly merchants and a better
rank as it seems) to carry water-tankards to serve their masters' houses
with water fetched either from the Thames or the common conduits." But,
with all his restraints, the city apprentice was ever prone to frolic,
and too often to mischief. The apprentices were a formidable body in the
days of the Tudors, sometimes defying the laws, and raising tumults
which have more than once ended in the prison and the halter. Chaucer,
writing some few years before the term of Caxton's service, describes
the love of sight-seeing which was characteristic of the London
apprentice:—

  "When there any ridings were in Cheap,
  Out of the shop thither would he leap;
  And till that he had all the sight yseen,
  And danced well, he would not come again."

Cheap was the great highway of processions; and London was the constant
theatre of triumphs and pageants, by which the wealthy citizens
expressed their devotion to their ruling authorities. In the fifteenth
century, when the very insecurity of the tenure of the crown demanded a
more ardent display of public opinion, the London apprentice had
"ridings" enough to look upon, where the pageantry was a real expression
of power and magnificence, and not a tawdry mockery, as that which now
disgraces the city of London once a year. Froissart describes the riding
of Henry IV. to his coronation. The entry of his illustrious son into
London after the battle of Agincourt was another of these remarkable
ridings. This, which was an occasion of real enthusiasm, took place in
Caxton's childhood. But in 1432, when he is held to have been an
apprentice, the boy king, Henry VI., upon his return from being crowned
King of France, entered London with a magnificence which chroniclers and
poets have vied in recording. Robert Fabyan, an alderman of London, who
wrote in the reign of Henry VII., describes this ceremonial with such an
admiration of the pomp, as only one could be supposed to feel who was
born, as Chaucer says,

  "To sitten in a guildhall on the dais."

To look forward to such occasions of pomp was a satisfaction to the
people, who knew nothing of the real workings of public affairs, and saw
only the outward indications of success or misfortune. The reign of
Henry VI. was an unhappy one for the citizens of London. Violent
contests for authority, insurrections, battles for the crown, left their
fearful traces upon the course of the next thirty years. But during
Caxton's boyhood the evil days seemed distant.

In the books of the Brewers' Company, which, like all other records,
were for the most part in Norman French, there is a curious entry in the
reign of Henry V., which records a great change in the habits of the
people. The entry is in Latin, and is thus translated: "Whereas our
mother-tongue, to wit, the English language, hath in modern days begun
to be honourably enlarged and adorned, for that our most excellent lord
King Henry the Fifth hath in his letters missive, and divers affairs
touching his own person, more willingly chosen to declare the secrets of
his will; and for the better understanding of his people hath, with a
diligent mind, procured the common idiom (setting aside others) to be
commended by the exercise of writing; and there are many of our craft of
brewers who have the knowledge of writing and reading in the said
English idiom, but in others, to wit, the Latin and French, before these
times used, they do not in any wise understand; for which causes, with
many others, it being considered how that the greater part of the lords
and trusty commons have begun to make their matters to be noted down in
our mother-tongue, so we also in our craft, following in some manner
their steps, have decreed in future to commit to memory the needful
things which concern us, as appeareth in the following."

The assertion of the Brewers' Company, in the reign of Henry V., that
"the English language hath in modern days begun to be honourably
enlarged and adorned," rested, we apprehend, upon broader foundations
than the "letters missive" of the king in the common idiom. Great
writers had arisen in our native tongue, with whose productions the
nobler and wealthier classes at any rate were familiar. The very
greatest of these,—the greatest name even now in our literature, with
one exception,—must have furnished employment to hundreds of
transcribers. The poems of Geoffrey Chaucer were familiar to all
well-educated men, however scanty was the supply of copies and dear
their cost. That Caxton himself was acquainted in his youth with these
great works we cannot have a doubt. When it became his fortunate lot to
multiply editions of the Canterbury Tales, and to render them accessible
to a much larger class of the people than in the days when he himself
first knew the solace and the delight of literature, he applied himself
to the task with all the earnestness of an early love. In his preface to
the second edition of the Canterbury Tales he thus delivers himself,
with more than common enthusiasm: "Great thanks, laud, and honour ought
to be given unto the clerks, poets, and historiographs that have written
many noble books of wisdom of the lives, passions, and miracles of holy
saints, of histories, of noble and famous acts and faits [deeds], and of
the chronicles sith [since] the beginning of the creation of the world
unto this present time; by which we are daily informed and have
knowledge of many things, of whom we should not have known if they had
not left to us their monuments written. Amongst whom, and in especial
before all other, we ought to give a singular laud unto that noble and
great philosopher Geoffrey Chaucer, the which, for his ornate writing in
our tongue, may well have the name of a laureat poet. For before that
he, by his labour, embellished, ornated, and made fair our English, in
this royaume [kingdom], was had rude speech and incongrue [incongruous],
as yet it appeareth by old books, which at this day ought not to have
place nor be compared among nor to his beauteous volumes and ornate
writings, of whom he made many books and treatises of many a noble
history, as well in metre as in rhyme and prose; and them so craftily
made, that he comprehended his matters in short, quick, and high
sentences; eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity,
and shewing the picked grain of sentence, uttered by crafty and sugared
eloquence." Again, in his edition of Chaucer's 'Book of Fame' he says,
"Which work, as me seemeth, is craftily made, and worthy to be written
and known: for he toucheth in it right great wisdom and subtle
understanding; and so in all his works he excelleth in mine opinion all
other writers in our English; for he writeth no void words, but all his
matter is full of high and quick sentence, to whom ought to be given
laud and praising for his noble making and writing. For of him all other
have borrowed sith, and taken in all their well saying and writing."
There is another passage in the second edition of the Canterbury Tales
which we quote here, not for the purpose of showing Caxton's honourable
character as a printer, for that belongs to a subsequent period, but to
point out that manuscripts of Chaucer were in private hands, varying
indeed in their text, as books must have varied that were produced by
different transcribers, but still keeping up the fame of the poet, and
highly valued by their possessors: "Of which book so incorrect was one
brought to me six year passed, which I supposed had been very true and
correct, and according to the same I did imprint a certain number of
them, which anon were sold to many and divers gentlemen: of whom one
gentleman came to me, and said that this book was not according in many
places unto the book that Geoffrey Chaucer had made. To whom I answered,
that I had made it according to my copy, and by me was nothing added nor
diminished. Then he said he knew a book which his father had and much
loved, that was very true, and according unto his own first book by him
made; and said more, if I would imprint it again, he would get me the
same book for a copy. How be it, he wist well his father would not
gladly part from it; to whom I said, in case that he could get me such a
book true and correct, that I would once endeavour me to imprint it
again, for to satisfy the author: whereas before by ignorance I erred in
hurting and defaming his book in divers places, in setting in some
things that he never said nor made, and leaving out many things that he
made which are requisite to be set in. And thus we fell at accord; and
he full gently got me of his father the said book, and delivered it to
me, by which I have corrected my book."

There was another poet of considerable popularity who was contemporary
with Chaucer. With the works of Gower, Caxton must have been familiar.
His principal poem, 'Confessio Amantis,' was printed by Caxton in 1483,
and is said to have been the most extensively circulated of all the
books that came from his press. The poem is full of stories that were
probably common to all Europe, running on through thousands of lines
with wonderful fluency, but little force. He was called the "moral
Gower" by Chaucer. The play of Pericles, ascribed to Shakspere, is
founded upon one of these stories. Gower himself shows us what was the
general course of reading in those days:—

  "Full oft time it falleth so,
  Mine ear with a good pittance
  Is fed of reading of romance,
  Of Idoyne, and of Amadas,
  That whilom[6] weren[7] in my case,
  And eke of other many a score,
  That loveden[8] long ere I was bore[9]."

The romances of chivalry, the stories of "fierce wars and faithful
loves," were especially the delight of the great and powerful. When the
noble was in camp, he solaced his hours of leisure with the marvellous
histories of King Arthur or Launcelot of the Lake; and when at home, he
listened to or read the same stories in the intervals of the chace or
the feast. Froissart tells in his own simple and graphic manner how he
presented a book to King Richard the Second, and how the king delighted
in the subject of the book: "Then the king desired to see my book that I
had brought for him; so he saw it in his chamber, for I had laid it
there ready on his bed. When the king opened it, it pleased him well,
for it was fair illumined and written, and covered with crimson velvet,
with ten buttons of silver and gilt, and roses of gold in the midst,
with two great clasps, gilt, richly wrought. Then the king demanded me
whereof it treated, and I showed him how it treated matters of love,
whereof the king was glad, and looked in it, and read it in many places,
for he could speak and read French very well." Froissart was a Frenchman
and wrote in French; but even Englishmen wrote in French at that period,
and some of Gower's early poems are in French. According to his own
account, the long poem of the 'Confessio Amantis,' which was written in
English, was executed at the command of the same King Richard:—

  "He hath this charge upon me laid,
  And bad me do my business,
  That to his high worthiness
  Some new thing I should book,
  That he himself it might look,
  After the form of my writing."

Chaucer and Gower lived some time before the period of Caxton's youth in
London, But there was a poet very popular in his day, whom he can
scarcely have avoided having seen playing a conspicuous part in the high
city festivals. This was John Lydgate, monk of Bury, who thus describes
himself—

  "I am a monk by my profession,
    Of Bury, called John Lydgate by my name,
  And wear a habit of perfection,
    Although my life agree not with the same."

[Illustration: Lydgate presenting a book to the Earl of Salisbury.]

Thomas Warton has thus exhibited the nature of his genius: "No poet
seems to have possessed a greater versatility of talents. He moves with
equal ease in every mode of composition. His hymns and his ballads have
the same degree of merit: and whether his subject be the life of a
hermit or a hero, of Saint Austin or Guy Earl of Warwick, ludicrous or
legendary, religious or romantic, a history or an allegory, he writes
with facility. His transitions were rapid from works of the most serious
and laborious kind to sallies of levity and pieces of popular
entertainment. His muse was of universal access, and he was not only the
poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. If a disguising was
intended by the company of goldsmiths, a mask before his majesty at
Eltham, a May game for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a mumming
before the lord mayor, a procession of pageants from the creation for
the festival of Corpus Christi, or a carol for a coronation, Lydgate was
consulted and gave the poetry." A fine illuminated drawing in one of
Lydgate's manuscripts, now in the British Museum, represents him
presenting a book to the Earl of Salisbury. Such a presentation may be
regarded as the first publication of a new work. The royal or noble
person at whose command it was written bestowed some rich gift upon the
author, which would be his sole pecuniary recompence, unless he received
some advantage from the transcribers, for the copies which they
multiplied. Doubtful as the rewards of authorship may be when the
multiplication of copies by the press enables each reader to contribute
a small acknowledgment of the benefit which he receives, the literary
condition must have been far worse when the poet, humbly kneeling before
some mighty man, as Lydgate does in the picture, might have been
dismissed with contumely, or his present received with a low
appreciation of the labour and the knowledge required to produce it. The
fame, however, of a popular writer reached his ears in a far more direct
and flattering manner than belongs to the literary honours of modern
days. There can be little doubt that the narrative poems of Chaucer and
Gower and Lydgate were familiar to the people through the recitations of
the minstrels. An agreeable writer on the Rise and Progress of English
Poetry, Mr. George Ellis, says, "Chaucer, in his address to his Troilus
and Cressida, tells us it was intended to be read 'or elles sung,' which
must relate to the chanting recitation of the minstrels, and a
considerable part of our old poetry is simply addressed to an audience,
without any mention of readers. That our English minstrels at any time
united all the talents of the profession, and were at once poets and
reciters and musicians, is extremely doubtful; but that they excited and
directed the efforts of their contemporary poets to a particular species
of composition, is as evident as that a body of actors must influence
the exertions of theatrical writers. They were, at a time when reading
and writing were rare accomplishments, the principal medium of
communication between authors and the public; and their memory in some
measure supplied the deficiency of manuscripts, and probably preserved
much of our early literature till the invention of printing." We may
thus learn, that, although the number of those was very few whose minds
by reading could be lifted out of the grovelling thoughts and petty
cares of every-day life, yet that the compositions of learned and
accomplished men, who still hold a high rank in our literature, might be
familiar to the people through the agency of a numerous body of singers
or reciters. There has been a good deal of controversy about the exact
definition of the minstrel character—whether the minstrels were
themselves poets and romance-writers, or the depositaries of the
writings of others and of the traditional literature of past
generations. Ritson, a writer upon this subject, says, "that there were
individuals formerly who made it their business to wander up and down
the country chanting romances, and singing songs and ballads to the
harp, fiddle, or more humble and less artificial instruments, cannot be
doubted." They were a very numerous body a century before Chaucer; and
most indefatigable in the prosecution of their trade. There is a writ or
declaration of Edward the Second, which recites the evil of idle
persons, under colour of minstrelsy, being received in other men's
houses to meat and drink; and then goes on to direct that to the houses
of great people no more than three or four minstrels of honour should
come at the most in one day, "and to the houses of meaner men that none
come unless he be desired, and such as shall come to hold themselves
contented with meat and drink, and with such courtesy as the master of
the house will show unto them of his own goodwill, without their asking
of anything." Nothing can more clearly exhibit the general demand for
the services of this body of men; for the very regulation as to the
nature of their reward shows clearly that they were accustomed to
require liberal payment, approaching perhaps to extortion; and then
comes in the State to say that they shall not have a free market for
their labour. They struggled on, sometimes prosperous and sometimes
depressed, according to the condition of the country, till the invention
of printing came to make popular literature always present in a man's
house. The _book_ of ballads or romances, which was then to be bought,
was contented to abide there without any "meat and drink." In the words
of Richard de Bury, whom we quoted in the first chapter, books "are the
masters who instruct us without rods, without hard words and anger,
without clothes and money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if
investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake
them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at
you." One of the later ministrels, to whom is ascribed the preservation,
and by some the composition, of the old ballad of Chevy Chase, thus
humbles himself in a most unpoetical and undignified manner to those who
fed him for his services:—

  "Now for the good cheer that I have had here
  I give you hearty thanks with bowing of my shanks,
  Desiring you by petition to grant me such commission—
  Because my name is Sheale—that both for meat and meal
  To you I may resort some time for my comfort.
  For I perceive here at all times is good cheer,
  Both ale, wine, and beer, as it doth now appear;
  I perceive, without fable, ye keep a good table.
  I can be content, if it be out of Lent,
  A piece of beef to take, my hunger to aslake;
  Both mutton and veal is good for Richard Sheale.
  Though I look so grave, I were a very knave
  If I would think scorn, either evening or morn,
  Being in hunger, of fresh salmon or congar.
  I can find in my heart with my friends to take a part
  Of such as God shall send; and thus I make an end.
  Now, farewell, good mine host; I thank you for your cost,
  Until another time, and thus do I end my rhyme."

But even such a humiliated ballad-maker, or ballad-singer, as poor old
Richard Sheale, was the depositary of treasures of popular fiction, many
of which have utterly perished, but of which a great portion of those
which are still preserved are delightful even to the most refined
reader. For, corrupted as they are by transmission from mouth to mouth
through several centuries, they are full of high and generous
sentiments, of deep pathos, of quiet humour; they carry us back into a
state of society wholly different from our own, when knowledge was
indeed scanty, and riches not very plentiful, but when the feelings and
affections were not so wholly under the direction of worldly wisdom, and
men were brave and loving, and women tender and confiding, with
something more of earnestness than belongs to the discreeter
arrangements of modern social life. The minstrels had indeed something
to call up the tear or the smile in every class of auditor. For the
earls and barons, the knights and squires, there were romances and songs
of chivalrous daring, such as moved the noble heart of Sir Philip
Sidney, even in the days when the minstrel was a poor despised wanderer:
"Is it the Lyric that most displeaseth, who, with his tuned lyre and
well-accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous
acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who sometimes
raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in singing the lauds
of the immortal God? Certainly I must confess mine own barbarousness, I
never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart
moved more than with a trumpet, and yet it is sung but by some blind
crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style." For those of meaner
sort there were the ballads of Robin Hood, "of whom the foolish vulgar
make lewd entertainment, and are delighted to hear the jesters and
minstrels sing them above all other ballads." So wrote a Scottish
historian in the middle of the fourteenth century.

We have thus briefly recapitulated the popular modes of acquiring
something of a literary taste in the early days of William Caxton. Books
were rare, and difficult to be obtained except by the wealthy. The drama
did not exist. The preachers, indeed, were not afraid to address an
indiscriminate audience with the conviction that, although the majority
were unlettered, they had vigorous understandings, and did not require
the great truths of religion and of private and of social duty to be
adapted to any intellectual weakness or infirmity. The national poetry,
which was heard at the high festivals of the city traders, and even
descended to as lowly a popularity as that of the village circle upon
the ale-bench under the spreading elm on a summer's eve, had no
essentials of vulgarity or childishness, such as in later days have been
thought necessary for general comprehension. We were ever a thoughtful
people, a reasoning people, and yet a people of strong passions and
unconquerable energy. A popular literature was kept alive and preserved,
however imperfectly, before the press came to make those who had learnt
to read self-dependent in their intellectual gratifications; and what
has come down to us of the old minstrelsy, with all its inaccuracy and
occasional feebleness, shows us that the people of England, four or five
centuries ago, had a common fund of high thought upon which a great
literature might in time be reared. The very existence of a poet like
Chaucer is the best proof of the vigour, and to a certain extent of the
cultivation, of the national mind, even in an age when books were
rarities.

[Footnote 1: Neatly.]

[Footnote 2: Guarded.]

[Footnote 3: French crowns, which were stamped with a shield.]

[Footnote 4: Employed.]

[Footnote 5: An agreement for borrowing money.]

[Footnote 6: Formerly.]

[Footnote 7: Were.]

[Footnote 8: Loved.]

[Footnote 9: Born.]




CHAPTER III.

 Caxton abroad—Caxton's mercantile pursuits—Restrictions on Trade—
 Caxton's Commission—Merchants' Marks—Beginnings of Printing—Playing
 Cards—Wood-engraving—Block-books—Moveable Types—Guttenberg—Guttenberg's
 Statue—Festival at Mentz.


Robert Large, the master of Caxton, became Lord Mayor of London in
1439-40. He died in 1441. That he was a man of considerable substance
appears by the record of his bequests, in Stow's Survey of London:
"Robert Large, mercer, mayor 1440, gave to his parish church of St.
Olave, in Surrey, two hundred pounds; to St. Margaret's, in Lothbury,
twenty-five pounds; to the poor, twenty pounds; to London-bridge, one
hundred marks; towards the vaulting over the watercourse of Walbrook,
two hundred marks; to poor maids' marriages, one hundred marks; to poor
householders, one hundred pounds."[10] By his last will he bequeathed to
his servant, William Caxton, twenty marks, a considerable sum in those
days. From this period it would seem that Caxton resided abroad. In the
first book he translated, the "Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,"
which bears upon the title to have been "ended and finished in the holy
city of Cologne, the 19th day of September, the year of our Lord one
thousand, four hundred, sixty, and eleven," he says, "I have continued
by the space of thirty year for the most part in the countries of
Brabant, Flanders, Holland, and Zealand." The Rev. John Lewis, who wrote
the Life of Master William Caxton, about a century ago, says, "It has
been guessed that he was abroad as a travelling agent or factor for the
Company of Mercers, and employed by them in the business of
merchandise." Oldys adds, but certainly without any authority, "It is
agreed on by those writers who have best acquainted themselves with his
story, he was deputed and intrusted by the Mercers' Company to be their
agent or factor in Holland, Zealand, Flanders, &c., to establish and
enlarge their correspondents, negociate the consumption of our own, and
importation of foreign manufactures, and otherwise promote the advantage
of the said corporation in their respective merchandise." This, indeed,
was a goodly commission, if we can make out that he ever received
such,—an employment which seems to speak of free and liberal intercourse
between two countries, each requiring the commodities of the other, and
conducting their interchange upon the sound principles of encouraging
mutual consumption, and thus producing mutual profit. Doubtless, we may
believe, upon a superficial view of the matter, that the agent of the
Mercers' Company was conducting his operations with the full authority
of the government at home, and with the hearty support of the rulers of
the land in which he so long lived. The real fact is, that for twenty of
those years in which Caxton describes himself as residing in the
countries of Brabant, Holland, and Zealand, there was an absolute
prohibition on both sides of all commercial intercourse between England
and the Duchy of Burgundy, to which those countries were subject; and
for nearly the whole period, no English goods were suffered to pass to
the continent, except through the town of Calais; and "in France," says
Caxton, "I was never." If Caxton had any mercantile employment at all
from his Company, it was, in all probability, for the purpose of finding
channels in trade that were closed up by the blind policy of the
respective governments. He could not have conducted any mercantile
operation in those countries, except in violation of the absurd
commercial laws which would not allow the people to seek their own
interest in their own way. It is by no means improbable, however, that
by the connivance of the royal personages who wanted for themselves rich
commodities which they could only obtain by that exchange which they
denied their subjects, William Caxton was in truth an accredited
smuggler for law-makers who attempted to limit the wants, and the means
of satisfying the wants, of the people they governed, in deference to
the prejudices of those who thought that trade could only exist under a
system of the most stringent prohibition.

While Edward the Fourth, and Charles the Good, Duke of Burgundy, were
launching against each other ordinance and enactment to prevent their
subjects becoming exchangers for the better supply of their respective
wants, some politic understanding between these princes led them
eventually to adopt a wiser system. It is pretty clear that William
Caxton was one of the agents, and a principal one, in putting an end to
a policy which the Duke of Burgundy said was "evermore to endure." In
1464 Edward the Fourth issued a commission to his trusty and
well-beloved Richard Whitehill and William Caxton, to be his especial
ambassadors, procurators, nuncios, and deputies to his most dear cousin
the Duke of Burgundy for the purpose of confirming an existing treaty of
commerce, or, if necessary, for making a new one. In 1466, this
commission being dated in October, 1464, a treaty was concluded with the
Duke of Burgundy, by which the commerce between his dominions and
England, which had been interrupted for twenty years, was restored; and
a port of Flanders was subsequently appointed to be a port of the
English staple, as well as Calais. It is pleasant to us to believe that
this extension of a principle which must eventually bind all nations in
a common brotherhood was effected by the good sense of a mercer of
London; who was afterwards to bestow upon his country the blessings of
an art which has been the great instrument of that country's progress in
real greatness and prosperity, and before which all impediments to the
continued course of that prosperity—all prejudices amongst her own
children, or amongst other peoples, that make the great family of
mankind aliens and enemies, and keep them from the enjoyment of the
advantages which each might bestow upon the other—will utterly perish.
It is pleasant to us to believe that William Caxton, the first English
printer, in his day opened the ports of one great trading community to
another great trading community. When he, the mercer's apprentice,
stamped the merchant's mark upon his master's bales, he knew not, he
could not have divined, that by this process of stamping, carried
forward by the ingenuity of many men into a new art, there would arise
consequences which would change the face of the world. He could not
imagine that he, whose education had consisted in learning to buy wool
and measure cloth, should, by the natural course of his commercial life,
be thrown into a society where a great wonder was to fill the minds of
all men with astonishment—the multiplication of manuscripts by some new
and secret process, as if by magic; and which some men, and he probably
amongst the number, must have regarded with a higher feeling than
wonder,—with something like that prophetic view of its consequences
which have been described by the novelist, who, perhaps more than any
man, has employed that art to the delight of all classes in every
country. We refer to the passage in Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward,
where Louis the Eleventh of France, and Martivalle Galeotti the
astrologer, speak of the invention of printing, and the sage predicts
"the lot of a succeeding generation, on whom knowledge will descend like
the first and second rain, uninterrupted, unabated, unbounded,
fertilizing some grounds, and overflowing others; changing the whole
form of social life."

[Illustration: Merchants' Marks.]

[Illustration: Blocks and Stencil Instruments.]

In a list of foreign goods forbidden to be imported into this country by
statute of 1464, the reader might be surprised to find that
playing-cards were of sufficient importance, from their general use, to
require that the native manufactories should be protected in the
production of them. Playing-cards were known in France for more than a
hundred years before this statute of Edward IV.; so that the common
notion that they were invented to furnish amusement to an insane king,
Charles VI. of France, about 1393, is a popular error. It is clear that
both in France and Spain at that period cards were the amusement not
only of the royal and noble inmates of palaces, but of the burghers and
the working people. The King of Castile, in 1387, prohibited cards
altogether; and they appear, with other games of skill and chance, to
have interfered so much with the regular labour of the artificers of
Paris, that the provost of that city, in 1397, forbade all working
people to play at tennis, bowls, nine-pins, dice, or cards, on
working-days. The earliest cards were probably painted by means of a
stencil, by which name we call a piece of pasteboard or plate of thin
metal pierced with apertures, by which a figure is formed upon paper or
other substance beneath it when fluid colour is smeared over its surface
with a brush. But it has also been conjectured, from their being in the
hands of the working-people, that their cheapness must have been
produced by some rude application of a wood-engraving to form the
outline which the stencilling process filled up with colour. There can
be no doubt that cards were _printed_ before the middle of the fifteenth
century; for there is a petition extant from the Venetian _painters_ to
their magistracy, dated 1441, setting forth that the art and mystery of
card-making and of _printing_ figures, which were practised in Venice,
had fallen into total decay, through the great quantity of foreign
playing-cards and coloured printed figures which were brought into the
city. The Germans were the great card-makers of this period; and the
name by which a wood-engraver is still called in Germany,
_Formschneider_, meaning figure-cutter, occurs in the town books of
Nuremburg as early as 1441. Some of the early cards were very rude. Here
is the Knave of Bells—for spades, diamonds, hearts, and clubs were not
then the universal symbols. Others called forth the skill of very clever
artists, such as he who is known as "the Master of 1466," whose knave is
a much more human knave than the traditionary worthy whom we look upon
to this hour. When Caxton, therefore, was abroad for thirty years, he
would unquestionably have seen every variety of these painted bits of
paper; some rich with crimson and purple, oftentimes painted on a golden
ground, and calling forth, like the missals, the highest art of the
limner; others impressed with a rude outline, and daubed by the
stenciller. It appears that the impressions of the engraved cards, as
well as of most of the earlier block-prints, were taken off by friction.
This is the mode by which, even at the present day, wood-engravers take
off the specimen impressions of their works called proofs. The Chinese
produce their block-books in a similar manner, without the aid of a
press.

[Illustration: Knave of Bells.]

[Illustration: Knave, of Master of 1466.]

But there was another application of engraved blocks, about the same
period, which was approaching still nearer to the art of printing. The
representations of saints and of scriptural histories, which the limners
in the monasteries had for several centuries been painting in their
missals and bibles, were copied in outline; and being divested of their
brilliant colours and rich gilding, presented figures exceedingly rude
in their want of proportion, and grotesque in their constrained and
violent attitudes. But they were nevertheless highly popular; and as the
pictures were accompanied with a few sentences from Scripture, they
probably supplied the first inducement to the laity to learn to read,
and thus prepared the way for that diffusion of knowledge which was to
accompany the invention of printing from moveable types. In the
collection of Earl Spencer there is a very curious print from a
woodblock, representing St. Christopher carrying the infant Saviour.
This print bears the date 1423. It is probably not the earliest specimen
of the art; but it is the earliest undoubted document which determines
with precision the period when wood-engraving was generally applied to
objects of devotion. In a very few years from the date of this print the
art was carried onward to a more important object,—that of producing a
_book_.

Several of such books are now in existence, and are known as
block-books. One of them is commonly called 'Biblia Pauperum,' the Bible
of the Poor. But an ingenious writer on the progress of woodcutting, in
the valuable book on that subject published by Mr. John Jackson, has
shown very clearly that this was not the original title of the book; and
he adds that it was rather a book for the use of preachers than the
laity:—"A series of skeleton sermons ornamented with woodcuts to warm
the preacher's imagination, and stored with texts to assist his memory."
This very rare book consists of forty leaves of small folio, each of
which contains a cut in wood, with extracts from the Scriptures, and
other illustrative sentences. Of other block-books the most remarkable
is called 'Speculum Salutis,'—the Mirror of Salvation. In this
performance the explanations of the text are much fuller than in the
'Biblia Pauperum.' In addition to these works, wooden blocks were also
used to print small manuals of grammar, called Donatuses, which were
used in schools. We present a fac-simile of a woodcut from one of the
early block-books.

[Illustration: The Wise Men's Offering.]

The use of carved blocks for the multiplication of copies of
playing-cards and devotional pictures gave birth to a principle which
has effected, and is still effecting, the most important changes in the
world. These devotional pictures had short legends or texts attached to
them; and when a text had to be printed, it was engraved in a solid
piece, as well as the picture. The first person who seized upon the idea
that the text or legend might be composed of separate letters capable of
rearrangement after the impressions were taken off, so as to be applied,
without new cutting, to other texts and legends, had secured the
principle upon which the printing art was to depend. It was easy to
extend the principle from a few lines to a whole page, and from one page
to many, so as to form a book; but then were seen the great labour and
expense of cutting so many separate letters upon small pieces of wood or
metal, and another step was required to be made before the principle was
thoroughly worked out. This step consisted in the ready multiplication
of the separate letters by casting metal in moulds. Lastly, instead of
using the old Chinese mode of friction to produce impressions, a _press_
was to be perfected. All these gradations were undoubtedly the result of
long and patient experiments carried on by several individuals, who each
saw the importance of the notion they were labouring to work out. It is
this circumstance which has given rise to interminable controversies as
to the inventors of printing, some claiming the honour for Coster of
Haarlem, and some for Guttenberg of Mentz; and, as is usual in all such
disputes, it was represented that the man to whom public opinion had
assigned the credit of the invention had stolen it from another, who, as
is also usual in these cases, thought of it in a dream, or received it
by some other mysterious revelation. The general consent of Europe now
assigns the chief honour to Guttenberg.[11]

During the summer of 1837 a statue of John Guttenberg, by Thorwaldsen,
was erected at Mentz (or Mayence), and on the 14th of August and the
following days a festival was held there, upon the occasion of the
inauguration of the monument. Abundant evidence has been brought forward
of late years to show that Guttenberg deserves all the honours of having
conceived, and in great part perfected, an art which has produced the
most signal effects upon the destinies of mankind. At that festival of
Mentz, at which many hundred persons were assembled, from all parts of
Europe, to do honour to the inventor of printing, no rival pretensions
were put forward; although many of the compatriots of Coster of Haarlem
were present. The fine statue of Guttenberg was opened amidst an
universal burst of enthusiasm. Never were the shouts of a vast multitude
raised on a more elevating occasion;—never were the triumphs of
intellect celebrated with greater fervour.

Passing his life amidst the ceaseless activity that belongs to the
commerce of literature in London, the writer of this volume felt no
common interest in the enthusiasm which the festival in honour of
Guttenberg called forth throughout Germany; and he determined to attend
that celebration. The fine statue which was to be opened to public view
on the 14th of August had been erected by a general subscription, to
which all Europe was invited to contribute. We apprehend that the
English, amidst the incessant claims upon their attention for the
support of all sorts of undertakings, whether of a national or
individual character, had known little of the purpose which the good
citizens of Mentz had been advocating with unabated zeal for several
years;—and perhaps the object itself was not calculated to call forth
any very great liberality on the part of those who are often directed in
their bounties as much by fashion as by their own convictions. Thus it
is that we have monuments out of number to warriors. Caxton has no
monument; neither has Shakspere. Be that as it may, England literally
gave nothing towards the statue of a man whose invention has done as
much as any other single cause to make England what she is. The
remoteness of the cause may also have lessened its importance; and some
people, who, without any deserts of their own, are enjoying a more than
full share of the blessings which have been shed upon us by the progress
of intellect (which determines the progress of national wealth), have a
sort of instinctive notion that the spread of knowledge is the spread of
something inimical to the pretensions of mere riches. We met with a lady
on board the steamboat ascending the Rhine, two days before the festival
of Mentz, who, whilst she gave us an elaborate account of the
fashionable dulness of the baths of Baden and Nassau, and all the other
German watering-places, told us by all means to avoid Mentz during the
following week, as a crowd of low people from all parts would be there,
to make a great fuss about a printer who had been dead two or three
hundred years. The low people did assemble in great crowds: it was
computed that at least fifteen thousand strangers had arrived to do
honour to the first printer.

The modes in which a large population displays its enthusiasm are pretty
much the same throughout the world. If the sentiment which collects men
together be very heart-stirring, all the outward manifestations of the
sentiment harmonize with its real truth. Thus, processions, and
orations, and public dinners, and pageantries which in themselves are
vain and empty, are important when the persons whom they collect
together have one common feeling which for the time is all-pervading. We
never saw such a popular fervour as prevailed at Mentz at the festival
of August, 1837. The statue was to be opened on Monday the 14th; but on
the Sunday evening the name of Guttenberg was rife through all the
streets. In the morning all Mentz was in motion by six o'clock; and at
eight a procession was formed to the Cathedral, which, if it was not
much more imposing than some of the processions of trades in London and
other cities, was conducted with a quiet precision which evidenced that
the people felt they were engaged in a solemn act. The fine old
Cathedral was crowded;—the Bishop of Mentz performed high Mass;—the
first Bible printed by Guttenberg was displayed. What a field for
reflection was here opened! The first Bible, in connexion with the
imposing pageantries of Roman Catholicism—the Bible, in great part a
sealed book to the body of the people; the service of God in a tongue
unknown to the larger number of worshippers;—but that first Bible the
germ of millions of Bibles that have spread the light of Christianity
throughout all the habitable globe! The Mass ended, the procession again
advanced to the adjacent square, where the statue was to be opened. Here
was erected a vast amphitheatre, where, seated under their respective
banners, were deputations from all the great cities of Europe. Amidst
salvos of artillery the veil was removed from the statue, and a hymn was
sung by a thousand voices. Then came orations;—then dinners—balls—
oratorios—boat-races—processions by torchlight. For three days the
population of Mentz was kept in a state of high excitement; and the echo
of the excitement went through Germany,—and Guttenberg! Guttenberg! was
toasted in many a bumper of Rhenish wine amidst this cordial and
enthusiastic people.

And, indeed, even in one who could not boast of belonging to the land in
which printing was invented, the universality of the mighty effects of
this art, when rightly considered, would produce almost a corresponding
enthusiasm. It is difficult to look upon the great changes that have
been effected during the last four centuries, and which are still in
progress everywhere around us, and not connect them with printing and
with its inventor. The castles on the Rhine, under whose ruins we
travelled back from Mentz, perished before the powerful combinations of
the people of the towns. The petty feudal despots fell, when the
burghers had acquired wealth and knowledge. But the progress of
despotism upon a larger scale could not have been arrested had the art
of Guttenberg not been discovered. The strongholds of military power
still frown over the same majestic river. The Rhine has seen its pretty
fortresses crumble into decay;—Ehrenbreitstein is more strong than ever.
But even Ehrenbreitstein will fall before the power of mind. The Rhine
is crowded with steamboats, where the feudal lord once levied tribute
upon the frail bark of the fisherman; and the approaches to the Rhine
from all Germany, and from France and Belgium, have become a great
series of railroads. Such communications will make war a game much more
difficult to play; and when mankind are thoroughly civilized, it will
never be played again. Seeing, then, what intellect has done and is
doing, we may well venerate the memory of Guttenberg of Mentz.

[Footnote 10: We believe that the text of Stow, "St. Olave in _Surrey_,"
is a mistake for "St. Olave in _Jewry_,"—for Robert Large was buried in
St. Olave in the Jewry, where a plated stone in the ground, in the south
aisle, recorded his death on the 24th of April, 1441.]

[Footnote 11: See Appendix A.]




CHAPTER IV.

 The Court of Burgundy—Caxton a Translator—Literature of Chivalry—Feudal
 Times—Caxton at the Ducal Court—Did Caxton print at Bruges—Edward the
 Fugitive—The new Art.


The "most dear" Duke of Burgundy, with whom Caxton was appointed to
negotiate in 1464, was Philip, surnamed the Good. He was a wise and
peaceful prince, and honourably earned his title. We know not whether
Caxton was in immediate attendance upon the court of Philip from the
commencement of his mission until the death of the duke in 1467; but the
evidence is subsequently clear that he was about the court in some
office of trust after the succession to the dukedom of the eldest son of
Philip, the Count of Charolois. The character of this prince was
entirely opposed to that of his father; and he acquired the name of
Charles le Téméraire, or the Rash. This fiery prince, whose influence in
that warlike age was perhaps greater than the benignant power of his
father, was not likely to have looked very favourably upon an envoy from
Edward of England: for he was allied by blood on his mother's side to
the house of Lancaster, and was consequently opposed to the fortunes of
the house of York. The court of Burgundy was the resort of many of the
adherents of that unhappy house, who had fled from England after many a
vain struggle with the triumphant Edward. These fugitives are described
by Comines "as young gentlemen whose fathers had been slain in England,
whom the Duke of Burgundy had generously entertained as his relations of
the house of Lancaster." Comines adds, "Some of them were reduced to
such extremity of want and poverty before the Duke of Burgundy received
them, that no common beggar could have been in greater; I saw one of
them, who was Duke of Exeter (but he concealed his name), following the
Duke of Burgundy's train bare-foot and barelegged, begging his bread
from door to door: this person was the next of the house of Lancaster;
had married King Edward's sister: and being afterwards known, had a
small pension allowed him for his subsistence. There were also some of
the family of the Somersets, and several others, all of them slain
since, in the wars." But the policy of Charles of Burgundy, after his
accession to the dukedom, led him to consider the ties of ancient
friendship as of far less importance than the strengthening of his hand
by an alliance with the successful house of York. Within a year of his
accession he married Margaret, sister of Edward IV. Comines says this
marriage "was principally to strengthen his alliance against the king of
France, otherwise he would never have done it, for the love he bore to
the house of Lancaster." The establishment of Margaret as Duchess of
Burgundy gave a direction to the fortunes of William Caxton, and was in
all likelihood the proximate cause that _he_ was our first English
printer.

Margaret Plantagenet was married to Charles of Burgundy at the city of
Bruges, on the 3rd of July, 1468. We have the distinct evidence of
Caxton that he was residing at Bruges some months previous to the
marriage; that he had little to do; and that he employed his leisure in
literary pursuits. In his 'Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye' it is
stated in the title-page, "which said translation and work was begun in
Bruges, in the county of Flanders, the first day of March, the year of
the Incarnation a thousand, four hundred, sixty and eight." The prologue
begins as follows:—"When I remember that every man is bounden by the
commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness,
which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to put myself unto
virtuous occupation and business, then I, having no great charge or
occupation, following the said counsel, took a French book and read
therein many strange marvellous histories, wherein I had great pleasure
and delight, as well for the novelty of the same, as for the fair
language of the French, which was in prose so well and compendiously set
and written, methought I understood the sentence and substance of every
matter. And for so much as this book was new and late made and drawn
into French, and never had seen it in our English tongue, I thought in
myself it should be a good business to translate it into our English, to
the end that it might be had as well in the royaume of England as in
other lands, and also for to pass therewith the time, and thus concluded
in myself to begin this said work, and forthwith took pen and ink, and
began boldly to run forth, as blind Bayard, in this present work."

Philip de Comines, speaking of the prosperity of the people at the time
of the accession of Charles, says, "The subjects of the house of
Burgundy lived at that time in great plenty and prosperity, grew proud
and wallowed in riches.... The expenses and habits both of women and men
were great and extravagant; their entertainments and banquets more
profuse and splendid than in any other place that I ever saw." The city
of Bruges was then the great seat of this wealth and luxury. The Flemish
nobles lived here in mansions of striking architecture, some traces of
which still remain. The merchants vied with the nobles in tasteful
magnificence. The canals of Bruges were crowded with boats laden with
the richest treasures of distant lands. It was commerce that made the
inhabitants of Bruges, of Ghent, and the other great Flemish towns so
rich and powerful; and the same commerce was the encourager of art,
which even at this early period displayed itself amongst a people
naturally disposed for its cultivation. Charles the Rash destroyed much
of this prosperity by his aptitude for war. But in the onset of his
career he fought with all the pomp and graces of the old chivalry, and
his court was the seat of such romantic pageantries that John Paston, an
Englishman who went over with Margaret of York, writes, "As for the
duke's court, as for lords, ladies, and gentlewomen, knights, esquires,
and gentlemen, I heard never of none like to it save King Arthur's
court." It was here, without doubt, that William Caxton, the yeoman's
son of the Weald of Kent, and afterwards the mercer's apprentice of the
city of London, acquired that love for the literature of chivalry which
he displays on many occasions in his office of translator and printer.
Here he made acquaintances that led him to the study of the
romance-writers, as for example of a worthy canon of whom he writes,
"Oft times I have been excited of the venerable man Messire Henry
Bolomyer canon of Lausanne, for to reduce for his pleasure some
histories, as well in Latin and in romance as in other fashion written;
that is to say, of the right puissant, virtuous, and noble Charles the
Great, King of France and Emperor of Rome, son of the great Pepin, and
of his princes and barons, as Rowland, Oliver, and other." His zeal for
this species of literature left him not in his latest years: for in his
translation of 'The Book of the Order of Chivalry,' which was printed by
him about 1484, he rises into absolute eloquence in his address at the
conclusion of the volume: "Oh, ye knights of England, where is the
custom and usage of noble chivalry that was used in those days? What do
ye now, but go to the baynes [baths] and play at dice? And some, not
well advised, use not honest and good rule, against all order of
knighthood. Leave this, leave it! and read the noble volumes of St.
Graal, of Lancelot, of Galaad, of Trystram, of Perse Forest, of
Percyval, of Gawayn, and many more: there shall ye see manhood,
courtesy, and gentleness. And look in latter days of the noble acts sith
the Conquest, as in King Richard days Cœur de Lion, Edward I., and III.
and his noble sons, Sir Robert Knolles, Sir John Hawkwode, Sir John
Chandos, and Sir Gueltiare Manny. Read Froissart; and also behold that
victorious and noble King Harry V., and the captains under him, his
noble brethren the earls of Salisbury, Montagu, and many other, whose
names shine gloriously by their virtuous noblesse and acts that they did
in the honour of the order of chivalry. Alas, what do ye but sleep and
take ease, and are all disordered from chivalry?" Caxton was dazzled, as
many others were, with the bravery and the generosity of the chivalric
character. He did not see the cruelty and pride, the oppression and
injustice, that lurked beneath the glittering armour and the velvet
mantle. Yet he was amongst those who first helped to destroy the gross
inequality upon which chivalry was founded, by raising up the middle
classes to the possession of knowledge. There were scenes transacting at
Bruges, even at the very hour when Margaret of York came to give her
hand to Charles of Burgundy, that must have shown him what fearful
passions were too often the companions of the courage and graces of
knighthood.

At the midsummer of 1468 Bruges presented a scene of magnificence that
was probably unequalled in those days of costly display. On the occasion
of the approaching marriage, the nobility of Charles's extensive
dominions arrived from every quarter. Ambassadors were there from all
Christian powers. It looked like an occasion on which men should forget
that there was such a thing as war in the world; and when despotism
should put on its blandest smile and its most courteous reverence for
all orders of men. The Duke of Burgundy anxiously desired the presence
of the Count de St. Pôl, the great Constable of France. The constable
arrived, surrounded with every pomp that his pride could devise,—with
trumpets and banners, with pages on foot and crowds of horsemen, and a
naked sword borne before him as the symbol of sovereignty. Charles was
irritated beyond measure, and refused to receive the great lord, who
from that hour became his deadliest enemy. But there was something more
tragic to be enacted in the midst of a population looking only for high
triumphs and royal pleasures. One of the chamberlains of the Duke of
Burgundy was an illegitimate son of the Lord of Condé; he was very
young, of exceeding beauty, and the most agreeable manners. He had
fought by the side of the duke at the battle of Montlhéry, and was one
of his most especial favourites. The youth, with that ferocious
self-abandonment which was not incompatible with the gentlest manners in
courts and the noblest honours in camps, committed a murder under
circumstances of extraordinary aggravation. He was playing at tennis,
and, the fairness of a stroke being doubtful, a bystander was called
upon to decide. Deciding against the Bastard of Condé, the young man
swore that he would be revenged. The bystander, who was a canon of the
church, fled to his home, and the furious youth pursued him. The canon
escaped, but his brother encountered the madman. Some victim must be
offered up to appease his selfish rage, and the brother was in his path.
The wretched man fell on his knees, and, clasping his hands, begged for
mercy. Those uplifted hands were cut off in an instant, and the sword
that had been honourably drawn at Montlhéry, pierced the breast of an
unoffending citizen. Such a murder could not pass unnoticed; and yet the
young man's friends did not doubt that he would go unpunished, for he
had committed the crime in his father's lordship. Such crimes were often
committed with impunity by the great and the powerful; and even the
commonalty were unprepared to expect any heavier punishment than a
pecuniary recompense to the relations of the murdered man. The duke,
however, had taken his determination. The Bastard of Condé was held in
arrest at the house of the gatekeeper of the city of Bruges. Charles was
solicited on every side for pardon, and even the relations of the
deceased, having been moved by suitable presents, supplicated his
release; but the duke kept the matter in suspense till Bruges was filled
with his subjects from every part of his dominions, and especially with
the most powerful of his nobles. At the instant that he was ready to
depart to meet the Lady Margaret at the neighbouring port of Ecluse, he
commanded that the young man should be taken to the common prison, and
the next morning led to execution. Even the magistrate of the city to
whom this command was intrusted thought it impossible that the duke
should execute one so highly connected, as if he were a common offender.
The execution was delayed several hours by the magistrate in the hope
that the duke would relent; but no respite came. The youth was carried
through the city to the place of execution, amidst the tears of the
people, who forgot his crime in his beauty. He was beheaded, and his
body divided into four quarters. The Lord of Condé and his adherents
left the city vowing vengeance. The nobles assembled felt themselves
outraged by this exercise of absolute power. Even the citizens
attributed the stern decree of the duke to his indomitable pride rather
than to his love of justice. Such was the prelude to the bridal
festivities of the court of Burgundy; of which one who wrote an especial
description in Latin says, "The sun never shone upon a more splendid
ceremony since the creation of the world."

There can be no doubt that Caxton was in the direct employ of Margaret,
Duchess of Burgundy. What he has told us himself of his position in her
court is far more interesting than all the conjectures which his
biographers have exercised upon the matter. He was in an honourable
position, he was treated with confidence, he was grateful. We have
already given an extract from the prologue to his 'Recuyell of the
Historyes of Troye,' which shows when and under what circumstances he
commenced the translation of that work. Remembering his simpleness and
unperfectness in the French and English languages (which passage we have
already noticed), he continues: "When all these things came before me,
after that I had made and written five or six quires, I fell in despair
of this work, and purposed no more to have continued therein, and the
quires laid apart; and in two years after laboured no more at this work,
and was fully in will to have left it. Till on a time it fortuned that
the right high, excellent, and right virtuous princess, my right
redoubted lady, my Lady Margaret"—and then he gives her a host of
titles—"sent for me to speak with her good grace of divers matters,
among the which I let her highness have knowledge of the aforesaid
beginning of this work; which anon commanded me to shew the said five or
six quires to her said grace. And when she had seen them, anon she found
defaute [fault] in mine English, which she commanded me to amend, and
moreover commanded me straightly [immediately] to continue and make an
end of the residue then not translated. Whose dreadful commandment I
durst in no wise disobey, because I am a servant unto her said grace,
and receive of her yearly fee, and other many good and great benefits,
and also hope many more to receive of her highness; but forthwith went
and laboured in the said translation after my simple and poor cunning,
all so nigh as I can following mine author, meekly beseeching the
bounteous highness of my said lady, that of her benevolence list to
accept and take in gree [take kindly] this simple and rude work." The
picture which Caxton thus presents to us of his showing his translation
with an author's diffidence to the "dreadful" duchess, her criticism of
his English, and her very flattering command that in spite of all its
faults he should make an end of his work, is as interesting as
Froissart's account of his literary recreations with Gaston de
Foix:—"The acquaintance of him and of me was because I had brought with
me a book, which I made at the contemplation of Winceslaus of Bohemia,
Duke of Luxembourg and of Brabant, which work was called 'Meliador,'
containing all the songs, ballads, rondeaux, and virelays which the
gentle duke had made in this time, which by imagination I had gathered
together; which book the Count of Foix was glad to see. And every night
after supper I read therein to him; and while I read there was none
durst speak any word, because he would I should be well understood,
wherein he took great solace." In both cases the men of letters were
received on a free and familiar footing in the courtly circles. In the
case of Caxton this was even more honourable to the Lady Margaret, than
the welcome which Gaston de Foix gave to the accomplished knight Sir
John Froissart. Caxton had no knightly honours to recommend him; he was
a plain merchant: but he was unquestionably a man of modesty and
intelligence; he had travelled much; he was familiar with the most
popular literature of his day; and he desired to extend the knowledge of
it by translations into his native language. It is difficult to say what
was his exact employment in the court of the Lady Margaret. He was
somewhat too old to partake of its light amusements, to mingle in its
gallantries, or even to prompt my lady's fool with some word of wisdom.
We have seen that four months before Margaret of York came to Bruges he
had "no great charge or occupation," and he undertook the translation of
a considerable work "for to pass therewith the time." It has, however,
been maintained of late years, that Caxton was at this very time a
printer. The question is a curious one, and we may bestow a little space
upon its examination.

Mr. Hallam, in his 'Literature of Europe,' noticing the progress of
printing, says that several books were printed in Paris in 1470 and
1471, adding, "But there seem to be unquestionable proofs that a still
earlier specimen of typography is due to an English printer, the famous
Caxton. His 'Recueil des Histoires de Troye' appears to have been
printed during the life of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, and consequently
before June 15, 1467. The place of publication, certainly within the
duke's dominions, has not been conjectured. It is, therefore, by several
years the earliest printed book in the French language. A Latin speech
by Russell, ambassador of Edward IV. to Charles of Burgundy, in 1469, is
the next publication of Caxton. This was also printed in the Low
Countries." The authority upon which the learned and accomplished
historian of the Middle Ages relies for this statement is that of Mr.
Dibdin, in his 'Typographical Antiquities.' The French edition of the
'Recueil des Histoires de Troye' bears no printer's name, date, or
place. It purports to have been composed by Raoul le Fevre, chaplain to
Duke Philip de Bourgoyne, in the year 1464. The evidence that this book
was printed by Caxton was summed up by Mr. Bryant, and communicated by
him to Mr. Herbert, the first editor of Ames's 'Typographical
Antiquities.' The Rev. Mr. Dibdin, the second editor, says that these
memoranda of Mr. Bryant's "clearly prove it to have been the production
of Caxton." The argument rests upon these points: that the French and
English editions of Le Fevre's work have an exact conformity and
likeness throughout, for not only the page itself, but the number of
lines in a page, the length, breadth, and intervals of the lines, are
alike in both, and the letters, great and small, are of the same
magnitude. It corresponds too with 'The Game of the Chess,' printed by
Caxton in England, in 1474. "These considerations," says Mr. Bryant,
"settle who the printer was." We venture to doubt this. Mr. Bryant has
himself shown how this resemblance might be produced between books
printed by Caxton, and books supposed to be printed by him, without
Caxton being the actual printer. "Mentz was taken by the Duke of Saxony
in the year 1462, and most of the artificers employed by John Fust, the
great inventor, were dispersed abroad. I make no doubt but Caxton, who
was at no great distance from Mentz, took this opportunity of making
himself a master of the mystery, which he had been at much trouble and
expense to obtain. This I imagine he effected by taking into pay some of
Fust's servants, and settling them for a time at Cologne. Of this number
probably were Pinson and Rood, Mechlin, Lettou, and Wynkyn de Worde.
With the help of some of these, he printed the book [which Wynkyn de
Worde says Caxton printed] 'Bartholomeus de Prop. Rerum,' and the
translation of the 'Recueil;' and probably many other books, which,
being either in French or Latin, were not vendible in our country, and
consequently no copies are extant here. Of all the books he printed in
England, I do not remember above one in a foreign language." The
calamity which drove the printers of Mentz from their homes, the
storming of the city by Adolphus of Nassau, would naturally disperse
their types, as well as break up their workshops. The resemblance
between the doubtful books, and books undoubtedly printed by Caxton, was
the resemblance of types cast in the same matrices; the spaces between
the lines, as well as the form and magnitude of the letters, were
produced by the letters being cast in the same mould. The resemblance
would have been equally produced whether the types were used by one and
the same printer, or by two printers. The typographical antiquarians say
that the same types are used in the French and English works of Le Fevre
and in Caxton's 'Game of Chess;' and Mr. Herbert adds, that the types
are the same as those used by Fust and Schoeffer, the partners of
Guttenberg. If the resemblance of types were sufficient to determine the
printer of two or more books, then Fust and Schoeffer ought to be called
the printers of the French 'Recueil,' as well as of the English
translation which Caxton says he printed at Cologne. There can be little
doubt that, when Caxton went to Cologne to be a printer in 1471, he
became possessed of the types and matrices with which he printed his
translation of Le Fevre, and subsequently brought to England to print
his 'Game of Chess.' Another printer might have preceded him in their
possession, and might have received them direct from Fust and Schoeffer.
When the art ceased to be a mystery, a profit might arise from selling
the types or multiplying the matrices. Upon these considerations we
wholly demur to the assertion, resting solely upon this resemblance,
that Caxton was a printer during the life of Philip le Bon. The belief
is entirely opposed to his own statement, that shortly after the death
of this prince he was completely at leisure, and set about a translation
to while away his time. To be a printer in those days was a mighty
undertaking. We shall subsequently see that he declares that he had
practised and learnt the art at great charge and expense. It is wholly
unlikely, also, that so gossiping a man, who makes a familiar friend of
his readers, telling them of almost every circumstance that led to the
printing of every book, that he in his translation should not have said
one word of being the printer of the original work. The other book, the
Latin speech by Russell, in 1469, which has been called the second
publication of Caxton, is attributed to him absolutely upon no other
grounds than the same resemblance of type. Assuredly we cannot receive
the fact of resemblance as conclusive of Caxton being the printer either
in this case or in that of the preceding. He tells us that in 1470 he
was a servant receiving yearly fee from the Duchess of Burgundy, and
completed an extensive work at her command, which he simply began "to
eschew sloth and idleness," and to put himself "unto virtuous occupation
and business." When he did fairly become a printer, he left sufficiently
clear indications of his habitual industry. We have no question how he
filled up his time when the press at Westminster was at work.

It was in the autumn of 1470, when Master William Caxton would appear to
have been busily labouring in some silent turret of the palace at
Bruges, upon his translation of Raoul le Fevre, that an event occurred,
of all others the most calculated to spread consternation in the court
of Burgundy, and to make the bold duke feel that in abandoning his
family alliance with the house of Lancaster he had not done the politic
thing which he anticipated. Edward IV., who had sat for some years with
tolerable quiet upon the English throne, to which he had fought his way
in many a battlefield with prodigious bravery, suddenly arrived at
Bruges, in the October of 1470, a discrowned fugitive. He made his
escape from the overwhelming inroad of the power of Warwick, "attended,"
says Comines, "by seven or eight hundred men without any clothes but
what they were to have fought in, no money in their pockets, and not one
in twenty of them knew whither they were going." He, the most beautiful
man of the time, as Comines describes him,—who for twelve or thirteen
years of prosperity had lived a life of the most luxurious
gratification,—he arrived at Bruges, after being chased by privateers,
and with difficulty rescued from their hands, so poor that he "was
forced to give the master of the ship for his passage a gown lined with
martens." At Bruges, then, did this fugitive remain nearly five months,
when he again leaped into his throne, in the following April, with a
triumphant boldness which has only one parallel in modern history,—that
of the march of Napoleon from Elba. In May, 1471, he addressed a letter
in French to the nobles and burgomasters of Bruges, thanking them for
the courtesy and hospitality he had received from them during his exile.
Edward was of a sanguine temper; and, however depressed in fortune, was
not likely, during those five months of humiliation, to have doubted
that in good time he should regain the throne. He was of an easy and
communicative disposition; and would naturally confer with his sister
and her confidential servants upon his plans and prospects. Comines
says, "King Edward told me that, in all the battles which he had gained,
his way was, when the victory was on his side, to mount on horseback,
and cry out to save the common soldiers, and put the gentry to the
sword." We mention this to show that he was not indisposed to talk of
himself and his doings with those whom he met during his exile. It is
more than probable, then, that he had the same sort of free
communication with his countryman Caxton. It was at this period that the
progress of the art of printing must have been a subject of universal
interest The merchants of Bruges had commercial intercourse with all the
countries of Europe; and they would naturally bring to the court of
Burgundy some specimens of that art which was already beginning to
create a new description of commerce. From Mentz, Bamberg, Cologne,
Strasburg, and Augsburg, they would bring some of the Latin and German
bibles which, from 1461 to 1470, had issued from the presses of those
cities. The presses of Italy, and especially of Rome, of Venice, and of
Milan, had, during the same period, sent forth books, and more
particularly classical works, in great abundance. The art had made such
rapid progress in Italy, that in the first edition of St. Jerome's
Epistles, printed in 1468, the Bishop of Aleria thus addresses Pope
Paul II.: "It was reserved for the times of your holiness for the
Christian world to be blessed with the immense advantages resulting from
the art of printing; by means of which, and with a little money, the
poorest person may collect together a few books. It is a small testimony
of the glory of your holiness, that the volumes which formerly scarcely
an hundred golden crowns would purchase may now be procured for twenty
and less, and these well-written and authentic ones." It is pretty clear
that Caxton, when he began his translation of the 'Histories of Troye,'
had some larger circulation in view than could be obtained by the medium
of transcription: "I thought in myself it should be a good business to
translate it into our English, to the end that it might be had as well
in the royaume of England as in other lands." It is also probable that
he was moving about in search of the best mode of printing it; for he
says, at the end of the second book of the 'Recueil,' "And for as much
as I suppose the said two books be not had before this time in our
English language, therefore I had the better will to accomplish the said
work; which work was begun in Bruges, and continued in Gaunt [Ghent],
and finished in Cologne, in time of the troublous world, and of the
great divisions being and reigning as well in the royaumes of England
and France as in all other places universally through the world, that is
to wit, the year of our Lord one thousand, four hundred, and
seventy-one." But he further says, with reference to his translation of
the third book, which he doubted about doing, "because that I have now
good leisure, being in Cologne, and have none other thing to do at this
time in eschewing of idleness, mother of all vices, I have deliberated
in myself of the contemplation of my said redoubted lady, to take this
labour in hand." We shall presently see when Caxton became, or at any
rate avowed himself to have become, a printer. Up to this point we see
him only as a translator, a man of leisure, and not one learning a new
and difficult craft. But we see him moving about from Bruges to Ghent,
from Ghent to Cologne, without any distinct or specified object. There
can be little doubt, we believe, that he was endeavouring to make
himself acquainted with the new art, still in great measure a secret
art, the masters of which required to be approached with considerable
caution. That the presence of Edward IV. in Flanders, during a period
when Caxton might readily have had access to his person, might have led
him to believe that the time would come when, under the patronage of the
restored prince, he might carry the art to London, is not an improbable
conjecture. Amongst the companions of Edward's exile was his
brother-in-law, the celebrated Lord Rivers. This brave and accomplished
young nobleman subsequently translated a book called 'The Dictes and
Sayings of Philosophers,' which Caxton printed at Westminster, in 1477.
The printer has added an appendix to this translation, from which we
collect that the noble author and his literary printer were upon terms
of mutual confidence and regard: "At such time as he had accomplished
this said work, it liked him to send it to me in certain quires to
oversee.... And so afterward I came unto my said lord, and told him how
I had read and seen his book, and that he had done a meritorious deed in
the labour of the translation thereof.... Then my said lord desired me
to oversee it, and, where as I should find fault, to correct it, wherein
I answered unto his lordship that I could not amend it....
Notwithstanding he willed me to oversee it." Earl Rivers, then Lord
Scales, was also at Bruges upon the occasion of the Lady Margaret's
marriage. Employed, therefore, by the Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of
Edward IV., and honoured with the confidence of Earl Rivers, his
brother-in-law, we may reasonably believe that the presence of Edward at
Bruges in 1470-71 might have had some influence upon the determination
of Caxton to learn and practise the new art of printing, and to carry it
into England, if the "troublous times" could afford him occasion. We
have distinct evidence that Edward IV. gave a marked encouragement to
the labours of Caxton as a translator, in a book printed by him without
any date, 'The Life of Jason,' written, as were the 'Histories of Troy,'
by Raoul le Fevre, in which Caxton says in his prologue, "For as much as
late by the commandment of the right high and noble princess my Lady
Margaret, &c., I translated a book out of French into English, named
'Recueil,' &c.... Therefore, under the protection and sufferance of the
most high, puissant, and Christian king, my most dread natural liege,
Lord Edward, &c., I intend to translate the said book of the 'Histories
of Jason.'" The expression "for as much as late by the commandment,
&c.," brings the date of the 'Histories of Jason' close to that of the
'Histories of Troy' and points out the probability that the protection
and sufferance of Edward was afforded to Caxton when the king was a
fugitive at the court of Burgundy. In the 'Issues of the Exchequer,'
there is the following entry of a payment on the 15th of June, in the
19th of Edward IV., "To William Caxton, in money paid to his own hands,
in discharge of twenty pounds which the lord the king commanded to be
paid to the same William for certain causes and matters performed by him
for the said lord the king." This is eight years after the period of
Edward's exile, being in 1479. But as the productions of Caxton's press
were very prolific at this time, we may believe that the payment of such
a large sum for certain causes and matters performed for the king was in
some degree connected with his labours in the introduction of printing
into England,—a payment not improbably postponed for obligations
incurred, and promises granted, at an earlier period.




CHAPTER V.

 Rapidity of Printing—Who the first English Printer—Caxton the first
 English Printer—First English Printed Book—Difficulties of the first
 Printers—Ancient Bookbinding—The Printer a Publisher—Conditions of
 Cheapness in Books.


At the end of the third book of Caxton's translation of the 'Recuyell of
the Historyes of Troye,' which we have so often quoted, is the following
most curious passage: "Thus end I this book, which I have translated
after mine author, as nigh as God hath given me cunning, to whom be
given the laud and praises. And for as much as in the writing of the
same my pen is worn, mine hand weary and not stedfast, mine eyen dimmed
with overmuch looking on the white paper, and my courage not so prone
and ready to labour as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily
and feebleth all the body; and also because I have promised to divers
gentlemen and to my friends to address to them as hastily as I might
this said book, therefore I have practised and learned, at my great
charge and dispense [expense], to ordain this said book in print, after
the manner and form as you may here see; and is not written with pen and
ink as other books are, to the end that every man may have them at once.
For all the books of this story named the 'Recuyell of the Historyes of
Troye,' thus imprinted as ye here see, were begun in one day, and also
finished in one day. Which book I presented to my said redoubted lady as
afore is said, and she hath well accepted it and largely rewarded me."
It was customary for the first printers, which is not according to the
belief that they wanted to palm their printed books off as manuscripts,
to state that they were not drawn or written with a pen and ink.
Udalricus Gallus, who printed at Rome about 1470, says, "I, Udalricus
Gallus, without pen or pencil have imprinted this book." But he further
says of himself at the end of one of his books,—"I printed thus much in
a day; it is not written in a year." It has been held that Caxton uses a
purely marvellous and hyperbolical mode of expression, when he says,
"All the books of this story, thus imprinted as ye here see, were begun
in one day and finished in one day." Dr. Dibdin inquires what Caxton
meant "by saying that the book was begun and finished in one day? Did he
wish his countrymen to believe that the translation of Le Fevre's book
was absolutely printed in twenty-four hours?" Dr. Dibdin truly holds the
thing to be impracticable, because the book consisted of seven hundred
and seventy-eight folio pages. Such feats have been done with the large
capital and division of labour of modern times; but to begin and finish
such a book in one day in the fifteenth century was certainly an
impossibility. We venture to think that Caxton says nothing of the sort.
He puts with great force and justice the chief advantages of
printing,—the rapidity with which many copies could be produced at once.
He promised, he says, to divers gentlemen and friends to address to them
as hastily as he might this book. There were many who wanted the book.
The transcribers could not supply their wants. He could not multiply
copies himself with his pen, for his hand was weary and his eyes dim. He
learned, therefore, to ordain the book in print, to the end that all his
friends might have the books at the same time,—that every man might have
them at once; and to explain this, he says, all the books thus imprinted
were begun in one day. If he printed a hundred copies, each of the
hundred copies was begun at the same time; a hundred sheets, each sheet
forming a portion of each copy, were printed off in one day,—and in the
same way were they also finished in one day. He does not say, as Dr.
Dibdin interprets the passage, that _the book_ was begun and finished in
one day,—one and the same day,—but that _all_ the books were begun on
one day, and all the books were finished on another day. His expression
is not very clear, but his meaning is quite apparent. This was the end
that he sought to obtain at great charge and expense; this is the end
which has been more and more obtained at every step forward in the art
of printing,—the rapid multiplication of copies, so that all men may
have them at once.

The place where Caxton learned the art of printing, and the persons of
whom he first learned it, are not shown in any of his voluminous
prologues and prefaces. But an extraordinary statement was published in
the year 1664, by a person of the name of Richard Atkyns, who sought to
prove that printing was a royal prerogative, because, as he says, the
art was first brought into England at the cost of the crown. His
narrative is held to be altogether a fiction; for the document upon
which he rests it was never forthcoming, and no person has ever
testified to the knowledge of it, except Richard Atkyns himself, who
laboured hard to obtain a patent from the crown for the sole printing of
law-books, upon the ground which he attempts to take of the crown having
brought printing into England. "Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of
Canterbury, moved the then king, Henry VI., to use all possible means
for procuring a printing-mould, for so it was then called, to be brought
into this kingdom. The king, a good man, and much given to works of this
nature, readily hearkened to the motion; and taking private advice how
to effect this design, concluded it could not be brought about without
great secrecy, and a considerable sum of money given to such person or
persons as would draw off some of the workmen from Haarlem in Holland,
where John Guttenberg had newly invented it, and was himself personally
at work. It was resolved that less than one thousand marks would not
produce the desired effect: towards which sum the said archbishop
presented the king with three hundred marks. The money being now
prepared, the management of the design was committed to Mr. Robert
Turnour, who then was keeper of the robes to the king, and a person most
in favour with him of any of his condition. Mr. Turnour took to his
assistance Mr. Caxton, a citizen of good abilities, who, trading much
into Holland, might be a creditable pretence, as well for his going as
staying in the Low Countries. Mr. Turnour was in disguise, his beard and
hair shaven quite off, but Mr. Caxton appeared known and public. They
having received the sum of one thousand marks, went first to Amsterdam,
then to Leyden, not daring to enter Haarlem itself; for the town was
very jealous, having imprisoned and apprehended divers persons, who came
from other parts for the same purpose. They stayed till they had spent
the whole one thousand marks in gifts and expenses. So as the king was
fain to send five hundred marks more, Mr. Turnour having written to the
king that he had almost done his work, a bargain, as he said, being
struck between him and two Hollanders for bringing off one of the
workmen, who should sufficiently discover and teach the new art. At
last, with much ado, they got off one of the under workmen, whose name
was Frederick Corsells, or rather Corsellis; who late one night stole
from his fellows in disguise, into a vessel prepared before for that
purpose; and so the wind, favouring the design, brought him safe to
London. It was not thought so prudent to set him on work at London, but
by the archbishop's means, who had been Vice-chancellor and afterwards
Chancellor of the University of Oxon, Corsellis was carried with a guard
to Oxon, which constantly watched to prevent Corsellis from any possible
escape, till he had made good his promise, in teaching how to print. So
that at Oxford printing was first set up in England." This is certainly
an extraordinary story, and one which upon the face of it has traces of
inconsistency, if not of imposture. Richard Atkyns says that a certain
worthy person "did present me with a copy of a record and manuscript in
Lambeth House, heretofore in his custody, belonging to the See, and not
to any particular Archbishop of Canterbury. The substance whereof was
this; though I hope, for public satisfaction, the record itself in its
due time will appear." The record itself did never appear, and, though
diligently sought for, could never be found. But Atkyns further stated
that the same most worthy person who gave him the copy of the record,
trusted him with a book "printed at Oxon, A.D. 1468, which was three
years before any of the recited authors [Stow and others] would allow it
[printing] to be in England." He does not mention the book; but there is
such a book, and it is entitled 'Expositio Sancti Ieronimi in Simbolum,
ad Papam Laurentiam;' and at the end, 'Explicit Expositio, &c., Impressa
Oxonie, et finita Anno Dom. MCCCCLXVIII, xvii die Decembris.' Anthony
Wood repeats the story of Atkyns in his 'History of the University of
Oxford;' and he adds, "And thus the mystery of printing appeared ten
years sooner in the University of Oxford than at any other place in
Europe, Haarlem and Mentz excepted. Not long after there were presses
set up in Westminster, St. Albans, Worcester, and other monasteries of
note. After this manner printing was introduced into England, by the
care of Archbishop Bourchier, in the year of Christ 1464, and the third
of King Edward IV." Wood's version of the story makes it a little, a
very little, more credible, for it brings it nearer to the time when the
newly discovered art of printing might have attracted some attention in
England. But even in 1464 there were, with scarcely more than one
exception, no printed books known in Europe but the first productions of
the press at Mentz. The story of Caxton going to Haarlem in the time of
Henry the Sixth, that is, in some year previous to 1461, must altogether
be a fabrication, or a mistake. The accounts that would ascribe the
invention of printing to Laurence Coster, of Haarlem, set up a legendary
story that John Fust, or John Guttenberg (not the real Guttenberg, but
an elder brother), stole the invention from Coster and carried it to
Mentz in 1442. If Caxton, therefore, went to Haarlem in Holland, with a
companion, in disguise, to learn the art of printing, he must have gone
there before 1442; for the story holds that Coster was not only robbed
of his secret, but of his types, and gave up printing in despair to his
more fortunate spoiler. Bourchier was not Archbishop of Canterbury till
1454. We may be sure, therefore, that, wherever Caxton went to learn the
art of printing at an earlier period than is generally supposed, he did
not go to Haarlem in Holland. Substitute Mentz for Haarlem, and Atkyns's
story is more consistent. It is by no means improbable that Henry the
Sixth and Cardinal Bourchier might have seen the magnificent Latin
bible, called the Mazarine bible, which was printed by Guttenberg,
Schoeffer, and Fust, and is held to have appeared about 1455. Of this
noble book Mr. Hallam says, "It is a very striking circumstance, that
the high-minded inventors of this great art tried at the very outset so
bold a flight as the printing an entire bible, and executed it with
astonishing success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine
strength and radiant armour, ready at the moment of her nativity to
subdue and destroy her enemies." The king and the archbishop might have
desired that England should learn the art of executing so splendid a
work as the first bible. At that period we know that Caxton was residing
abroad, and he was a fit person to be selected for such a commission.
But kings at that day were scarcely better supplied with money than
their subjects; and if Henry the Sixth had sent to Mr. Robert Turnour or
Mr. William Caxton seven hundred marks at one time and five hundred at
another, the gifts must have been registered with all due formality. We
have the Exchequer registers of Henry the Sixth and his great rival; and
although we learn that Edward the Fourth gave Caxton twenty pounds,
neither his name nor that of Mr. Tumour, nor even of the archbishop, is
associated with any bounty of Henry the Sixth. We may, therefore, safely
conclude, with Dr. Conyers Middleton, with regard to all this story,
that "Mr. Atkyns, a bold vain man, might be the inventor of it, having
an interest in imposing upon the world, to confirm his argument that
printing was of the prerogative royal, in opposition to the stationers;
against whom he was engaged in expensive lawsuits, in defence of the
king's patents, under which he claimed some exclusive powers of
printing." The date of 1468 on the Oxford book is reasonably concluded
to have been a typographical error. There are niceties in the printing
of that book which did not belong to the earliest stages of the art; and
the same type and manner of printing are seen in Oxford books printed
immediately after 1478. The probability therefore is, that an X was
omitted in the Roman numerals.

We could scarcely avoid detailing this story, apocryphal as the whole
matter is upon the face of it, because the claims of Oxford to the
honour of the first printing-press were once the subject of a fierce
controversy. The honest antiquarian Oldys complains most bitterly of
Richard Atkyns, "How unwarrantably he robbed Master Caxton of the
honour, wherewith he had long been, by the suffrage of all learned men,
undeniably invested, of first introducing and practising this most
scientifical invention among us." But had this story been true, Caxton
would not have been robbed of his glory. He would still have been what
Leland, writing within half a century of his death, calls him, "Angliæ
Prototypographus"—the first printer of England. For it is not the man
who is the accidental instrument of introducing a great invention, and
then pursues it no further, who is to have the fame of its promulgation.
It is he who by patient and assiduous labour acquires the mastery of a
new principle, sees afar off the high objects to which it may be
applied, carries out its details with persevering courage, is not
deterred by failure nor satisfied with partial success, works for a
great purpose through long years of anxiety, is careless of honours or
rewards, and finally does accomplish all and much more than he proposed,
planting the tree, training it, rejoicing in its good fruit,—he it is
that is the real first introducer and practiser of a great scientific
invention, even though some one may have preceded him in some similar
attempt—an experiment, but not a perfect work. We may well believe that,
for some ten years of his residence abroad, the knowledge that a new art
was discovered, promising such mighty results as that of printing, must
have excited the deepest interest in the mind of Caxton. He says
himself, in his continuation of the Polychronicon, "About this time
[1455] the craft of imprinting was first found in Mogunce in Almayne."
During his residence at the court of Burgundy he would see the art
multiplying around him. Italy, where it most extensively flourished
before 1470, was too distant for his personal inspection. Bamberg,
Augsburg, and Strasburg brought it nearer to him. But Cologne, where
Conrad Winters set up a press about 1470, was very near at hand. A few
days' journey would place him within the walls of the holy city of the
Rhine. Cologne, we have no doubt, fixed the employment of the remainder
of his life; and made the London mercer, whose name, like the names of
many other good and respectable men, would have held no place in the
memory of the world but for the art he learnt in his latter
years,—Cologne rendered the name of Caxton a bright and venerable
name;—a name that even his countrymen, who are accustomed chiefly to
raise columns and statues to the warlike defenders of their country,
will one day honour amongst the heroes who have most successfully
cultivated the arts of peace, and by high talent and patient labour have
rendered it impossible that mankind should not steadily advance in the
acquisition of knowledge and virtue, and in the consequent amelioration
of the lot of every member of the family of mankind, at some period,
present or remote.

The provost of the city of Mentz, on the occasion of the festival of
Guttenberg, published an address full of German enthusiasm, at which we
may be apt to smile, but which breathes a spirit of reverence for the
higher concerns of our being which we might profitably engraft upon the
practical good sense on which we pride ourselves. He says, "If the
mortal who invented that method of fixing the fugitive sounds of words
which we call the alphabet has operated upon mankind like a divinity, so
also has Guttenberg's genius brought together the once isolated
inquirers, teachers, and learners—all the scattered and divided efforts
for extending God's kingdom over the whole civilized earth—as though
beneath one temple. Guttenberg's invention, not a lucky accident, but
the golden fruit of a well-considered idea—an invention made with a
perfect consciousness of its end—has above all other causes, for more
than four centuries, urged forward and established the dominion of
science; and what is of the most importance, has immeasurably advanced
the mental formation and education of the people. This invention, a true
intellectual sun, has mounted above the horizon, first of the European
Christians, and then of the people of other climes and other faiths, to
an ever-enduring morning. It has made the return of barbarism, the
isolation of mankind, the reign of darkness, impossible for all future
times. It has established a public opinion, a court of moral judicature
common to all civilized nations, whatever natural divisions may separate
them, as much as for the provinces of one and the same state. In a word,
it has formed fellow labourers at the never-resting loom of Christian
European civilization in every quarter of the world, in almost every
island of the ocean."

Filled with some such strong belief, although perhaps a vague belief, of
the blessings which printing might bestow upon his own country, we may
view William Caxton proceeding, about the end of 1470, to the city of
Cologne, resolved to acquire the art of which he had seen some of the
effects, without stint of labour or expense. That he was an apt and
diligent scholar his after works abundantly prove.

The first book printed in the English language, the 'Recueil of the
Histories of Troy,' which we have so often noticed, does not bear upon
the face of it when and where it was printed. That it was printed by
Caxton we can have no doubt, because he says, "I have practised and
learned, at my great charge and dispense, to ordain this said book in
print." He tells us, too, in the title-page, that the _translation_ was
finished at Cologne, in September, 1471. That Caxton printed at Cologne
we have tolerably clear evidence. There is a most curious book of
Natural History, originally written in Latin by Bartholomew Glanvill, a
Franciscan friar of the fourteenth century, commonly known as
Bartholomæus. A translation of this book, which is called 'De
Proprietatibus Rerum,' was printed in England by Wynkyn de Worde, who
was an assistant to Caxton in his printing-office at Westminster, and
there succeeded to him. In some quaint stanzas which occur in this
edition, and which appear to be written either by or in the name of the
printer, are these lines, which we copy, in the first instance, exactly
following the orthography and non-punctuation of the original:—

  "And also of your charyte call to remembraunce
  The soule of William Caxton first prȳter of this boke
  Jn laten tonge at Coleyn hȳself to auaūce
  That euery well disposyd man may theron loke."

That we are asked to call to remembrance the soul of William Caxton is
perfectly clear; but how are we to read the subsequent members of the
sentence? The most obvious meaning appears to be that William Caxton was
the first printer of this book in the Latin tongue; that he printed it
at Cologne; and that his object in printing it was to advance or profit
himself, in addition to his desire that every well-disposed man might
look upon it. But there is another interpretation of these words, which
is certainly not a forced one;—that William Caxton was the first printer
of this book, the English book, and that the object of his printing it
was to advance himself in the Latin tongue at Cologne. "This book" would
appear then to be, this English book, this same book. If a copy of this
book, whether in Latin or English, printed at Cologne at so early a
period, could be found, the question would be set at rest. There is a
Latin edition printed at Cologne, in 1481, by John Koelhoff; and there
is an edition in Latin without date or place. The first English edition
known is that by Wynkyn de Worde, and that translation was made much
earlier than the time of Caxton, by John de Trevisa. Caxton could
scarcely have been said to have desired to have advanced himself in the
Latin tongue, unless he had translated the book as well as printed it.
The mere fact of superintending workmen who set up the types in Latin
would have done little to advance his knowledge of the language. We
believe, therefore, that we must receive the obscure lines of Wynkyn de
Worde as evidence that Caxton did print at Cologne, and that he
undertook the Latin edition of Bartholomæus as a commercial speculation,
"himself to advance," or profit.

And, indeed, when we look at the state of England after the return of
Edward IV. from his exile,—the "great divisions" of which Caxton himself
speaks,—we may consider that he acted with discretion in conducting his
first printing operations in a German city. It must be also borne in
mind that this was by far the readiest mode to obtain a competent
knowledge in the new art. Had he come over to England with types and
presses, and even with the most skilful workmen, the probability is that
the man of letters who, two or three years before, had little or nothing
to do in his attendance upon the Burgundian court, would have ill
succeeded in so complicated and difficult a commercial enterprise.
Lambinet, a French bibliographical writer, tells us that Melchior de
Stamham, wishing to establish a printing-office at Augsburg, engaged a
skilful workman of the same town, of the name of Sauerloch. He employed
a whole year in making the necessary preparations for his office. He
bought five presses, of the materials of which he constructed five other
presses. He cast pewter types, and, having spent a large sum, seven
hundred and two florins, in establishing his office, began working in
1473. He died before he had completed one book; heartbroken, probably,
at the amount of capital he had sunk; for his unfinished book was sold
off at a mere trifle, and his office broken up. This statement, which
rests upon some ancient testimony, shows us something of the
difficulties which had to be encountered by the early printers. They had
to do everything for themselves; to construct the materials of their
art, types, presses, and every other instrument and appliance. When
Caxton began to print at Cologne, he probably had the means of obtaining
a set of moulds from some previous printer,—what are called strikes from
the punches that form the original matrices. The writers upon typography
seem to assume the necessity of every one of the old printers cutting
his punches anew, and shaping his letters according to his own notions
of proportionate beauty. That the great masters of their art, the first
inventors, the Italian printers, the Alduses, the Stephenses, pursued
this course is perfectly clear. But when printing ceased to be a
mystery, about 1462, it is more than probable that those who tried to
set up a press, especially in Germany, either bought a few types of the
more established printers, or obtained a readier means of casting types
than that of cutting new punches,—a difficult and expensive operation.
Thus we believe the attempts to assign a book without a printer's name
to some printer whose types that book resembles, can be little relied
upon. Caxton's types are held to be like the type of this printer and
the type of that; and it is said that he copied the types, with the
objection added that he did not copy the best models. What should have
prevented him buying the types from the continent, as every English
printer did until the middle of the last century? or at any rate what
should have prevented him buying copies of the moulds which other
printers were using? The bas-relief upon Thorwaldsen's statue of
Guttenberg exhibits the first printer examining a matrix. But all the
difficulties in the formation of the first matrix overcome, we may
readily see that, at every stage, the art of making fusile types would
become easier and simpler, till at length the division of labour should
be perfectly applied to type-making, and the mere casting of a letter,
as each letter is cast singly, exhibit one of the most rapid and
beautiful pieces of handiwork that the arts can show.

But the type obtained, Caxton would still have much to do before his
office was furnished. We have seen how Melchior of Augsburg set about
getting his presses: "He bought of John Schuesseler five presses, which
cost him seventy-three Rhenish florins: he constructed with these
materials five other smaller presses." To those who know what a
well-adjusted machine the commonest printing-press now in use is, it is
not easy at first to conceive what is meant by saying that Melchior
bought five presses, and made five other presses out of the materials.
The solution is this:—in all probability this printer of Augsburg bought
five old wine-presses, and, using the screws, cut them down and adapted
them to the special purpose for which he designed them. The earliest
printing-press was nothing more than a common screw-press,—such as a
cheese-press, or a napkin-press,—with a contrivance for running the
_form_ of types under the screw after the _form_ was inked. It is
evident that this mode of obtaining an impression must have been very
laborious and very slow. As the screw must have come down upon the types
with a dead pull,—that is, as the table upon which the types were placed
was solid and unyielding,—great care must have been required to prevent
the pressure being so hard as to injure the face of the letters.

A famous printer, Jodocus Badius Ascensianus, has exhibited his press in
the title-page of a book printed by him in 1498. Up to the middle of the
last century this rude press was in use in England; although the press
of an ingenious Dutch mechanic, Blaew,—in which the pressure was rapidly
communicated from the screw to the types, and all the parts of the press
were yielding so as to produce a sharp but not a crushing
impression,—was gradually superseding it. The early printers
manufactured their own ink, so that Caxton had to learn the art of
ink-making. The ink was applied to the types by balls, or dabbers, such
as one of the men holds who is working the press of Badius. Such dabbers
were universally used in printing forty years ago. As the ancient weaver
was expected to make his own loom, so, even this short time since, the
division of labour was so imperfectly applied to printing, that the
pressman was expected to make his own balls. A very rude and nasty
process this was. The sheepskins, called pelts, were prepared in the
printing-office, where the wool with which they were stuffed was also
carded; and these balls, thus manufactured by a man whose general work
was entirely of a different nature, required the expenditure of at least
half an hour's labour every day in a very disagreeable operation, by
which they were kept soft.

There were many other little niceties in the home construction of the
materials for printing which Caxton would necessarily have to learn. But
in the earlier stages of an art requiring such nice arrangement, both in
the departments of the compositor, or setter-up of the type, and of the
pressman, it is quite clear that many things which, by the habit of four
centuries, have become familiar and easy in a printing-office, would be
exceedingly difficult to be acquired by the first printers. Rapidity in
the work was probably out of the question. Accidents must constantly
have occurred in wedging up the single letters tightly in pages and
sheets; and when one looks at the regularity of the inking of these old
books, and the beautiful accuracy with which the line on one side of a
page falls on the corresponding line on the other side (called by
printers "register"), we maybe sure that with very imperfect mechanical
means an amount of care was taken in working off the sheets which would
appear ludicrous to a modern pressman. The higher operation of a
printing-office, which consists in reading the proofs, must have been in
the first instance full of embarrassment and difficulty. A scholar was
doubtless employed to test the accuracy of the proofs; probably some one
who had been previously employed to overlook the labours of the
transcribers. Fierce must have been the indignation of such a one during
a course of painful experience, when he found one letter presented for
another, letters and even syllables and words omitted, letters
topsy-turvy, and even actual substitutions of one word for another.
These are almost unavoidable consequences of the mechanical operation of
arranging moveable types, so entirely different from the work of the
transcriber. The corrector of the press would not understand this; and
his life would not be a pleasant one. Caxton was no doubt the corrector
of his own press; and well for him it was that he brought to his task
the patience, industry, and good temper which are manifest in his
writings.

[Illustration: Ancient Press.]

But the ancient printer had something more to do before his manufacture
was complete. He was a bookbinder as well as a printer. The ancient
books, manuscript as well as printed, were wonderful specimens of
patient labour. The board, literally a wooden board, between which the
leaves were fastened, was as thick as the panel of a door. This was
covered with leather, sometimes embossed with the most ingenious
devices. There were large brass nails, with ornamented heads, on the
outside of this cover, with magnificent corners to the lids. In
addition, there were clasps. The back was rendered solid with paste and
glue, so as to last for centuries. Erasmus says of such a book, "As for
Thomas Aquinas's Secunda Secundæ, no man can carry it about, much less
get it into his head." An ancient woodcut shows us the binder hammering
at the leaves to make them flat, and a lad sewing the leaves in a frame
very like that still in use. Above are the books flying in the air in
all their solid glory.

But the most difficult labour of the ancient printer, and that which
would necessarily constitute the great distinction between one printer
and another, was yet to come. He had to sell his books when he had
manufactured them, for there was no division of the labour of publisher
and printer in those days. His success would of course much depend upon
the quality of his books; upon their adaptation to the nature of the
demand for books; upon their accuracy; upon their approach to the beauty
of the old manuscripts. But he had to incur the risk common to all
copying processes, whether the thing produced be a medal or a book, of
expending a large certain sum before a single copy could be produced.
The process of printing, compared with that of writing, is a cheap
process as ordinarily conducted; but the condition of cheapness is
this,—that a sufficient number of copies of any particular book may be
reckoned upon as saleable, so as to render the proportion of the first
expense upon a single copy inconsiderable. If it were required even at
the present time to print a single copy, or even three or four copies
only, of any literary work, the cost of printing would be greater than
the cost of transcribing. It is when hundreds, and especially thousands,
of the same work are demanded, that the great value of the
printing-press in making knowledge cheap is particularly shown. It is
probable that the first printers did not take off more than two or three
hundred, if so many, of their works; and, therefore, the earliest
printed books must have been still dear, on account of the limited
number of their readers. Caxton, as it appears by a passage in one of
his books, was a cautious printer; and required something like an
assurance that he should sell enough of any particular book to repay the
cost of producing it. In his 'Legend of Saints' he says, "I have
submysed [submitted] myself to translate into English the 'Legend of
Saints,' called 'Legenda aurea' in Latin; and William, Earl of Arundel,
desired me—and promised to take a reasonable quantity of them—and sent
me a worshipful gentleman, promising that my said lord should during my
life give and grant to me a yearly fee, that is to note, a buck in
summer and a doe in winter." Caxton, with his sale of a reasonable
quantity, and his summer and winter venison, was more fortunate than
others of his brethren, who speculated upon a public demand for books
without any guarantee from the great and wealthy. Sweynheim and
Pannartz, Germans who settled in Rome, and there printed many beautiful
editions of the Latin Classics, presented a petition to the Pope, in
1471, which contains the following passage:—"We were the first of the
Germans who introduced this art, with vast labour and cost, into your
holiness' territories, in the time of your predecessor; and encouraged
by our example other printers to do the same. If you peruse the
catalogue of the works printed by us, you will admire how and where we
could procure a sufficient quantity of paper, or even rags, for such a
number of volumes. The total of these books amounts to 12,475,—a
prodigious heap,—and intolerable to us, your holiness' printers, by
reason of those unsold. We are no longer able to bear the great expense
of housekeeping, for want of buyers; of which there cannot be a more
flagrant proof than that our house, though otherwise spacious enough, is
full of quire-books, but void of every necessary of life." For some
years after the invention of printing, many of the ingenious, learned,
and enterprising men who devoted themselves to the new art which was to
change the face of society, were ruined, because they could not sell
cheaply unless they printed considerable number of a book; and there
were not readers enough to take off the stock which they thus
accumulated. In time, however, as the facilities for acquiring knowledge
which printing afforded created many readers, the trade of printing
books became one of less general risk; and dealers in literature could
afford more and more to dispense with individual patronage, and rely
upon the public demand.




CHAPTER VI.

 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.]




CHAPTER VII.

Female Manners—Lord Rivers—Popular History—Popular Science—Popular
Fables—Popular Translations—The Canterbury Tales—Statutes—Books
of Chivalry—Caxton's last days.


In the library belonging to the Archbishops of Canterbury, at Lambeth,
is a beautiful manuscript, on vellum, of a French work, 'Les Dicts
Moraux des Philosophes,' which contains the illumination of which the
above is a copy. In lines written under the illumination the book is
stated to be translated by "Antony erle," by which Lord Rivers is meant.
This book was printed by Caxton in 1477; and it is held that the man
kneeling by the side of the earl in the illumination is the printer of
the book. We have already mentioned the confidential intercourse which
subsisted between Lord Rivers and his printer, with regard to the
revision of this work. (See page 82.) The passages which we there quote
are given in a sort of appendix, in which Caxton professes to have
himself translated a chapter upon women, which Lord Rivers did not think
fit to meddle with, and which he prints with a real or affected
apprehension. The printer's statement is altogether such a piece of sly
humour, that we willingly transcribe it, trusting that our readers will
see the drollery through the quaintness:—

"I find that my said lord hath left out certain and divers conclusions
touching women. Whereof I marvelled that my said lord hath not writ on
them, nor what hath moved him so to do, nor what cause he had at that
time. But I suppose that some fair lady hath desired him to leave it out
of his book; or else he was amorous on some noble lady, for whose love
he would not set it in his book; or else for the very affection, love,
and good will that he hath unto all ladies and gentlewomen, he thought
that Socrates spared the sooth, and wrote of women more than truth;
which I cannot think that so true a man and so noble a philosopher as
Socrates was, should write otherwise than truth. For if he had made
fault in writing of women, he ought not nor should not be believed in
his other Dictes and Sayings. But I perceive that my said lord knoweth
verily that such defaults be not had nor found in the women born and
dwelling in these parts nor regions of the world. Socrates was a Greek,
born in a far country from hence, which country is all of other
conditions than this is, and men and women of other nature than they be
here in this country; for I wot well, of whatsoever condition women be
in Greece, the women of this country be right good, wise, pleasant,
humble, discreet, sober, chaste, obedient to their husbands, true,
secret, stedfast, ever busy, and never idle, attemperate in speaking,
and virtuous in all their works; or at least should be so. For which
causes so evident, my said lord, as I suppose, thought it was not of
necessity to set in his book the sayings of his author Socrates touching
women."

There is a book translated by Caxton from the French, and printed by him
in 1484, which we may incidentally here notice, as illustrating the
female manners of that century. It is called '_The Knight of the
Tower_;' and really would seem to justify the sarcasm of Caxton where he
says, "The women of this country be right good, &c., or at least should
be so." The preface implies that the work, though written by a
Frenchman, applies to the contemporary state of society in England; and
it may be well to see how our ladies were employed about four centuries
ago. It appears from this curious performance that the ladies, although
well accomplished in needlework, confectionary, church music, and even
taught something of the rude surgery of those days, were not great
proficients in reading, and the art of writing was thought to be better
let alone by them. The Knight of the Tower complains of the levity of
the ladies. Their extravagance in dress, the husband's standing
complaint, is thus put by the Knight of the Tower: "The wives say to
their husbands every day, 'Sir, such a wife and such hath such goodly
array that beseemeth her well, and I pray you I may have of the same.'
And if her husband say, 'Wife, if such have such array, such that are
wiser than they have it not,' she will say, 'No force it is [that is of
no consequence], for they cannot wear it; and if I have it, ye shall see
how well it will become me, for I can wear it.' And thus with her words
her husband must needs ordain her that which she desireth, or he shall
never have peace with her, for they will find so many reasons that they
will not be warned [put off]." The women of lower estate come in for the
same censure, the complaint being that they _fur_ their draperies and
_fur_ their heels. It appears to have been the practice for ladies to go
very freely to feasts and assemblies, to joustings and tournaments,
without what we now call the protection of a husband or a male relation.
A contemporary writer says, they lavished their wealth and corrupted
their virtue by these freedoms. If we may judge from the warnings which
the Knight of the Tower gives his daughters of the discipline they would
receive at the hands of their husbands for any act of disobedience,—the
discipline not only of hard words, but of harder blows,—it is not to be
wondered at that they sought abroad for some relief to the gloom and
severity of their home lives. It is pleasant, amidst these illustrations
of barbarous and profligate manners, to find a picture of that real
goodness which has distinguished the female character in all ages, and
which, especially in the times of feudal oppression of which we are
speaking, mitigated the lot of those who were dependent upon the
benevolence of the great possessors of property. The good Lady Cecile of
Balleville is thus described by the Knight of the Tower: "Her daily
ordinance was, that she rose early enough, and had ever friars and two
or three chaplains, which said matins before her within the oratory. And
after, she heard a high mass and two low, and said her service full
devoutly. And after this she went and arrayed herself, and walked in her
garden or else about her place, saying her other devotions and prayers.
And as time was she went to dinner. And after dinner, if she wist and
knew any sick folk or women in their childbed, she went to see and
visited them, and made to be brought to them her best meat. And there as
she might not go herself, she had a servant proper therefore, which rode
upon a little horse, and bare with him great plenty of good meat and
drink, for to give to the poor and sick folk there as they were. Also,
she was of such custom, that, if she knew any poor gentlewoman that
should be wedded, she arrayed her with her jewels. Also she went to the
obsequies of poor gentlewomen, and gave there torches, and such other
luminary as it needed thereto. And after she had heard evensong she went
to her supper if she fasted not, and timely she went to bed, and made
her steward to come to her to wit [know] what meat should be had the
next day. She made great abstinence, and wore the hair upon the
Wednesday and upon the Friday." This is a true character of the middle
ages;—goodness based upon sincere piety, but that degenerating into
penances and mortifications, which our Reformed faith teaches us to
believe are unnecessary for spiritual elevation.

Caxton's early friend and patron, Lord Rivers, appears, as far as we can
judge from the books which remain, to have been the only one of the
first English printer's contemporaries who rendered him any literary
assistance. He contributed three works to Caxton's press; namely, the
'Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers,' 'The Moral Proverbs of
Christine de Pisa,' and the book named 'Cordial.'

The book named '_Cordial_' is clearly described in a prologue by Caxton.
It was delivered to him, he says, by Lord Rivers, "for to be imprinted
and so multiplied to go abroad among the people, that thereby more
surely might be remembered the four last things undoubtedly coming."
Caxton, in an elaborate commendation of his patron, of whose former
"great tribulation and adversity" he speaks, says, "It seemeth that he
conceiveth well the mutability and the unstableness of this present
life, and that he desireth, with a great zeal and spiritual love, our
ghostly help and perpetual salvation." Lord Rivers had indeed borne
tribulation since the time when, the flower of Edward's court, he
jousted with the Bastard of Burgundy in Smithfield, in 1468. In the
following year his father and brother were murdered by a desperate
faction at Northampton. When Lord Rivers, conceiving the mutability and
unstableness of life, wrote the book called 'Cordial,' he was only
six-and-thirty years of age. Three years after Caxton printed the book,
the translator was himself murdered at Pomfret by the Protector Richard.
Shakspere did not do injustice to the noble character of this peer when
he makes him exclaim, when he was led to the block,

  "Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this,—
  To-day shalt thou behold a subject die,
  For truth, for duty, and for loyalty."

  _Richard III._, Act iii., Scene 2.

There is left to us a remarkable fragment which indicates to us
something higher than the ability and literary attainment of this
unfortunate nobleman. It has been preserved by John Rouse, a
contemporary historian, who lived in the pleasant solitude of Guy's
Cliff, near Warwick, and died there in 1491. He says (we translate from
his Latin), "In the time of his imprisonment at Pomfret he wrote a balet
in English, which has been shown to me, having these words—Sum what
musyng," &c.; and then Rouse transcribes the ballad, of which the second
stanza is imperfect, but has been supplied from another ancient copy.
Percy, who prints the ballad in his 'Reliques,' says, "If we consider
that it was written during his cruel confinement in Pomfret Castle, a
short time before his execution in 1483, it gives us a fine picture of
the composure and steadiness with which this stout earl beheld his
approaching fate." We subjoin the ballad, modernising the orthography:—

  Somewhat musing, and more mourning,
    In remembering the unstedfastness,
  This world being of such wheeling,
    Me contrarying what may I guess.

  I fear doubtless, remediless
    Is now to seize my woful chance;
  For unkindness withouten less
    And no redress, me doth avance,

  With displeasance to my grievance
    And no surance of remedy:
  Lo in this trance, now in substance
    Such is my dance, willing to die.

  Methinks truly bounden am I,
    And that greatly, to be content,
  Seeing plainly fortune doth wry
    All contrary from mine intent.

  My life was lent me to one intent;
    It is nigh spent. Welcome, fortune!
  But I ne went thus to be shent,
    But she it meant—such is her won [wont].

Turn we to one of the more important works of Caxton, in which he sought
to inform his countrymen generally with a knowledge of history. '_The
Chronicles of England_,' printed in 1480, begins at the fabulous period
before the Romans, and ends at the commencement of the reign of Edward
IV. The early legends of English History, which even Milton did not
disdain to touch upon, are founded upon the 'History' of Nennius, which
was composed in the ninth century, and which was copied by Geoffrey of
Monmouth and other of the early chroniclers. Caxton took the thing as he
found it, and continued the narrative to his own time. He deals
prudently with contemporary events. Caxton followed up these chronicles
in the same year with another book, called '_The Description of
Britain_,' in which he tells of the extent of the island, its marvels
and wonders, its highways, rivers, cities, and towns, provinces, laws,
bishoprics, and languages. He describes also Scotland and Ireland. Some
of his marvels and wonders are a little astounding; but others are as
precise in their description, and as forcible (brevity being an
essential quality), as we could well desire. Thus of Stonehenge: "At
Stonehinge beside Salisbury there be great stones and wondrous huge; and
be reared on high, as it were gates set upon other gates; nevertheless
it is not known cleanly nor aperceived how and wherefore they be so
areared and so wonderful hanged."

From the chronicles of his own country Caxton sought to lead his readers
forward to a knowledge of the history of other countries. He published
in 1482 '_The Polychronicon_, containing the bearings and deeds of many
times.' This book was originally composed by Higden, a Benedictine monk
of Chester; and was translated from Latin into English by John de
Trevisa, who lived in the times of Edward III. and Richard II. Caxton in
his title-page, says, "Imprinted by William Caxton, after having
somewhat changed the rude and old English, that is to wit certain words
which in these days be neither used nor understanden." In another place
he says, "And now at this time simply imprinted and set in form by me,
William Caxton, and a little embellished from the old making." Caxton
was here doing what every person who desires to advance the knowledge of
his time, by extending that knowledge beyond the narrow circle of
scholars and antiquarians, must always do. He popularised an old book;
he made it intelligible. He did not do,—as some verbal pedants amongst
us still persist in doing,—present our old writers, and especially our
poets, in all the capriciousness of their original orthography. He was
the first great diffuser of knowledge amongst us; and surely we think he
took a judicious course. He says of the 'Polychronicon,' "The book is
general, touching shortly many notable matters." But, _general_ as the
book was, and extensively as he desired to circulate it according to his
limited means, he does not approach his task without a due sense of the
importance of the knowledge he was seeking to impart. The praise of
history in his proem is truly eloquent: "History is a perpetual
conservatrice of those things that have been before this present time;
and also a quotidian witness of benefits, of malfaits [evil deeds],
great acts, and triumphal victories of all manner of people. And also,
if the terrible feigned fables of poets have much stirred and moved men
to right and conserving of justice, how much more is to be supposed that
history, assertrice of virtue and a mother of all philosophy, moving our
manners to virtue, reformeth and reconcileth near hand all those men
which through the infirmity of our moral nature hath led the most part
of their life in otiosity [idleness], and misspended their time, passed
right soon out of remembrance: of which life and death is equal
oblivion." Again, "Other monuments distributed in divers changes endure
but for a short time or season; but the virtue of history, diffused and
spread by the universal world hath time, which consumeth all other
things, as conservatrice and keeper of her work."

'_The Image or Mirror of the World_' is one of the popular books which
Caxton translated from the French. It treats of a vast variety of
subjects, after the imperfect natural philosophy of those days. We have
an account of the seven liberal arts; of nature, how she worketh; and
how the earth holdeth him right in the middle of the world. We have also
much geographical information, amongst which the wonders of Inde occupy
a considerable space. Meteorology and astronomy take up another large
portion. The work concludes with an account of the celestial paradise.
This book seems specially addressed to high and courtly readers, for
Caxton says, "The hearts of nobles, in eschewing of idleness at such
time as they have none other virtuous occupations on hand, ought to
exercise them in reading, studying, and visiting the noble feats and
deeds of the sage and wise men, sometime travelling in profitable
virtues; of whom it happeneth oft that some be inclined to visit the
books treating of sciences particular; and other to read and visit books
speaking of feats of arms, of love, or of other marvellous histories;
and among all other, this present book, which is called the 'Image or
Mirror of the World,' ought to be visited, read, and known, by cause it
treateth of the world, and of the wonderful division thereof." But the
translator tells us, "I have endeavoured me therein, at the request and
desire, cost and dispense, of the honourable and worshipful man, Hugh
Brice, citizen and alderman of London." We may therefore believe that
Caxton intended this book for a wider circulation than that of the
nobles whom he addresses; especially as he says, "I have made it so
plain that every man reasonable may understand it, if he advisedly and
attentively read it, or hear it." The good old printer rendered the book
intelligible to all classes, under the condition that all who read it
should give their attention. This is one of the books into which Caxton
has introduced woodcuts, giving twenty-seven figures, "without which it
may not lightly [easily] be understood." These twenty-seven figures are
diagrams, explanatory of some of the scientific principles laid down in
this book; but there are eleven other cuts illustrative of other
subjects treated in the work. An idea maybe formed of the manner in
which those cuts are engraved from the following fac-simile of 'Music.'

[Illustration]

One of the most popular books of Caxton's translation must
unquestionably have been the '_History of Reynard the Fox_.' It is held
that this work was composed in the twelfth century; and surely the
author must have been a man of high genius to have constructed a fable
which has been ever since popular in all countries, and delights us even
to this hour. Caxton has no woodcuts to his edition, to which the book
subsequently owed a portion of its attractions.

'_The Subtil Histories and Fables of Esop_,' translated by Caxton from
the French, were printed by him in 1483, "The first year of the reign of
King Richard the Third." In the first leaf there is a supposed portrait
of Esop, a large rough woodcut, exhibiting him as he is described, with
a great head, large visage, long jaws, sharp eyes, a short neck,
_curb_-backed, and so forth. There is a controversy whether Richard the
Third was a deformed man or not. It is held by many that it was one of
the scandals put forth under his triumphant successor (which scandal
Shakspere has for ever made current), that Richard was

  "Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
  Deform'd, unfinish'd."

It strikes us that Caxton would scarcely have ventured, in the first
year of King Richard III., to exhibit a print of a hump-backed Esop (for
any print was then a rare thing), if his dread sovereign had been
remarkable amongst the people for a similar defect. The conclusion of
these fables of Esop has a story told by Caxton as from himself, which
is a remarkable specimen of a plain narrative style, with a good deal of
sly humour:—

"Now then I will finish all these fables with this tale that followeth,
which a worshipful priest and a parson told me late: he said that there
were dwelling at Oxenford two priests, both Masters of Arts—of whom that
one was quick and could put himself forth; and that other was a good
simple priest. And so it happened that the master that was pert and
quick was anon promoted to a benefice or twain, and after to prebends,
and for to be a dean of a great prince's chapel, supposing and weening
that his fellow, the simple priest, should never be promoted, but be
always an annual, or, at the most, a parish priest. So after a long time
that this worshipful man, this dean, came running into a good parish
with five or seven horses, like a prelate, and came into the church of
the said parish, and found there this good simple man, sometime his
fellow, which came and welcomed him lowly. And that other bade him 'Good
morrow, Master John,' and took him slightly by the hand, and axed him
where he dwelt.—And the good man said, 'In this parish.' 'How,' said he,
'are ye here a sole priest, or a parish priest?' 'Nay, Sir,' said he,
'for lack of a better, though I be not able nor worthy, I am parson and
curate of this parish.' And then that other vailed [lowered] his bonnet,
and said, 'Master Parson, I pray you to be not displeased; I had
supposed ye had not been beneficed. But, master,' said he, 'I pray you
what is this benefice worth to you a year?' 'Forsooth,' said the good
simple man, 'I wot never; for I make never accompts thereof, how well I
have had it four or five years.' 'And know ye not,' said he, 'what it is
worth?—it should seem a good benefice.' 'No, forsooth,' said he, 'but I
wot well what it shall be worth to me.' 'Why,' said he, 'what shall it
be worth?' Forsooth,' said he, 'if I do my true dealing in the cure of
my parishes in preaching and teaching, and do my part belonging to my
cure, I shall have heaven therefore. And if their souls be lost, or any
of them, by my default, I shall be punished therefore. And hereof I am
sure.' And with that word the rich dean was abashed: and thought he
should be the better, and take more heed to his cures and benefices than
he had done. This was a good answer of a good priest and an honest. And
herewith I finish this book, translated and imprinted by me, William
Caxton." The moral of the fable is not obsolete.

One of Caxton's most splendid books, of which he seems to have printed
three editions, was '_The Golden Legend_.' This is, indeed, an important
work, printed in double columns, and containing between four and five
hundred pages, which are largely illustrated with woodcuts. It was not
without great caution, as we have already mentioned (page 107), that
Caxton proceeded with this heavy and expensive undertaking. Happy would
it have been for all printers if puissant and virtuous earls, and others
in high places, had thought it a duty to encourage knowledge by taking a
"reasonable quantity" of a great work; but happier are we now, when,
such assistance being grudgingly bestowed or honestly despised, the
makers of books can depend upon something more satisfying than the rich
man's purse, which was generally associated with "the proud man's
contumely."

In the prologue to the 'Golden Legend' Caxton recites several of the
works which he had previously "translated out of French into English at
the request of certain lords, ladies, and gentlemen." Those recited are
the 'Recueil of Troy,' the 'Book of the Chess,' 'Jason,' the 'Mirror of
the World,' Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' and 'Godfrey of Boulogne.' It is
remarkable that no printed copy exists of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses;' but in
the library of Magdalen College, Cambridge, there is a manuscript
containing five books of the 'Metamorphoses,' which purport to be
translated by Caxton. It was evidently a part of his plan for the
encouragement of liberal education, to present a portion of the people
with translations of the classics through the ready means that were open
to him of re-translation from the French. Many translators in later
times have availed themselves of such aids, without the honesty to
indicate the immediate sources of their versions. Caxton printed '_The
Book of Tully of Old Age_,' and '_Tullius his Book of Friendship_.' He
seems to have had great difficulty in obtaining a copy of an old
translation of 'Tullius de Senectute.' The Book 'De Amicitia' was
translated by John, Earl of Worcester, the celebrated adherent of the
house of York, who was beheaded in 1470. Caxton, we think somewhat
unnecessarily, limits the perusal of the treatise on Old Age. "This book
is not requisite nor eke convenient for every rude and simple man, which
understandeth not of science nor cunning, and for such as have not heard
of the noble policy and prudence of the Romans; but for noble, wise, and
great lords, gentlemen, and merchants, that have been and daily be
occupied in matter touching the public weal: and in especial unto them
that been passed their green age, and eke their middle age, called
virility, and been approached unto _senectute_, called old and ancient
age. Wherein they may see how to suffer and bear the same patiently; and
what surety and virtue been in the same, and have also cause to be
joyous and glad that they have escaped and passed the manifold perils
and doubteous adventures that been in juvente and youth, as in this said
book here following ye may more plainly see."

'_The Book of Eneydos_,' compiled from Virgil, is not a translation of
Virgil's great epic, but a sort of historical narrative formed upon the
course of the poet's great story. The most remarkable passage of this
book is that of Caxton's preface, in which he complains of the
unstedfastness of our language, and the difficulty that he found between
plain, rude, and curious terms. (See page 5.) In this translation he
again limits his work to a particular class of persons; as if he felt,
which was probably a prejudice of his time, that the inferior members of
the laity ought not to touch anything that pertained to scholastic
learning. He says, "Forasmuch as this present book is not for a rude
uplandish man to labour therein, nor read it, but only for a clerk and a
noble gentleman that feeleth and understandeth in faits of arms, in
love, and in noble chivalry: therefore, in mean between both, I have
reduced and translated this said book into our English, not over rude
nor curious, but in such terms as shall be understanden, by God's grace,
according to my copy."

'_The book called Cathon_' (Cato's Morals) was destined by Caxton for a
wider circulation:—"In my judgment it is the best book for to be taught
to young children in schools, and also to people of every age it is full
convenient if it be well understanden."

Dr. Dibdin, in his 'Typographical Antiquities,' says of Caxton,
"Exclusively of the labours attached to the working of his press as a
new art, our typographer contrived, though well stricken in years, to
translate not fewer than five thousand closely printed folio pages. As a
translator, therefore, he ranks among the most laborious, and, I would
hope, not the least successful, of his tribe. The foregoing conclusion
is the result of a careful enumeration of all the books translated as
well as printed by him; which [the translated books], if published in
the modern fashion, would extend to nearly twenty-five octavo volumes!"
The exact nature of his labours seems, as might well be imagined, to
have been often determined by very accidental circumstances. One noble
lord requests him to produce this book, and one worshipful gentleman
urges him to translate that. He says himself of his Virgil, "After
divers works made, translated, and achieved, having no work in hand, I,
sitting in my study whereas lay many divers pamphlets and books,
happened that to my hand came a little book in French, which late was
translated out of Latin by some noble clerk of France, which book is
named Eneydos, made in Latin by that noble poet and great clerk Virgil."
Some books, indeed, he would be determined to print by their existing
popularity. Such were his two editions of Chaucer's '_Canterbury Tales_'
which we may be sure, from his sound criticism, he felt the necessity of
promulgating to a much wider circle than had been reached by the
transcribers. (See page 31.) Caxton was especially the devoted printer
of Chaucer. His truly honourable conduct in venturing upon a new edition
of the 'Canterbury Tales,' when he found his first was incorrect,
exhibits an example in the first printer and the first publisher which
the printers and publishers of all subsequent times ought to reverence
and imitate. The early printers, English and foreign, were indeed a high
and noble race. They did not set themselves up to be the patrons of
letters; they did not dispense their dole to scholars grudgingly and
thanklessly; they worked with them; they encountered with them the risks
of profit and of fame; they were scholars themselves; they felt the deep
responsibility of their office; they carried on the highest of all
commerce in an elevated temper; they were not mere hucksters and
chafferers. It was in no spirit of pride, it was in the spirit of duty,
that Caxton raised a table of verses to Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. In
his edition of Boetius, which he gives us to understand was translated
by Master Geoffrey Chaucer, he says, "And furthermore I desire and
require you, that of your charity ye would pray for the soul of the said
worshipful man Geoffrey Chaucer, first translator of this said book into
English, and embellisher in making the said language ornate and fair,
which shall endure perpetually, and therefore he ought eternally to be
remembered; of whom the body and corps lieth buried in the Abbey of
Westminster, beside London, to fore the chapel of Saint Benet, by whose
sepulture is written on a table, hanging on a pillar, his epitaph made
by a poet-laureate, whereof the copy followeth." The writer of the Life
of Chaucer, in the 'Biographia Britannica,' says, "It is very probable
he lay beneath a large stone of gray marble in the pavement where the
monument to Mr. Dryden now stands, which is in the front of that chapel
[St. Benet's], upon the erecting of which [Dryden's monument] this stone
was taken up, and sawed in pieces to made good the pavement. At least
this seems best to answer the description of the place given by Caxton."
There appears, according to the ancient editors of Chaucer's works, to
have been two Latin lines upon his tombstone previous to the epitaph set
up upon a pillar by Caxton. That epitaph was written by Stephanus
Suriganius, poet-laureate of Milan. The monument of Chaucer, which still
remains in the Abbey, around which the ashes of Spenser, and Beaumont,
and Drayton, and Jonson, and Cowley, and Dryden, have clustered, was
erected by an Oxford student in 1555. There might have been worse things
preserved, and yet to be looked upon, in that Abbey, than honest old
Caxton's epitaph upon him whom he calls "the worshipful father and first
founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English."

As the popularity of Chaucer demanded various impressions of his works
from Caxton's press, so did he print an apparently cheap edition of
Gower's '_Confessio Amantis_,' in small type. Two of Lydgate's works
were also printed by him. The more fugitive poetry which issued from his
press has probably all perished. In one of the volumes of Old Ballads in
the British Museum is a fragment of a poem, of which nothing further is
known, telling the story of some heroine that lived a life of unvaried
solitude:—

  "From her childhood I find that she fled
    Office of woman, and to wood she went,
  And many a wild harte's blood she shed
    With arrows broad that she to them sent."

One of the most important uses of early printing in England is to be
found in fragments of the Statutes of the Realm, made in the first
parliament of Richard III., and in the first, second, and third
parliaments of Henry VII., some leaves of which exist. That the
promulgation of the laws would soon follow the introduction of the art
of printing was a natural consequence. Early in the next century the
publication of Acts of Parliament became an important branch of trade;
and a King's Printer was formally appointed. Up to our own times all the
cheapening processes of the art of printing had been withheld, at least
in their results, from that branch of printing which was to instruct the
people in their new laws. The Statutes were the dearest of books, and
kept dear for no other purpose but to preserve one relic of the
monopolies of the days of the Stuarts. The abuse has been partially
remedied.

We have purposely reserved to the conclusion of this account of the
productions of Caxton's press, some notice of those works to the
undertaking of which he seems to have been moved by his familiarity with
the frequenters of the court,—those whose talk was of tournaments and
battles, of gallant knights and noble dames; and whose heads, like that
of the worthy Knight of La Mancha, were "full of nothing but
enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, complaints, amours,
torments." It is quite marvellous to look upon the enthusiasm with which
Master Caxton deals with these matters in the days when he had achieved

  "The silver livery of advised age."

It offers us one of the many proofs of the energy and youthfulness of
his character. We have already quoted his address to the knights of
England (see page 66), given in his '_Book of the Order of Chivalry_,'
supposed to have been printed in 1484. After this address he proposes a
question which shows that he considers he has fallen upon degenerate
days. "How many knights be there now in England that have the use and
the exercise of a knight? that is to wit, that he knoweth his horse, and
his horse him; that is to say, he being ready at a point to have all
thing that belongeth to a knight, an horse that is according and broken
after his hand, his armour and harness suit, and so forth, _et cetera_.
I suppose, an a due search should be made, there should be many founden
that lack: the more pity is! I would it pleased our sovereign Lord, that
twice or thrice a year, or at the least once, he would cry jousts of
peace, to the end that every knight should have horse and harness, and
also the use and craft of a knight, and also to tourney one against one,
or two against two; and the best to have a prize, a diamond or jewel,
such as should please the prince. This should cause gentlemen to resort
to the ancient customs of chivalry to great fame and renown: and also to
be alway ready to serve their prince when he shall call them, or have
need." There is always some compensating principle arising in the world
to prevent its too rapid degeneracy; and thus, although the tournament
has long ceased, except as a farce, there is many a noble who may still
say, "That he knoweth his horse, and his horse him," through the
attractions of Melton Mowbray and Epsom. Hunting and horse-racing have
done much to keep up our pristine civilization. In '_The Fait of Arms
and Chivalry_,' 1489, Caxton undertakes a higher strain. He translates
this book, "to the end that every gentleman born to arms and all manner
men of war, captains, soldiers, victuallers, and all other, should have
knowledge how they ought to behave them in the faits of war and of
battles." And yet, strange to relate, this belligerent book was written
by a fair lady, Christina of Pisa. The '_Histories of King Arthur_,'
printed in 1485, lands us at once into all the legendary hero-worship of
the middle ages. Caxton, in his preface to this translation by Sir
Thomas Mallory, gives us a pretty full account of the Nine Worthies,
"the best that ever were;" and then he goes on to expound his reasons
for once doubting whether the Histories of Arthur were anything but
fables, and how he was convinced that he was a real man. But surely in
these chivalrous books Caxton had an honest purpose. He exhorts noble
lords and ladies, with all other estates, to read this said book,
"wherein they shall well find many joyous and pleasant histories, and
noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalries; for
herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,
hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin.
Do after the good, and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good
fame and renown." '_The Life of Charles the Great_' succeeded the
'Histories of King Arthur;' for, according to Caxton, Charlemagne was
the second of the three worthy. It is in the preface to this book that
Caxton says that his father and mother in his youth sent him to school,
by which, by the sufferance of God, he gets his living.

We may conclude this imperfect description of Caxton's labours in the
literature of romance and chivalry, so characteristic of the age in
which he lived, with the following extract from the '_History of King
Blanchardine and Queen Eglantine his wife_,' which he translated from
the French, at the command of the Duchess of Somerset, mother of King
Henry VII. The passage shows us that the old printers were dealers in
foreign books as well as in their own productions: "Which book I had
long to fore _sold_ to my said lady, and knew well that the story of it
was honest and joyful to all virtuous young noble gentlemen and women,
for to read therein, as for their pastime. For under correction, in my
judgment, histories of noble feats and valiant acts of arms and war,
which have been achieved in old time of many noble princes, lords, and
knights, are as well for to see and know their valiantness for to stand
in the special grace and love of their ladies, and in like wise for
gentle young ladies and demoiselles for to learn to be stedfast and
constant in their part to them, that they once have promised and agreed
to, such as have put their lives oft in jeopardy for to please them to
stand in grace, as it is to occupy the ken and study overmuch in books
of contemplation." This is a defence of novel-reading which we could
scarcely have expected at so early a period of our literature.

In 1490 Caxton was approaching, according to all his biographers, to the
great age of fourscore. About this period he appears to have consigned
some relation to the grave, perhaps his wife. In the first year of the
churchwardens' accounts of the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster,
from May 17, 1490, to June 3, 1492, there is the following entry:—

  "Item; atte bureynge of Mawde Caxton
    for torches and tapers ... iiijˢ ijᵈ."

On the 15th June, 1490, Caxton finished translating out of French into
English '_The Art and Craft to know well to die_.' The commencement of
the book is an abrupt one: "When it is so, that what a man maketh or
doeth it is made to come to some end, and if the thing be good and well
made it must needs come to good end; then by better and greater reason
every man ought to intend in such wise to live in this world, in keeping
the commandments of God, that he may come to a good end. And then out of
this world, full of wretchedness and tribulations, he may go to heaven
unto God and his saints, unto joy perdurable."

That the end of Caxton was a good end we have little doubt. We have a
testimony, which we shall presently see, that he _worked_ to the end. He
worked upon a book of pious instruction to the last day of his life. He
was not slumbering when his call came. He was still labouring at the
work for which he was born.

There is the following entry in the churchwardens' accounts of the
parish of St. Margaret, in the second year of the period we have above
mentioned:—

  "Item; atte bureyng of WILLIAM
  CAXTON for iiij torches ... vjˢ viiiᵈ

  Item; for the belle at same bureyng ... vjᵈ."


[Illustration: Mark of Wynkyn de Worde.[13]]




CHAPTER VIII.

 The Chapel—The Companions—Increase of Readers—Books make Readers—
 Caxton's Types—Wynkyn's Dream—The first Paper-mill.

It was evensong time when, after a day of listlessness, the printers in
the Almonry at Westminster prepared to close the doors of their
workshop. This was a tolerably spacious room, with a carved oaken roof.
The setting sun shone brightly into the chamber, and lighted up such
furniture as no other room in London could then exhibit. Between the
columns which supported the roof stood two presses —ponderous machines.
A _form_ of types lay unread upon the _table_ of one of these presses;
the other was empty. There were _cases_ ranged between the opposite
columns; but there was no _copy_ suspended ready for the compositors to
proceed with in the morning. No heap of wet paper was piled upon the
floor. The _balls_, removed from the presses, were rotting in a corner.
The _ink-blocks_ were dusty, and a thin film had formed over the oily
pigment. He who had set these machines in motion, and filled the whole
space with the activity of mind, was dead. His daily work was ended.

Three grave-looking men, decently clothed in black, were girding on
their swords. Their caps were in their hands. The door opened, and the
chief of the workmen came in. It was Wynkyn de Worde. With short speech,
but with looks of deep significance, he called a _chapel_—the printer's
parliament—a conclave as solemn and as omnipotent as the Saxons'
Witenagemot. Wynkyn was the Father of the Chapel.

The four drew their high stools round the _imposing-stone_—those stools
on which they had sat through many a day of quiet labour, steadily
working to the distant end of some ponderous folio, without hurry or
anxiety. Upon the stone lay two uncorrected folio pages—a portion of the
'Lives of the Fathers.' The _proof_ was not returned. He that they had
followed a few days before to his grave in Saint Margaret's church had
lifted it once back to his failing eyes,—and then they closed in night.

"Companions," said Wynkyn—(surely that word "_companions_" tells of the
antiquity of printing, and of the old love and fellowship that subsisted
amongst its craft)—"companions, the good work will not stop."

"Wynkyn," said Richard Pynson, "who is to carry on the work?"

"I am ready," answered Wynkyn.

A faint expression of joy rose to the lips of these honest men, but it
was damped by the remembrance of him they had lost.

"He died," said Wynkyn, "as he lived. The Lives of the Holy Fathers is
finished, as far as the translator's labour. There is the rest of the
copy. Read the words of the last page, which _I_ have written:—

"Thus endeth the most virtuous history of the devout and right-renowned
lives of holy fathers living in desert, worthy of remembrance to all
well-disposed persons, which hath been translated out of French into
English by William Caxton, of Westminster, late dead, and finished at
the last day of his life."[14]

The tears were in all their eyes; and "God rest his soul!" was whispered
around.

"Companion," said William Machlinia, "is not this a hazardous
enterprise?"

"I have encouragement," replied Wynkyn;—"the Lady Margaret, his
Highness' mother, gives me aid. So droop not, fear not. We will carry on
the work briskly in our good master's house.—So fill the case."[15]

A shout almost mounted to the roof.

"But why should we fear? You, Machlinia, you, Lettou, and you, dear
Richard Pynson, if you choose not to abide with your old companion here,
there is work for you all in these good towns of Westminster, London,
and Southwark. You have money; you know where to buy types. Printing
_must_ go forward."

"Always full of heart," said Pynson. "But you forget the statute of King
Richard; we cannot say 'God rest his soul,' for our old master scarcely
ever forgave him putting Lord Rivers to death. You forget the statute.
We ought to know it, for we printed it. I can turn to the file in a
moment. It is the Act touching the merchants of Italy, which forbids
them selling their wares in this realm. Here it is: 'Provided always
that this Act, or any part thereof, in no wise extend or be prejudicial
of any let, hurt, or impediment to any artificer or merchant stranger,
of what nation or country he be or shall be of, for bringing into this
realm, or selling by retail or otherwise, of any manner of books written
or imprinted.' Can we stand up against that, if we have more presses
than the old press of the Abbey of Westminster?"

"Ay, truly, we can, good friend," briskly answered Wynkyn. "Have we any
books in our stores? Could we ever print books fast enough? Are there
not readers rising up on all sides? Do we depend upon the court? The
mercers and the drapers, the grocers and the spicers of the city, crowd
here for our books. The rude uplandish men even take our books; they
that our good master rather vilipended. The tapsters and taverners have
our books. The whole country-side cries out for our ballads and our
Robin Hood stories; and, to say the truth, the citizen's wife is as much
taken with our King Arthurs and King Blanchardines as the most noble
knight that Master Caxton ever desired to look upon in his green days of
jousts in Burgundy. So fill the case."[16]

"But if foreigners bring books into England," said cautious William
Machlinia, "there will be more books than readers."

"Books make readers," rejoined Wynkyn. "Do you remember how timidly even
our bold master went on before he was safe in his sell? Do you forget
how he asked this lord to take a copy, and that knight to give him
something in fee; and how he bargained for his summer venison and his
winter venison, as an encouragement in his ventures? But he found a
larger market than he ever counted upon, and so shall we all. Go ye
forth, my brave fellows. Stay not to work for me, if you can work better
for yourselves. I fear no rivals."

"Why, Wynkyn," interposed Pynson, "you talk as if printing were as
necessary as air; books as food, or clothing, or fire."

"And so they will be some day. What is to stop the want of books? Will
one man have the command of books, and another desire them not? The time
may come when every man shall require books."

"Perhaps," said Lettou, who had an eye to printing the Statutes, "the
time may come when every man shall want to read an Act of Parliament,
instead of the few lawyers who buy our Acts now."

"Hardly so," grunted Wynkyn.

"Or perchance you think that, when our sovereign liege meets his Peers
and Commons in Parliament, it were well to print a book some month or
two after, to tell what the said Parliament said, as well as ordained?"

"Nay, nay, you run me hard," said Wynkyn.

"And if within a month, why not within a day? Why shouldn't we print the
words as fast as they are spoken? We only want fairy fingers to pick up
our types, and presses that Doctor Faustus and his devils may some day
make, to tell all London to-morrow morning what is done this morning in
the palace at Westminster."

"Prithee, be serious," ejaculated Wynkyn. "Why do you talk such
gallymaufry? I was speaking of possible things; and I really think the
day may come when one person in a thousand may read books and buy books,
and we shall have a trade almost as good as that of armourers and
fletchers."

"The Bible!" exclaimed Pynson; "O that we might print the Bible! I know
of a copy of Wickliffe's Bible. That were indeed a book to print!"

"I have no doubt, Richard," replied Wynkyn, "that the happy time may
come when a Bible shall be chained in every church, for every Christian
man to look upon. You remember when our brother Hunte showed us the
chained books in the Library at Oxford. So a century or two hence a
Bible may be found in every parish. Twelve thousand parishes in England!
We should want more paper in that good day, Master Richard."

"You had better fancy at once," said Lettou, "that every housekeeper
will want a Bible! Heaven save the mark, how some men's imaginations run
away with them!"

"I cannot see," interposed Machlinia, "how we can venture upon more
presses in London. Here are two. They have been worked well, since the
day when they were shipped at Cologne. Here are five good founts of
type, as much as a thousand weight—_Great Primer_, _Double Pica_,
_Pica_—a large and a small face, and _Long Primer_. They have well
worked; they are pretty nigh worn out. What man would risk such an
adventure, after our good old master? He was a favourite at court and in
cloister. He was well patronized. Who is to patronize us?"

[Illustration: Caxton's Type.]

"The people, I tell you," exclaimed Wynkyn. "The babe in the cradle
wants an Absey-book; the maid at her distaff wants a ballad; the priest
wants his Pie; the young lover wants a romance of chivalry to read to
his mistress; the lawyer wants his Statutes; the scholar wants his
Virgil and Cicero. They will all want more the more they are supplied.
How many in England have a book at all, think you? Let us make books
cheaper by printing more of them at once. The churchwardens of St.
Margaret's asked me six-and-eightpence yesterday for the volume that our
master left the parish;[17] for not a copy can I get, if we should want
to print again. Six-and-eightpence! That was exactly what he charged his
customers for the volume. Print five hundred instead of two hundred, and
we could sell it for three-and-four-pence."

"And ruin ourselves," said Machlinia. "Master Wynkyn, I shall fear to
work for you if you go on so madly. What has turned your head?"

"Hearken," said Wynkyn. "The day our good master was buried I had no
stomach for my home. I could not eat. I could scarcely look on the
sunshine. There was a chill at my heart. I took the key of our office,
for you all were absent, and I came here in the deep twilight. I sat
down in Master Caxton's chair. I sat till I fancied I saw him moving
about, as he was wont to move, in his furred gown, explaining this copy
to one of us, and shaking his head at that proof to the other. I fell
asleep. Then I dreamed a dream, a wild dream, but one that seems to have
given me hope and courage. There I sat, in the old desk at the head of
this room, straining my eyes at the old proofs. The room gradually
expanded. The four _frames_ went on multiplying, till they became
innumerable. I saw _case_ piled upon _case_; and _form_ side by side
with _form_. All was bustle, and yet quiet, in that room. Readers passed
to and fro; there was a glare of many lights; all seemed employed in
producing one folio, an enormous folio. In an instant the room had
changed. I heard a noise as of many wheels. I saw sheets of paper
covered with ink as quickly as I pick up this type. Sheet upon sheet,
hundreds of sheets, thousands of sheets, came from forth the
wheels—flowing in unstained, like corn from the hopper, and coming out
printed, like flour to the sack. They flew abroad as if carried over the
earth by the winds. Again the scene changed. In a cottage, an
artificer's cottage, though it had many things in it which belong to
princes' palaces, I saw a man lay down his basket of tools and take up
one of these sheets. He read it; he laughed, he looked angry; tears rose
to his eyes; and then he read aloud to his wife and children. I asked
him to show me the sheet. It was wet; it contained as many types as our
'Mirror of the World.' But it bore the date of 1844. I looked around,
and I saw shelves of books against that cottage wall—large volumes and
small volumes; and a boy opened one of the large volumes and showed me
numberless block-cuts; and the artificer and his wife and his children
gathered round me, all looking with glee towards their books, and the
good man pointed to an inscription on his bookshelves, and I read these
words,

  MY LIBRARY A DUKEDOM.

I woke in haste; and, whether awake or dreaming I know not, my master
stood beside me, and smilingly exclaimed, 'This is my fruit.' I have
encouragement in this dream."

"Friend Wynkyn," said Pynson, "these are distempered visions. The press
may go forward; I think it will go forward. But I am of the belief that
the press will never work but for the great and the learned, to any
purpose of profit to the printer. How can we ever hope to send our wares
abroad? We may hawk our ballads and our merry jests through London; but
the citizens are too busy to heed them, and the apprentices and serving
men too poor to buy them. To the country we cannot send them. Good lack,
imagine the poor pedler tramping with a pack of books to Bristol or
Winchester! Before he could reach either city through our wild roads, he
would have his throat cut or be starved. Master Wynkyn, we shall always
have a narrow market till the king mends his highways, and that will
never be."

"I am rather for trying, Master Wynkyn," said Lettou, "some good cutting
jest against our friends in the Abbey, such as Dan Chaucer expounded
touching the friars. That would sell in these precincts."

"Hush!" exclaimed Wynkyn: "the good fathers are our friends; and though
some murmur against them, we might have worse masters."

"I wish they would let us print the Bible though," ejaculated Pynson.

"The time will come, and that right soon," exclaimed the hopeful Wynkyn.

"So be it," said they one and all.

"But what fair sheet of paper is that in your hand, good Wynkyn?" said
Pynson.

"Master Richard, we are all moving onward. This is English-made paper.
Is it not better than the brown thick paper we have had from over the
sea? How _he_ would have rejoiced in this accomplishment of John Tate's
longing trials! Ay, Master Richard, this fair sheet was made in the new
mill at Hertford; and well am I minded to use it in our Bartholomæeus,
which I shall straightly put in hand, when the Formschneider is ready. I
have thought anent it; I have resolved on it; and I have indited some
rude verses touching the matter, simple person as I am:—

  "For in this world to reckon every thing
    Pleasure to man, there is none comparable
  As is to read and understanding
    In books of wisdom—they ben so delectable,
    Which sound to virtue, and ben profitable;
  And all that love such virtue ben full glad
  Books to renew, and cause them to be made.

  And also of your charity call to remembrance
    The soul of William Caxton, first printer of this book
  In Latin tongue at Cologne, himself to advance,
    That every well-disposed man may thereon look:
    And John Tate the younger joy mote [may] he brook,
  Which hath late in England made this paper thin,
  That now in our English this book is printed in."

"Fairly rhymed, Wynkyn," said Lettou. "But John Tate the younger is a
bold fellow. Of a surety England can never support a Paper-mill of its
own."

"Come, to business," said William of Mechlin.

[Footnote 13: He always, in these marks, associated the device of Caxton
with his own; glorying, as he well might, in succeeding to the business
of his honoured master, and continuing for so many years the good work
which he had begun.]

[Footnote 14: These are the words with which this book closes.]

[Footnote 15:
  "Wynkyn de Worde this hath set in print,
  In William Caxton's house:—so fill the case."

  Stanzas to '_Scala Perfectionis_,' 1494.]

[Footnote 16: To "fill the case" is to put fresh types in the case,
ready to arrange in new pages. The bibliographers scarcely understood
the technical expression of honest Wynkyn.]

[Footnote 17: There is a record in the parish books of St. Margaret's of
the churchwardens selling for 6_s._ 8_d._ one of the books bequeathed to
the church by William Caxton.]




APPENDIX A.


The following account of the invention of printing is given by an
ancient German chronicler of the name of Trithemius, who appears to have
personally known one of the three persons who clearly seem to have the
best title to be called the inventors of printing.

"At this time, in the city of Mentz on the Rhine in Germany, and not in
Italy, as some have erroneously written, that wonderful and then
unheard-of art of printing and characterizing books was invented and
devised by John Guttenberger, a citizen of Mentz, who, having expended
almost the whole of his property in the invention of this art, and on
account of the difficulties which he experienced on all sides, was about
to abandon it altogether; when, by the advice, and through the means, of
John Fust [or Faust], likewise a citizen of Mentz, he succeeded in
bringing it to perfection. At first they formed [engraved] the
characters or letters in written order on blocks of wood, and in this
manner they printed the vocabulary called a 'Catholicon.' But with these
forms [blocks] they could print nothing else, because the characters
could not be transposed in these tablets, but were engraved thereon, as
we have said. To this invention succeeded a more subtle one, for they
found out the means of cutting the forms of all the letters of the
alphabet, which they called matrices, from which again they cast
characters of copper or tin of sufficient hardness to resist the
necessary pressure, which they had before engraved by hand. And truly,
as I learned thirty years since from Peter Opilio (Schoeffer) de
Gernsheim, citizen of Mentz, who was the son-in-law of the first
inventor of this art, great difficulties were experienced after the
first invention of this art of printing, for in printing the Bible,
before they had completed the third quaternion (or gathering of four
sheets), 4000 florins were expended. This Peter Schoeffer, whom we have
above mentioned, first servant and afterwards son-in-law to the first
inventor, John Fust, as we have said, an ingenious and sagacious man,
discovered the more easy method of casting the types, and thus the art
was reduced to the complete state in which it now is. These three kept
this method of printing secret for some time, until it was divulged by
some of their workmen, without whose aid this art could not have been
exercised; it was first developed at Strasburg, and soon became known to
other nations. And thus much of the admirable and subtle art of printing
may suffice—the first inventors were citizens of Mentz. These three
first inventors of Printing, (videlicet) John Guttenberger, John Fust,
and Peter Schoeffer, his son-in-law, lived at Mentz, in the house called
Zum Jungen, which has ever since been called the Printing-office."

[Illustration: Guttenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer.]

The invention of Schoeffer, which, whatever might have been its first
mechanical imperfections, undoubtedly completed the principle of
printing, is more particularly described in an early document, which is
given in several learned works on typography, as proceeding from a
relation of Fust. It is as follows:—"Peter Schoeffer, of Gernsheim,
perceiving his master Fust's design, and being himself ardently desirous
to improve the art, found out (by the good providence of God) the method
of cutting (_incidendi_) the characters in a matrix, that the letters
might each be singly cast, instead of being cut. He privately cut
matrices for the whole alphabet; and when he showed his master the
letters cast from these matrices, Fust was so pleased with the
contrivance, that he promised Peter to give him his only daughter
Christina in marriage; a promise which he soon after performed. But
there were as many difficulties at first with these letters, as there
had been before with wooden ones; the metal being too soft to support
the force of the impression: but this defect was soon remedied by mixing
the metal with a substance which sufficiently hardened it." John
Schoeffer, the son of Peter, who was also a printer, confirms this
account, adding, "Fust and Schoeffer concealed this new improvement by
administering an oath of secrecy to all whom they intrusted, till the
year 1462, when, by the dispersion of their servants into different
countries, at the sacking of Mentz by the Archbishop Adolphus, the
invention was publicly divulged."




APPENDIX B.


BOOKS PRINTED BY CAXTON.

To our first printer are assigned 64 works, from 1471 to 1491. We
subjoin a list of them, furnished to the 'Penny Cyclopædia' by Sir Henry
Ellis, Principal Librarian of the British Museum. In this list are
included the French edition of the 'Recueil,' and the Oration of
Russell, which are considered doubtful.

1. 'Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes, compose par raoulle le feure,
chapellein de Monseigneur le duc Philippe de Bourgoingne en l'an de
grace mil cccclxiiii.' fol.

2. 'Propositio clarissimi Oratoris Magistri Johannis Russell, decretorum
doctoris ac adtunc Ambassiatoris Edwardi Regis Anglie et Francie ad
illustr. Principem Karolum ducem Burgundie super susceptione ordinis
garterij, &c. 4to.

3. 'The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, composed and drawen out of
diverce bookes of latyn into Frensshe by Raoul le ffeure in the yere
1464, and drawen out of frensshe in to Englisshe by William Caxton at
the commaundement of Margarete Duchess of Burgoyne, &c., whych sayd
translacion and werke was begonne in Brugis in 1468 and ended in the
holy cyte of Colen 19 Sept. 1471,' fol.

4. 'The Game and Playe of the Chesse, translated out of the French,
fynysshid the last day of Marche, 1474,' fol.

5. A second edition of the same, fol. (with woodcuts).

6. 'A Boke of the hoole lyf of Jason,' (1475,) fol.

7. 'The Dictes and notable wyse Sayenges of the Phylosophers, transl.
out of Frenshe by lord Antoyne Wydeville Erle Ryuyeres, empr. at
Westmestre, 1477,' fol.

8. 'The Morale Prouerbes of Christyne (of Pisa),' fol. 1478.

9. 'The Book named Cordyale: or Memorare Novissima, which treateth of
The foure last Things,' begun 1478, finished 1480, fol.

10. 'The Chronicles of Englond,' Westm., 1480, fol.

11. 'Description of Britayne,' 1480, fol.

12. 'The Mirrour of the World or thymage of the same,' 1481, fol.

13. 'The Historye of Reynart the Foxe,' 1481, fol.

14. 'The Boke of Tullius de Senectute, with Tullius de Amicitia, and the
Declamacyon, which laboureth to shew wherein honour sholde reste,' 1481,
fol.

15. 'Godefroy of Boloyne; or, the laste Siege and Conqueste of
Jherusalem,' Westm., 1481, fol.

16. 'The Polycronycon,' 1482, fol.

17. 'The Pylgremage of the Sowle;' translated from the French, Westm.,
1483, fol.

18. 'Liber Festivalis, or Directions for keeping Feasts all the Yere,'
Westm., 1483, fol.

19. 'Quatuor Sermones' (without date), fol.

20. 'Confessio Amantis, that is to saye in Englisshe, The Confessyon of
the Louer, maad and compyled by Johan Gower, squyer,' Westm., 1483, fol.

21. 'The Golden Legende,' Westm., 1483, fol.

22. Another edition of 'The Legende,' sm. folio.

23. A third, 'fin. at Westmestre,' 20th May, 1483, fol.

24. 'The Booke callid Cathon' (Magnus), translated from the French,
1483, fol.

25. 'Parvus Chato' (without printer's name or date, but in Caxton's
type), folio.

26. 'The Knyght of the Toure,' translated from the French; Westm.
(1484), fol.

27. 'The Subtyl Historyes and Fables of Esope,' translated from the
French, 1484, fol.

28. 'The Book of the Ordre of Chyvalry, or Knyghthode,' translated from
the French (assigned to 1484), fol.

29. 'The Book ryal; or the Book for a Kyng,' 1484, fol.

30. 'A Book of the noble Historyes of Kynge Arthur and of certen of his
Knyghtes, which book was reduced in to Englysshe by syr Thomas Malory
Knyght,' 1485, fol.

31. 'The Lyf of Charles the Grete Kyng of Fraunce and Emperour of Rome,'
1485, fol.

32. Another edition of the same, 1485, fol.

33. 'Thystorye of the noble ryght valyaunt and worthy Knyghte Parys and
of the fayr Vyenne, the doulphyns doughter of Vyennoys,' translated from
the French, 1485, fol.

34. 'The Book of Good Maners,' 1486, fol.

35. 'The Doctrinal of Sapyence,' translated from the French, 1489, fol.

36. 'The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyvalrye,' a translation from
the first part of Vegetius de Re Militari, 1489, fol.

37. 'The Arte and Crafte to knowe well to dye,' translated from the
French, 1490, fol.

38. 'The Boke of Eneydos, compyled by Vyrgyle,' translated from the
French, 1490, fol.

39. 'The Talis of Cauntyrburye' (no date), fol.

40. Another edition (without date or place), fol.

41. 'Infancia Salvatoris,' 4to.

42. 'The Boke of Consolacion of Philosophie, whiche that Boecius made
for his comforte and consolacion' (no date nor place), fol.

43. A collection of Chaucer's and Lydgate's minor Poems, 4to.

44. 'The Book of Fame, made by Gefferey Chaucer,' fol.

45. 'Troylus and Creseyde,' fol.

46. 'A Book for Travellers,' fol.

47. 'The Lyf of St. Katherin of Senis,' fol.

48. 'Speculum Vite Christi; or the myrroure of the blessyd Lyf of Jhesu
Criste,' fol.

49. 'Directorium Sacerdotum: sive Ordinale secundum Usum Sarum,' Westm.,
fol.

50. 'The Worke (or Court) of Sapience,' composed by John Lydgate, fol.

51. 'A Boke of divers Ghostly Maters,' Westm., fol.

52. 'The Curial made by Maystre Alain Charretier,' translated from the
French, fol.

53. 'The Lyf of our Lady, made by Dan John Lydgate, monke of Burye,'
fol.

54. 'The Lyf of Saynt Wenefryde, reduced into Englisshe,' fol.

55. 'A Lytel Tretise, intytuled or named The Lucidarye,' 4to.

56. 'Reverendissimi viri dni. Gulielmi Lyndewodi, LLD. et epi Asaphensis
constitutiones provinciales Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ,' 24mo.

57. 'The Hystorye of Kynge Blanchardyne and Queen Eglantyne his wyfe,'
fol.

58. 'The Siege of the noble and invyncyble Cytee of Rhodes,' fol.

59. 'Statuta apud Westmonasterium edita, anno primo Regis Ricardi
tercii,' fol.

60. 'Statutes' made in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Parliaments of Henry VII.,
folio. (The only fragment of this work known consists of two leaves.)

61. 'The Accidence' (mentioned in one of the sale catalogues of the
library of T. Martin of Palgrave).

62. 'The Prouffytable Boke of mānes soule, called The Chastysing of
Goddes Chyldern,' fol.

63. 'Horæ,' &c., 12mo., a fragment of eight pages, now at Oxford, in the
library bequeathed to the Bodleian by the late F. Douce, Esq.

64. A fragment of a Ballad, preserved in a volume of scraps and ballads
in the British Museum.

From the time of Caxton's press to that of Thomas Hacket, we have the
enumeration of 2926 books in Dr. Dibdin's work. The 'Typographical
Antiquities' of Ames and Herbert comes down to a later period. They
recorded the names of three hundred and fifty printers in England and
Scotland, or of foreign printers engaged in producing books for England,
that flourished between 1474 and 1600. The same authors have recorded
the titles (we have counted with sufficient accuracy to make the
assertion) of nearly 10,000 distinct works printed amongst us during the
same period. Many of these works, however, were only single sheets; but
on the other hand, there are doubtless many not here registered.
Dividing the total number of books printed during these 130 years, we
find that the average number of distinct works produced each year was 75.




APPENDIX C.


To avoid encumbering the preceding pages with foot-notes upon particular
passages, the author subjoins a list of the principal books which he has
referred to, or consulted, in this imperfect sketch of the Life of the
Father of English Printing:—

'Typographical Antiquities, or an Historical Account of the Origin and
Progress of Printing in Great Britain and Ireland.' By Joseph Ames and
William Herbert. 3 vols. 4to., 1785.

The same. Now greatly enlarged, with copious notes. By the Rev. Thomas
Frognall Dibdin. 4 vols. 4to., 1810.

'Biographia Britannica.' By Andrew Kippis. Article 'Caxton,' in vol.
iii., 1784.

'Life of William Caxton.' Treatise, Library of Useful Knowledge, 1828.

'A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical.' With
illustrations engraved on wood, by John Jackson, 1839.

'A Concise History of the Origin and Progress of Printing,' 1770.

'Introduction to the Literature of Europe.' By Henry Hallam. Vol. i.,
1836.

'Philobiblion, a Treatise on the Love of Books.' By Richard de Bury.
Translated by John B. Inglis, 1832.

'History of English Poetry.' By Thomas Warton. 4 vols. 8vo., 1824.

'The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer.' With an Essay on his Language and
Versification, &c. By Thomas Tyrwhitt. 5 vols., 1830.

'Specimens of the Early English Poets,' to which is prefixed an
'Historical Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the

English Poetry and Language.' By George Ellis. 3 vols., 1811.

'Illustrations of the Lives and Writings of Gower and Chaucer.' By the
Rev. Henry J. Todd, 1810.

'Three Early English Metrical Romances.' Edited by John Robson, for the
Camden Society. 1842.

'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.' By Thomas Percy. 3 vols., 1794.

'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' By Sir Walter Scott. 'Introductory
Remarks on Popular Poetry,' 1833.

'Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of
Society.' By Robert Southey. 2 vols., 1831.

'Utopia.' Written in Latin by Sir Thomas More. Translated by Ralph
Robinson. A new edition, by the Rev. T. F. Dibdin, 2 vols. 1808.

'The History of London.' By Thomas Maitland. 2 vols. folio, 1756.

'The New Chronicles of England and France.' By Robert Fabyan. Edited by
Sir Henry Ellis. 2 vols. 4to., 1811.

'The History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London.' By William
Herbert. 2 vols. 8vo., 1834.

'Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster.' By John Stow.
Augmented by John Strype. 2 vols. fol., 1720.

'Sir John Froissart's Chronicles.' Translated by Lord Berners. 2 vols.
4to. 1812.

'Memoirs of Philip de Comines.' Translated by Mr. Uvedale. 2 vols. 8vo.,
1723.

'Paston Letters. Original Letters, written during the Reigns of Henry
VI., Edward IV., and Richard III.' By Sir John Fenn. A new edition, by
A. Ramsay. 2 vols., 1840.

'Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne.' Par M. de Barante. 10 vols. 8vo., 1836.

'Statutes of the Realm.' From original records and authentic
manuscripts. Vol. ii., 1816.

'Memoirs of Wool,' &c. By John Smith. 2 vols., 1747.

'Extracts from the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer, Henry III. to Henry
VI.' 1837.

'Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV.' Edited by John Bruce, for the
Camden Society. 1838.

'Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth.' By Nicholas Harris Nicolas.
1830.

'Monasticon Anglicanum.' By Sir William Dugdale. Edition of 1817.

'Retrospective Review.' Vol. xv. Article, 'The Knight of the Tower's
Advice to his Daughters.'


END OF PART I.




 PART II.
 THE MODERN PRESS.




THE MODERN PRESS.




CHAPTER I.

Cheap Popular Literature—Conditions of Cheapness—Popular Literature
of Elizabeth's reign—Who were the readers.


The history of Cheap Popular Literature is a long and instructive
chapter of the history of the condition of the People. Before the
invention of printing there was little literature that could be called
popular, and none that could be called cheap. But in the very earliest
stages of the press all books would be comparatively cheap, and all
literature to a certain extent popular. Our first printer, as we regard
his works, had a most especial eye to the largest number of readers. We
have no record of the price of his books beyond the fact that one of
them was sold for 6_s._ 8_d._, a price equal to that of a quarter of
wheat. But the subjects of his books, for the most part, show that he
thought it his especial business to simplify knowledge, and to furnish
reading for amusement. We can scarcely call any of his books learned.
What there is of science in them was of a popular sort, and illustrated
by diagrams. The histories were those of our old legendary chronicles,
as attractive even as the romances of chivalry which accompanied them.
His poetry was chiefly that of one of the great minds whose essential
attribute is that of universality. Caxton went to the largest number of
readers that his age presented to him.

It is a remarkable characteristic of the first century of printing, not
only in this country, but wherever a press was erected, that the highest
and most constant efforts of the new art were addressed to the diffusion
of the old stores of knowledge, rather than to an enlargement of the
stores. The early professors of the art on the continent, in Germany,
Italy, and France, were scholars who knew the importance of securing the
world's inheritance of the knowledge of Greece and Rome from any further
destruction, such as the scattered manuscripts of the ancient poets,
orators, and historians had experienced, through neglect and ignorance.
The press would put them fairly beyond the reach of any new waste. But
after the first half-century of printing, when these manuscripts had
been copied in type, and the public libraries and the princes and nobles
of Europe had been supplied, a fresh want arose out of the satisfaction
of the former want. Men of letters, who did not belong to the class of
the rich, anxiously demanded copies of the ancient classics; and their
demands were not made in vain. The Alduses, and Stephenses, and
Plantins, did not hold it good to keep books dear for the advancement of
letters; they anxiously desired to make them cheap, and they produced,
therefore, not expensive folios only, as their predecessors had done,
but neat and compactly printed octavos and duodecimos, for the general
market. The instant that they did this, the foundations of literature
were widened and deepened. They probably at first over-rated the demand;
indeed, we know they did so, and they suffered in consequence. But the
time was sure to come when their labours would be rewarded; and, at any
rate, they were at once placed beyond a servile dependence upon patrons.
When they had their customers in every great city and university, they
did not wait for the approving nod of a pope or a cardinal before they
began to print.

A new demand very soon followed upon the first demand for cheap copies
of the ancient classics, and this was even more completely the demand of
the people. The doctrines of the Reformation had proclaimed the Bible as
the best spiritual guide and teacher, and the people would have Bibles.
The first English Bible was bought up and burnt; those who bought the
Bibles contributed capital for making new Bibles, and those who burnt
the Bibles advertised them. The first printers of the Bible were,
however, cautious; they did not see the number of readers upon which
they were to rely for a sale. In 1540 Grafton printed but 500 copies of
his complete edition of the Scriptures; and yet, so great was the rush
to this new supply of the most important knowledge, that we have
existing 326 editions of the English Bible, or parts of the Bible,
printed between 1526 and 1600.

The early English printers did not attempt what the continental ones
were doing for the ancient classics. Down to 1540 no Greek book had
appeared from an English press. Oxford had only printed a part of
Cicero's Epistles; Cambridge, no ancient writer whatever: only three or
four old Roman writers had been reprinted, at that period, throughout
England. But a great deal was done for public instruction by the course
which our early printers took; for, as one of them says, "Divers famous
clerks and learned men translated and made many noble works into our
English tongue, whereby there was much more plenty and abundance of
English used than there was in times past." The English nobility were,
probably, for more than the first half-century of English printing, the
great encouragers of our press: they required translations and
abridgments of the classics, versions of French and Italian romances,
old chronicles, and helps to devout exercises. Caxton and his successors
abundantly supplied these wants; and the impulse to most of their
exertions was given by the growing demand for literary amusement on the
part of the great. Caxton, as we have seen, speaking of his 'Boke of
Eneydos,' says, "This present book is not for a rude uplandish man to
labour therein, nor read it." But a great change was working in Europe;
the "rude uplandish man," if he gave promise of talent, was sent to
school. The priests strove with the laity for the education of the
people; and not only in Protestant but in Catholic countries, were
schools and universities everywhere founded. Here, again, was a new
source of employment for the press—A, B, C's, or Abseys, Primers,
Catechisms, Grammars, Dictionaries, were multiplied in every direction.
Books became, also, during this period, the tools of professional men.
There were not many works of medicine, but a great many of law; and even
the people required instruction in the ordinances they were called upon
to obey, which they received in the form of proclamations.

The course of the early printers was based upon the principle that they
could produce books cheaper by the press than by the scribe. This point
once established, the next fact would be also clear—that the more
impressions they printed the cheaper the book could be afforded. Beyond
this great fact there was a difficulty. There would arise in their minds
the same doubt which has puzzled all printers and booksellers from the
time of Caxton to our times; which is at the bottom of all controversies
about dear books and low-priced books at the present hour; and which
will continue to perplex the producers of books, even should the entire
population beyond infancy become readers, and have the means of
purchasing books in some form or other. That question is simply a
commercial one, and is perfectly independent of any schemes of public or
private generosity for the enlightenment of the people; it is—Given the
subject of a book, its mode of treatment, the celebrity or otherwise of
its author, its amount of matter—what is the natural limit of its first
sale, and the necessary ratio of its published price? If the probable
demand be under-rated, there will be a high price, which will restrict
the natural demand; and if over-rated, there will be a low price, which
will curtail the natural profit. This is scarcely a question for
enthusiasts for cheapness to decide, upon the broad assertion that a
large sale of low-priced books will be more profitable than a small sale
of high-priced books.


In 1825, Archibald Constable, then the great publisher, propounded to
the then 'Great Unknown' his plan for revolutionising "the art and
traffic of bookselling." He exhibited the annual schedule of assessed
taxes, having reckoned the number of persons who paid for each separate
article of luxury; and from that document he calculated that, if he
produced every year "twelve volumes so good that millions must wish to
have them, and so cheap that every butcher's callant may have them, if
he please to let me tax him sixpence a week," he should sell them, "not
by thousands or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands—ay, by
millions." It is recorded that a worthy divine, instructing his
bookseller to publish a sermon of his composition, decided that at least
twelve thousand should be the number printed, he having calculated that
one copy would be required in each parish by the clergyman alone, to say
nothing of chance customers. These statistics were ingenious, but they
were not safe guides. The callants did not consent to be taxed sixpence
a week; and the rectors and curates did not rush to St. Paul's
Churchyard to buy up the limited impression of the sermon.

But the Edinburgh publisher, and the rural divine, were nevertheless
right in their endeavour to find some principle upon which they could
determine the probable demand for a literary work. Constable proposed to
himself the union of goodness and cheapness, to create a demand that
(still using his own words) would have made him "richer than the
possession of all the copyrights of all the quartos that ever were, or
will be, hot-pressed." The goodness without the cheapness might have
produced little change in the market; the cheapness without the goodness
might have been more influential But, with the truest combination of
these qualities, there is nothing so easy or so common as to over-rate a
demand in the commerce of books. The price of a book aspiring to the
greatest popularity can only be settled by an estimate of the probable
number of readers at any one time in the community, and by a still more
difficult estimate of the sort of reading which is likely to interest
the greatest number. The same difficulty arises with regard to every new
book, and has always arisen. The amount of the "reading public," with
its almost endless subdivisions, arising out of station, or age, or
average intelligence, or prevailing taste, is very difficult to be
estimated in our own day; and there are not many authentic details ready
to our hand upon which we can make an estimate for any past period. We
will endeavour, out of these scanty landmarks, to collect some facts
relating to the former state and progressive extension of the realms of
print.

It is no modern discovery that a book cheap enough for the many amongst
reading people to buy, and at the same time a book which the many would
have a strong desire to buy, would be more advantageous to the
manufacturer of books than a dear book which the few only could buy, and
which the few only would desire to buy. There is preserved, in the
handwriting of Christopher Barker, in 1582, 'A Note of the offices and
other special licences for printing granted by her Majesty, with a
conjecture of their valuation.'[18] This worthy printer to the Queen
probably a little under-rated his own gains, when he says that the whole
Bible requires so great a cost, that his predecessors kept the realm
twelve years without venturing a single edition, but that he had
desperately adventured to print four in a year and a half, expending
about 3000_l._, to the certain ruin of his wife and family if he had
died in the time. Of these four editions, three were in folio, and one
in quarto. The sale of the folios would necessarily be limited by the
cost, in the way that the same unhappy patentee complains of as to his
Book of Common Prayer, "which few or none do buy except the minister."
But how stands the sale of smaller and less expensive books? Mr. Daye
prints the Psalms in metre, which book, "being occupied of all sorts of
men, women, and children, and requiring no great stock for the
furnishing thereof, is therefore gainful." The small Catechism is "also
a profitable copy, for that it is general." Mr. Seres prints the Morning
and Evening Prayer, with the Collects and the Litany; and where poor Mr.
Barker sells one Book of Common Prayer, "he (Seres) furnisheth the whole
parishes throughout the realm, which are commonly a hundred to one." But
with all his laments and jealousies, Queen Elizabeth's printer, in those
anti-commercial days, had hit the sound principle that is at the root of
the commerce of books. There is one of the printers, he says, whose
patent contains all dictionaries in all tongues, all chronicles and
histories whatsoever; and his position is thus described:—"If he print
competent numbers of each to maintain his charges, all England,
Scotland, and much more, were not able to utter them; and if he should
print but a few of each volume, the prices would be exceedingly great,
and he in more danger to be undone than likely to gain." Here are the
Scylla and Charybdis of the book-trade. Let "all good books on their
first appearance appeal to the needy multitude," says one adviser. Mr.
Barker answers, "All England, Scotland, and much more, were not able to
utter them." "Let the rich and luxurious be first addressed," say the
old traditional believers that dearness and excellence are synonymous.
Mr. Barker answers—"Print but a few of each volume, at exceedingly high
prices, and there is more danger of ruin than gain."

The Note of Christopher Barker to Lord Burghley is an answer to a
complaint that had been made in 1582, that the privileges granted to
members of the Stationers' Company "will be the overthrow of the
printers and stationers within this city, being in number one hundred
and seventy-five, and thereby the excessive prices of books
prejudiciable to the state of the whole realm." In the absence of any
knowledge of the numbers printed of a book, and of its consequent price,
at the time of this complaint against the monopolists of charging
"excessive prices," it may enable us to form some estimate of the
character of the books issued in 1582, and thence of the quality of the
readers of books, if we glance at two other sources of information—Ames
and Herbert's 'Typographical Antiquities,' and Mr. Collier's 'Extracts
from the Registers of the Stationers' Company.' The latter is especially
valuable, as showing what was doing in the most popular literature—the
literature of ballads and broadsides, of marvellous adventures and merry
tales—which matters Ames and Herbert rejected in a great degree.

In the twenty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth then, we learn that the
printers of London had a good deal of work to do, in the production of
Bibles, Testaments, and Prayer-books—of A B C's, Primers, and
Catechisms; of divinity, chiefly controversial; of almanacs and
prognostications; of Latin books for grammar-schools; of grammars and
dictionaries; of statutes and law-books. This was the staple work of the
press, which had been going on from the beginning of the century, and
constantly increasing. We learn from the 'Privy-purse Accounts of
Elizabeth of York,' that, in 1505, twenty pence were paid for a Primer
and a Psalter. This sum was equal to a week's wages of a labourer in
husbandry. The Primer and the Psalter were scarcely for the labourer. In
1516 'Fitzherbert's Grand Abridgment,' then first published, cost the
lawyer forty shillings—a price equal to the expense of a week's commons
for all the students of Fitzherbert's inn. No doubt a century of
printing in England had greatly lowered the price of all books that were
essential instruments in the learned professions, or for the conduct of
school education. But in the reign of Elizabeth the class of general
readers had arisen; a class far more extensive than that of the clerks
and noble gentlemen to whom our first printers addressed their
translations of the classics, their French and Italian romances, their
'Gesta Romanorum,' their old chronicles, and their early poetry. It was
a time of travel and adventure. In this year, 1582, we find printed
'Discovery and Conquest of the East Indies,' 'Discovery and Conquest of
the Provinces of Peru, and also of the rich Mines of Potosi,' 'Divers
Voyages touching the Discovery of America' (Hakluyt), 'Acts and Gests of
the Spaniards in the West Indies,' 'State of Flanders and Portugal.' 'A
Discourse in commendation of Sir Francis Drake' had appeared in 1581.
Frobisher had received his poetical 'Welcome Home,' by Churchyard, in
1579. Of historical works, we have none printed in 1582, with the
exception of 'The Life, Acts, and Death of the most noble, valiant, and
renowned Prince Arthur,' which the readers of all classes would receive
with undoubting mind as an authentic record. But solid books of history
had very recently been produced. Holinshed had published his
'Chronicles;' Guicciardini had been translated by Jeffrey Fenton, and
Herodotus by B. R.

The rude historical Drama was then just arising to familiarise the
people with their country's annals. In ten more years the press would
teem with play-books; for the triumphant era was approaching of those
who, in 1579, Stephen Gosson denounced to uttermost perdition in his
'Pleasant invective against poets, pipers, jesters, and such-like
caterpillars of a commonwealth.' That species of popular literature is
almost absent from the Registers of 1582; but the materials upon which
much of the romantic drama is founded were familiar to the readers of
this period. Who were the readers, we may judge from the titles of some
of these novels. One will indicate a class:—'The Wonderful Adventures of
Simonides, gathered as well for the instruction of our noble young
gentlemen as our honourable courtly ladies.' The translators and writers
of these romances seem to have had no notion of a class of readers
beyond the circle of the rich and the high-born. Sidney's 'Arcadia' is
called 'The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia;' and in his Dedication to
"My dear Lady and Sister," he says, "It is done only for you, and to
you; ... for indeed for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and
that triflingly handled." A few years after came Robert Greene, and
other writers of imagination, who were equally starved in writing plays
for the stage-managers and stories for the stationers. Greene's
'Pandosto,' afterwards called 'Dorastus and Fawnia,' is a small quarto
of 56 pages, in which Shakspere found the story of 'The Winter's Tale.'
The author describes this novelet as "pleasant for age to avoid dreary
thoughts; profitable for youth to eschew other wanton pastimes; and
bringing to both a desired content." He dedicates it "To the Gentlemen
Readers, Health;" and to these "Gentlemen" he says, "If any condemn my
rashness for troubling your ears with so many unlearned pamphlets, I
will straight shroud myself under the shadow of your courtesies." The
scholar was addressing the "gentlemen" of the Inns of Court and of the
Universities. He was looking to a ruder class of readers when, in 1591,
he published 'A Notable Discovery of Cosenage,' having himself, as he
confesses, kept villainous company. This tract he addresses "To the
young Gentlemen, Merchants, Apprentices, Farmers, and plain Countrymen."
Here is a great extension of the reading public: but we have some doubts
if Greene's tract ever reached "Farmers and plain Countrymen." The
question arises, how were books to be circulated in the provinces? It
was more than a century later before some of the largest towns, such as
Birmingham, had their booksellers. The pedlers who kept the fairs and
markets were the booksellers of the early days of the press. The last
new pamphlet travelled into the country in the same pack with the last
new ruff; it travelled many miles, and found few buyers. And yet for
some popular books the demand was not contemptible. Sir Thomas Challoner
translated 'The Praise of Folly,' of Erasmus, which was published in
1577; and the Stationers' Company stipulated with the publisher that he
should print "not above 1500 of any impression," and that "any of the
Company may lay on with him, reasonably, at every impression." Mr.
Collier, who gives this curious extract from "the Stationers'
Registers," thinks that this meant "sharing the profits." It meant that
whilst the sheets were at press any member of the Company might print
off a reasonable number for his own sale. To "lay on" is still a
technical term in printing. Challoner's Erasmus was an amusing book for
the scholar, and had, no doubt, a special sale amongst teachers and
students. Philip Stubbes, in his 'Anatomy of Abuses,' first published in
1583, bitterly complains that "pamphlets of toys and babbleries corrupt
men's minds and pervert good wits;" and he especially laments that such
books, being "better esteemed and more vendible than the godliest and
sagest books that be," have caused "that worthy Book of Martyrs, made by
that famous father and excellent instrument in God his Church, Master
John Foxe, so little to be accepted." We might have concluded that, even
in those days of limited bookselling, the great popular book of the
'Acts and Monuments' would have had an universal sale, with its
wonderful woodcuts and its deep interest for the bulk of the people. But
when its excitement was simply historical, two centuries afterwards, the
same book would be found in many a peasant's cottage, for the sole
reason that it might be purchased in small portions by a periodical
outlay. Whilst the wares of worthy John Fox were sleeping in the
bookseller's warehouse, the people were buying their 'Almanacs and
Prognostications,' which Christopher Barker, speaking of their patentee,
calls "a pretty commodity towards an honest man's living." They were
buying, in this year of 1582, 'The Dial of Destiny,' an astrological
treatise; 'The Examination and Confession of Witches;' 'The Execution of
Edmund Campion, the Jesuit;' 'The Interpretation of Dreams;' 'A Treatise
of the rare and strange Wonders seen in the Air.' They were buying 'A
Ballad of the Lamentation of a modest Maiden being deceitfully
forsaken;' A Ballad entitled 'Now we go, of the Papists' new overthrow;'
'The picture of two pernicious Varlets, called Prig Pickthank and Clem
Clawback;' 'A Ballad entitled a doleful Ditty, declaring the unfortunate
hap of two faithful friends, the one went out of her wits and the other
for sorrow died.' They were buying story-books in prose and
rhyme,—accounts of murders and treasons, of fires and earthquakes,—and
songs, "old and plain." The Court had its 'Euphues, very pleasant for
all gentlemen to read;' and the City its mirror of Court manners,
entitled 'How a young gentleman may behave himself in all companies.'

If we look very broadly at the character of the popular literature of
the middle period of the reign of Elizabeth, and compare it with the
popular literature of our own day, we shall find that the differences
are more in degree than in kind. We have purposely selected the period
before the uprising of our great dramatic literature, which must have
had a prodigious effect upon the intellectual condition of the people.
There was a great deal of training going forward in the grammar-schools
for the sons of tradesmen, and of the more opulent cultivators; but the
rudiments of knowledge were not accessible to the labourers in rural
districts, and the inferior handicraftsmen. There was, probably, no
great distinction in the acquirements of the gentry and the burgesses.
Some read with a real desire for information; some for mere amusement.
Newspapers were not as yet. In the country house where reading was an
occupation, there was Hall's 'Chronicle,' and Stow's 'Chronicle,' and,
may be, his rival Grafton's; there was Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,'
Tusser's 'Five Hundred Points of good Husbandry,' and, though Philip
Stubbes denies its popularity, Fox's 'Book of Martyrs.' Chaucer and
Gower had become obsolete in the courtly circles; but Surrey, and
Sackville, and Gascoigne were dozed over after the noontide dinner. The
peers and commoners who came to Court and Parliament bought the new
Travels and Discoveries, and carried them into the country, for the
solace of many a long winter evening's curiosity about "antres vast and
deserts idle." The Greek and Roman classics were becoming somewhat
popularly known through translations. But it is tolerably clear that
much of the light reading, and most of the cheapest books, were rubbish
spun over and over again out of the novels of Bandello, and Boccaccio,
and Boisteau, and losing their original elegance in hasty and imperfect
translations. The taste for such reading received its best counteraction
when the stage became a noble instrument of popular instruction; and
when those who did not frequent the theatres had a wondrous store of
exciting fiction opened to them by a few plays of Shakspere and many
more of his contemporaries. It was in vain that puritanism, such as that
of Prynne, denounced "the ordinary reading of Comedies, Tragedies,
Arcadias, Amorous Histories, Poets," as unlawful. They held their empire
till civil war came to put an end to most home-studies, except that of
party and polemical pamphlets. But even in the tempestuous times that
preceded the great outbreak, Sir Henry Wotton, quoting the saying of a
Frenchman, laments that "his country was much the worse by old men
studying the venom of policy, and young men reading the dregs of fancy."

[Footnote 18: Archæologia, vol. xxv. page 100, &c.]




CHAPTER II.

Imperfect Civilisation—Reading during the Civil Wars—Reading after the
Restoration—French Romances—First London Catalogue, 1680—Authors and
Booksellers—Subscription Books—Books in Numbers—The Canvassing System.


In a condition of society which may be characterised as that of a very
imperfect civilisation—when communication is difficult, and in some
cases impossible; when the influence of the capital upon the provinces
is very partial and uncertain; when knowledge is for the most part
confined to the learned professions—we must regard the rich upper
classes precisely in the same relation to popular literature as we now
regard the poor lower classes. We must view them as essentially
uncritical and unrefined, swallowing the coarsest intellectual food with
greediness, looking chiefly to excitement and amusement in books, and
not very willingly elevating themselves to mental improvement as a great
duty. When Ben Jonson speaks of the "prerogative the vulgar have to lose
their judgments, and like that which is naught"—when he derides the
taste of "the beast the multitude"—he also takes care to tell us that
his description of those who "think rude things greater than polished,"
not only applied to "the sordid multitude, but to the neater sort of our
gallants: for all are the multitude; only they differ in clothes, not in
judgment or understanding."[19] About the time when Jonson wrote
thus—more calmly than when he denounced "the loathed stage, and the more
loathsome age"—Burton was exhibiting the intellectual condition of the
gentry in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy:'—"I am not ignorant how
barbarously and basely for the most part our ruder gentry esteem of
libraries and books; how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure,
so inestimable a benefit, as Æsop's cock did the jewel he found in the
dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of education."
Again, he says, "If they read a book at any time, 'tis an English
chronicle, St. Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or
some pamphlet of news; and that at such seasons only when they cannot
stir abroad." The "pamphlet of news" was a prodigious ingredient in the
queer cauldron of popular literature for the next half-century. Every
one has heard of the thirty thousand tracts in the British Museum,
forming two thousand volumes, all published between 1640 and 1660. The
impression of many of these was probably very small; for Rushworth, to
whom they became authorities, tells us that King Charles I. gave ten
pounds for the liberty to read one at the owner's house in St. Paul's
Churchyard. This was the twenty years' work of Milton's "pens and heads,
sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new
notions and ideas." Others were, "as fast reading, trying all things."
Milton asks, "What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and
so prone to seek after knowledge?" He truly answers: "wise and faithful
labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, sages, and
worthies."[20] The "wise and faithful labourers" were scarcely to be
found in the civil and ecclesiastical violence of these partisan
writers. But they were the pioneers of constitutional liberty; and till
that fabric was built up, literature, properly so called, would offer
few things great or enduring. The demand for books in that stormy period
was, doubtless, very limited. The belief that the Ειχὼγ Βασιλιχὴ was
written by Charles I. would naturally account for the sale of fifty
editions in one year. But from 1623 to 1664 only two editions of
Shakspere were sold; and when the Restoration came, an act of Parliament
was passed that only twenty printers should practise their art in the
kingdom. The fact, as recorded by Evelyn, that at the fire of London, in
1666, the booksellers who carried on their business in the neighbourhood
of St. Paul's lost as many books, in quires, as were worth 200,000_l._,
is rather a proof of a slow demand than of the enormous extent of
bookselling. In the vaults of Saint Faith's were rotting many a copy of
what the world has agreed to call "heavy" books; books in advance of
their time; books that no price would have made largely saleable—the
books for the few.

The terrible quarter of a century that had preceded the Restoration, and
the new tastes which the return of the Stuarts brought to England, would
seem to have swept away even the remembrances of the popular literature
of Elizabeth and James. Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, has a
remarkable passage with reference to the poets: "As for the antiquated
and fallen into obscurity from their former credit and reputation, they
are for the most part those who have written beyond the verge of the
present age; for let us look back as far as about thirty or forty years,
and we shall find a profound silence of the poets beyond that time,
except of some few dramatics, of whose real worth the interest of the
now flourishing stage cannot but be sensible."[21] This was written in
1674. What had the people to read who had forgotten Spenser, and Daniel,
and Drayton; and Herbert—who knew little of Shakspere, except in the
translations of Davenant and Dryden; and who, unquestionably, had small
relish for the popular prose of another age, such as Bacon's 'Essays'?
They had rhyming tragedies; they had obscene comedies; they had their
Sedleys and Rochesters. It is not wonderful that the popular taste soon
grew corrupted. Pepys says (1666), "To Deptford by water, reading
Othello, Moor of Venice, which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good
play; but having so lately read The Adventures of Five Hours, it seems a
mean thing." Their "light reading" was a marvel—that romance literature
which at one time was as popular in its degree as the shilling novel of
our own day. We have before us Mr. Samuel Speed's Catalogue of Books,
printed for him in 1670. The first is 'Pharamond, the famed Romance,
written by the author of those other two eminent volumes Cassandra and
Cleopatra.' These famed and eminent volumes are large folios, translated
from the French of M. de la Calprenede. If Calprenede was the Dumas,
Madeleine Scudery was the Eugene Sue of those days. No popularity that
these moderns have obtained by their _feuilletons_ could have exceeded
the excitement produced here, as well as in France, by the wonderful
folios of their predecessors. 'Artamenes' and 'Clelia,' to say nothing
of 'Almahide' and 'The Illustrious Bassa,' were in every mansion of the
ladies of quality. The matron and her daughters sate at their embroidery
while the companion read aloud, night after night, a page or two of
these interminable adventures, in which Greeks and Romans talked the
language of the _Grand Monarque_; and the intrigues of the court, and
the characters of its personages, were mysteriously shadowed forth in
what were called "_Portraits_." What signified that they were stupid?
They were as level to the comprehension of their high-born readers as
the penny novels of the present day are to the intelligence of the
factory-girl. They had a long popularity, and were reprinted again and
again, in their eight or ten volumes, when the age of duodecimos had
arrived. They had been fashionable, and that was enough. Character they
had none, and very little of human passions. They were constructed upon
the admirable recipe of Molière in the 'Précieuses Ridicules'—a lover
without feeling; a mistress without preference; mutual insensibility;
sedulous attention to forms; a declaration in a garden; the banishment
of the lover by the coquetting fair; perseverance; timid confessions;
rivals; persecutions of fathers; jealousies conceived under false
appearances; laments; despairs; abductions; and all that. Mammas thought
they were wisely instructing their daughters, when they permitted
Mademoiselle Scudery to teach them "des règles dont, en bonne
galanterie, on ne saurait se dispenser." In vain Molière, and Boileau,
and Scarron laughed at the great heroic romances. They held their own
till Le Sage in France, and Defoe and Fielding in England, spoke the
language of real life. They show us how long the great and little vulgar
will feed upon husks, till some real fruit is offered to them. But it is
remarkable how, in the same age, works of real genius and works of
intense dulness will run side by side. It may be a question how far 'Don
Quixote' drove out the romances of chivalry. 'Tartufe,' and 'Le Malade
Imaginaire' were of the same era as that of the wonderful productions in
which Cyrus was talking _galanterie_ to Mandane through a thousand folio
pages. When Pepys thought 'Othello' a mean thing compared with 'The
Adventures of Five Hours' he also bought "Hudibras, both parts, the book
now in greatest fashion for drollery;" but he tells us his honest mind
when he says, "I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies."
Voltaire had a different standard of taste when he wrote, "I never met
with so much wit in one single book as in this." The politics of
'Hudibras' made it "in greatest fashion;" the wit shot over the heads of
the idle, dissipated, slavish, and corrupt courtiers who gave it their
patronage, but eventually left its author to starve. Butler became
popular in another generation; and so did Milton. The first edition of
'Paradise Lost' sufficed for a circulation of seven years.

The earliest Catalogue of Books published in this country contains a
list of "all the books printed in England since the dreadful fire, 1666,
to the end of Trinity term, 1680." The statistical results of this
catalogue of the productions of the press for fourteen years have been
ascertained by us. The whole number of books printed was 3550; of which
947 were divinity, 420 law, and 153 physic; 397 were school-books, and
253 on subjects of geography and navigation, including maps. About
one-half of these books were single sermons and tracts. Deducting the
reprints, pamphlets, single sermons, and maps, we have estimated that,
upon an average, 100 new books were produced in each year.

About the time when this catalogue was published, John Dunton, one of
the most eccentric, and perhaps therefore amusing, of the publishing
race, went into business with half a shop. He can tell us something of
the manufacture of some of these books of the London catalogue. He says,
"Printing was now uppermost in my thoughts; and hackney authors began to
ply me with specimens as earnestly, and with as much passion and
concern, as the watermen do passengers with oars and scullers." He adds,
"As for their honesty, 'tis very remarkable. They'll either persuade you
to go upon another man's copy, to steal his thought, or to abridge his
books which should, have got him bread for his lifetime."[22] There were
varieties of this class:—"Mr. Bradshaw was the best accomplished hackney
author I have met with; his genius was quite above the common size, and
his style was incomparably fine." Dunton had a suspicion that Bradshaw
wrote 'The Turkish Spy,' which might justify somewhat of his eulogium.
Roger North says that "the demi-booksellers," who deal in "the fresh
scum of the press," are such as "crack their brains to find out selling
subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at hard meat, to write and
correct by the great; and so puff up an octavo to a sufficient
thickness, and there is six shillings current for an hour and a half's
reading, and perhaps never to be read or looked upon after." The people
get these wares cheaper now. The publishers of that day, and long
afterwards, were not very nice as to the uniform excellence of the books
they issued. Dunton informs us that Mr. William Rogers, who was the
publisher of Sherlock and Tillotson, was concerned in publishing "some
Dying Speeches." They had books for all tastes, and carried their goods
to many markets. They were equally at home in Cheapside or at Sturbridge
fair; and the great Bernard Lintot exhibited his "rubric posts" in his
shop, and kept a booth on the Thames when it was frozen over. Some,
according to Dunton, were "pirates and cormorants;" others, who had "the
intimate acquaintance of several excellent pens, could never want
copies." Some were good at "projection"—the devisers of "selling
subjects;" and the talent of some "lies at collection," which Dunton
exemplifies by Mr. Crouch, who "melted down the best of our English
histories into twelvepenny books, which are filled with wonders,
rarities, and curiosities." One, who "printed The Flying Post, did often
fill it with stolen copies;" whilst Jacob Tonson, who paid Dryden like a
safe tradesman as he was, and made him presents of melons and sherry, is
very indignant that the great poet charged him fifty guineas for
fourteen hundred and forty-six lines, when he expected to have had
fifteen hundred and eighteen lines for forty guineas. Peace to their
manes! They were all doing something towards the supply of that great
want which was beginning to assert itself somewhat extensively in their
day. They were, for the most part, rugged dealers in wares intellectual.
They had many modes of turning a penny beyond the profits which they
derived, as publishers, from "the great genius" or "the eminent hand,"
which each patronised. They had some difficulties in their way as
manufacturers; although the more cautious and lucky did make fortunes.
The more limited the public, the more uncertain the demand. They were
pretty safe with their tracts, and their abridgments, and their new
comedies; but when they had to deal with works of learning, which were
necessarily costly, they and their authors—for the authors had often to
sustain the charges of printing—encountered serious losses. We shall see
how, as the commerce of books extended, new measures were adopted to
lessen, if not to remove, the risk.

Amongst the 'Calamities of Authors' there are many touching records of

  "Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty,"

produced by printing books that met with no ready sale. Purchas was
ruined by his 'Pilgrimes;' Castell by his 'Lexicon Heptaglotton;' Ockley
by his 'History of the Saracens;' Rushworth by his 'Historical
Collections.' Bishop Kennett gave away his 'Register and Chronicle,'
saying, "The volume, too large, brings me no profit." The remedy was to
be found in publishing by subscription. This plan, like most other human
things, was subject to abuse; but it was founded upon a true estimate of
the peculiar risks of publishing. It is manifest that, if a certain
number of persons unite in agreement to purchase a book which is about
to be printed, the author may be at ease with regard to the issue of the
enterprise, and the subscribers ought to receive what they want at a
lower cost than when risk enters into price. For more than half a
century nearly all the great books were published by subscription; and
the highest in literature felt no degradation in canvassing themselves
with their "subscription receipts." It is easy to perceive, by the
subscription prices, when the work was set on foot by an author, or his
friends, simply as a more convenient mode of obtaining or bestowing
money than begging or borrowing; and when there was a real market value
given for the commodity offered. The scheme of levying contributions
upon subscribers was as old as the days of Taylor, the Water Poet. He
published his 'Pennilesse Pilgrimage' in this fashion; and it seems that
he sometimes gave his books to those who were unwilling to return his
honorarium. He consoles himself by a lampoon against his false
subscribers:—

  "They took a book worth twelvepence, and were bound
  To give a crown, an angel, or a pound;
  A noble, piece, or half-piece, what they list,—
  They past their words, or freely set their fist."

Honest John had sixteen hundred and fifty such subscribers; but of
these, seven hundred and fifty were "bad debtors."[23] In the next
century, Myles Davies has the same story to tell of the degradation of
the literary begging-letter writer. He leaves his books at the great
man's door; he writes letter upon letter, "with fresh odes upon his
graceship, and an account where I lived, and what noblemen had accepted
of my present." He walks before the "parlour-window," and "advances to
address his grace to remember the poor author." At last his parcel of
books is returned to him unopened, "with half-a-guinea upon top of the
cargo," and "with desire to receive no more." Heaven, in its mercy, has
relieved the tribe from these heartbreaking disgraces. There may be "the
fear that kills," but there is no longer the patron who starves.
Goldsmith has described the devices and the abasement of the little man
in the coffee-house, who "drew out a bundle of proposals, begging me to
subscribe to a new edition he was going to give the world of Propertius,
with notes." His plans were more ingenious and diversified than those of
Myles Davies: "I first besiege their hearts with flattery, and then pour
in my proposals at the breach. If they subscribe readily the first time,
I renew my request to beg a dedication fee. If they let me have that, I
smite them once more for engraving their coat-of-arms at the top." Forty
years after Myles Davies, Samuel Johnson was enduring the anxieties
attendant upon the subscription plan, although friends stood between the
author and the customer. He writes to Burney in 1758, "I have likewise
enclosed twelve receipts (for Shakspere); not that I mean to impose upon
you the trouble of pushing them with more importunity than may seem
proper," &c. Long was the subscribed Shakspeare delayed; and the proud
struggling man had to bear Churchill's malignity, as well as the
reproaches of his own sense of honour:—

  "He for subscribers baits his hook,
  And takes your cash; but where's the book?"

Well might Johnson write, in more prosperous times, "He that asks
subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage
him, defame him." Johnson and his publishers set no price upon their
books, as a gratuity to the author, beyond their common market value.
But great men had gone before them, who regulated their subscription
prices by a higher estimate of the value of their works. Steele had
received a guinea an octavo volume for the republication of 'The
Tatler;' Pope had six guineas for his six quarto volumes of 'The
Iliad;'—"a sum," says Johnson, "according to the value of money at that
time, by no means inconsiderable." The subscription to Pope's
'Shakspeare' was also six guineas for six volumes. Johnson's projected
translation of Paul Sarpi's 'History of the Council of Trent' was only
to be charged twopence a sheet. That seems to have been the ordinary
price of subscription books during the first half of the eighteenth
century. Du Halde's 'China,' which appears to have required a great deal
of what "the trade" call "pushing," was advertised by Cave at three
halfpence a sheet; besides the attraction of a complicated
lottery-scheme, with marvellous prizes. When the subscribers to a new
book were served, the remaining copies were sold, generally at superior
rates. Sometimes, in the case of high-priced works, the unsold copies
lay quiet through the mildew of a quarter of a century in the
bookseller's warehouse. At Tonson's sale, in 1767, Pope's six-guinea
Shakspeare had fallen to sixteen shillings for the hundred and forty
copies then sold as a "remainder."[24] Many of the subscription books
were remarkably profitable. The gains of Pope upon his 'Iliad' are
minutely recorded in his Life by Johnson. Lintot paid the expense of the
subscription copies, and gave the poet two hundred pounds a volume in
addition. Lintot looked for his remuneration to an edition in folio. The
project was knocked on the head by a reprint in Holland, in duodecimo;
which edition was clandestinely imported, as in the recent days of
French editions of Byron and Scott. Lintot took a wise course. He went
at once to the general public with editions in duodecimo, at
half-a-crown a volume, of which he very soon sold seven thousand five
hundred copies. But it may well be doubted if Pope would have made five
thousand three hundred pounds, if he had originally gone, without the
quarto subscription process, to the buyers of duodecimos. Perhaps even
the duodecimos would not have sold extensively without the reputation of
the quartos. There was no great reading public to make a fortune for the
poet out of small profits upon large sales. Some may think that Pope
would have been as illustrious without the ease which this fortune gave
him. It may be so. But of one thing we are clear—that in every age the
higher rewards of authorship, reaped by one eminent individual, are
benefits to the great body of authors; and thus that the villa at
Twickenham had a certain influence in making what the world called
"Grub-street" less despicable and more thriving. It dissociated
authorship from garrets. Yet it is marvellous, even now, how some of the
race of attorneys and stockbrokers turn up their eyes when they hear of
a successful writer keeping a brougham, and lament, over their claret,
that such men will be improvident.

In those days of subscription books there were great contrasts of
success and loss; of steady support and capricious neglect. Conyers
Middleton made a little fortune by his 'Life of Cicero,' in two volumes
quarto, published in 1741. His suspected heterodoxy was no bar to his
success. Carte, in 1747, printed three thousand copies of the first
volume of his 'General History of England,' for which he had adequate
support. In that unlucky volume his Jacobitism peeped out, in a relation
of an astonishing cure for the king's-evil, produced by the touch of the
first Pretender, who, he says, "had not at that time been crowned or
anointed." Away went the "remainder" of the three thousand volumes to
the trunk-maker, and of the subsequent volumes only seven hundred and
fifty were printed. Whether by subscription, or by the mode of fixing a
published price for a general sale,—which, in the second half of the
century, was superseding the attempt to ascertain the number of
purchasers before publication,—there was always a great amount of
caprice, or prejudice, in the unripe public judgment of a book, which
rendered its fate very hazardous and uncertain. Hume, in 1754, published
the first volume of his 'History of England.' He says, "Mr. Millar told
me that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it." Gibbon
published the first volume of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
in 1776: "I am at a loss," he modestly tells us, "how to describe the
success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer. The
first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition
were scarcely adequate to the demand; and the bookseller's property was
twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin." Thomson's 'Seasons' was lying
as waste paper in the publisher's shop, when one Mr. Whatley purchased a
copy; and his authority in the coffee-houses brought it into notice.
Collins was not so fortunate. His 'Odes' would not sell. He repaid the
bookseller the price he had received for the copyright, settled for the
printing, and burnt the greater part of the impression.

We have put together some of these scattered facts, to show how
difficult was the publication of books before a great general public had
been raised up to read and purchase, and how the risk of expensive works
was sought to be lessened by taking hostages against evil fortune. The
subdivision of large books into weekly or monthly numbers was one of the
expedients that was early resorted to for attracting purchasers. Some
curious relations of the first days of number-publishing are given in a
rare pamphlet by the Rev. Thomas Stackhouse, the author of the
well-known 'History of the Bible.' In 1732 two booksellers, Mr. Wilford
and Mr. Edlin, "when the success of some certain things published weekly
set every little bookseller's wits to work," proposed to this poor
curate of Finchley "to write something which might be published weekly,
but what it was they knew not." At the Castle Tavern, in Paternoster
Row, the trio deliberated upon the "something" that was to have a run.
Edlin was for a "Roman History, brushing up Ozell's dull style, when the
old thing would still do in a weekly manner." Wilford was for 'Family
Directors.' Stackhouse proposed the 'New History of the Bible.' Wilford
backed out; Edlin and Stackhouse quarrelled. The divine wanted many
works of commentators and critics. The bookseller maintained "that the
chief of his subscribers lived in Southwark, Wapping, and Ratcliff
Highway; that they had no notion of critics and commentators; that the
work would be adapted to their capacity, and therefore the less learning
in it the better." Stackhouse got out of the hands of this encourager of
letters, found another publisher, and prospered, as well as he could,
upon the subscriptions to his "four sheets of original matter for
sixpence."[25] Many of the number-books were published under fictitious
names of authors; and some actual authors, clerical and lay, lent their
names to works of which they never saw a line. One of the most
accomplished of the number-book writers was Dr. Robert Sanders, a
self-created LL.D. He produced Histories of England, in folio and
quarto, under various names. He was the writer of the Notes to the
edition of the Bible, published in 1773, under the honoured name of Dr.
Henry Southwell. The ingenious note-writer has told the story without
reservation:—"As I was not a clergyman, my name could not be prefixed to
it. Application was made to several clergymen for the use of their
names; and at last Henry Southwell, LL.D., granted his." In a year or
two the indefatigable Sanders was ready with a scheme for a larger
commentary. He found a Doctor who would lend his name for a hundred
pounds; but such a sum was out of the question. A mere A.M. was
purchased for twenty pounds; but the affair broke down. The commentator
relates that he was told by the proprietors "they had no further
occasion for my services, and even denied me my week's wages." We hope
the laborious Sanders was less scurvily treated by the publishers of
that immortal work of his, which has been the glory of the number-trade
even up to this hour, namely, 'The Newgate Calendar, or Malefactor's
Bloody Register.' How many fortunes have been made out of this great
storehouse of popular knowledge is of little consequence to society. It
may be of importance to consider how many imps of fame have here studied
the path to glory. Sanders had a rival—the Rev. Mr. Villette, ordinary
of Newgate—who published the 'Annals of Newgate, or Malefactor's
Register,' &c., "intended as a beacon to warn the rising generation
against the temptations, the allurements, and the dangers of bad
company." In this title-page "the celebrated John Sheppard," and "the
equally celebrated Margaret Caroline Rudd," are leading attractions. The
author of the 'Annals,' no doubt, prospered better than he of the
'Calendar.'

Poor wretched Sanders, during the period when he was correcting Lord
Lyttleton's 'History of Henry II.,' had "a weekly subsistence;" but in
1768 he writes, "During these six weeks I have not tasted one whole meal
of victuals at a time."[26] The original race of number-publishers had
no very exalted notion of the value of literary labour. Their successors
had no will to bestow any payment upon literature at all, while they had
the old stores to produce and reproduce. They have now been forced into
some few attempts at originality. But the employment of new authorship
is a rare exception to their ordinary course. When the necessity does
arise, there is always perturbation of mind. In a moment of despair,
when his press was standing still for some of that manuscript which, in
an unlucky hour, he had bargained for with a living writer, one of this
fraternity exclaimed, "Give me dead authors, they never keep you waiting
for copy!" Many good books have, however, been produced by the early
number-publishers. We may mention Chambers' 'Cyclopædia,' Smollett's
'History of England,' and Scott's 'Bible.' Some well-printed books are
still being produced, but the compilers help themselves freely to what
others have dearly paid for. Taken as a whole, they are the least
improved, and certainly they are the dearest books, in the whole range
of popular literature. The system upon which they are sold is
essentially that of forcing a sale; and the necessary cost of this
forcing, called "canvassing," is sought to be saved in the quantity of
the article "canvassed," or in the less obvious degradation of its
quality. The "canvasser" is an universal genius, and he must be paid as
men of genius ought to be paid. He has to force off the commonest of
wares by the most ingenious of devices. It is not the intrinsic merit of
a book that is to command a sale, but the exterior accomplishments of
the salesman. He adapts himself to every condition of person with whom
he is thrown into contact. As in Birmingham and other great towns there
is a beggars' register, which describes the susceptibilities of the
families at whose gates beggars call, even to the particular theological
opinions of the occupants, so the canvasser has a pretty accurate
account of the households within his beat. He knows where there is the
customer in the kitchen, and the customer in the parlour. He sometimes
has a timid colloquy with the cook in the passage; sometimes takes a
glass of ale in the servants' hall; and, when he can rely upon the
charms of his address, sends his card boldly into the drawing-room. No
refusal can prevent him in the end leaving his number for inspection.
The system is most rife in North and Midland England; it is not so
common in the agricultural South, although it might be an instrument of
diffusing sound knowledge amongst a scattered population. If an effort
were honestly made to publish works really cheap, because intrinsically
good, upon "the canvassing system," that system, which has many real
advantages, might be redeemed from the disgrace which now too often
attaches to it, in the hands of the quacks who are most flourishing in
that line.

The number-trade was a necessary offshoot of that periodical literature
which sprang up into importance at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, and which, in all its ramifications, has had a more powerful
influence than that of all other literature upon the intelligence of the
great body of the people.

[Footnote 19: Discoveries.]

[Footnote 20: Areopagitica.]

[Footnote 21: Theatrum Poetarum, Preface.]

[Footnote 22: Dunton's 'Life and Errors,' ed. 1705, p. 70.]

[Footnote 23: 'A Kicksey Winsey.']

[Footnote 24: 'Gentleman's Magazine,' vol. lvii., quoted in Nicholls'
'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. v. p. 597.]

[Footnote 25: See Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 394.]

[Footnote 26: Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 730, and vol.
iii. p. 760.]




CHAPTER III.

Periodical Literature—Prices of Books; 18th Century—Two classes of
Buyers—The Magazines—Collections of the Poets—The Circulating Library—
Cheap Book-Clubs.


On the 8th of February, 1696, our friend John Dunton completed the
nineteenth volume of 'The Athenian Mercury, resolving all the most nice
and curious questions proposed by the ingenious.' This penny tract,
published twice a-week, consisted of a single leaf. "The ingenious"
ceased to question, and "The Athenian Society," as the bookseller called
his scribes, ceased to answer, after six years of this oracular labour.
There came an irruption of the barbarians, in the shape of "nine
newspapers every week." John proposed to resume his task "as soon as the
glut of news is a little over." The countryman waiting for the river to
roll by was not more mistaken. In 1709 there was one daily paper in
London; twelve, three times a-week; and three, twice a-week. Amongst
those of three times a-week was 'The Tatler,' which commenced April 12,
1709. The early Tatlers had their regular foreign intelligence. They
were as much newspapers as 'The Flying Post' and 'The Postboy.' But
Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., very soon discontinued the information which he
derived from letters from the Hague and advices from Berlin. He had
something of a more original character to offer his readers. The state
of popular enlightenment at this period has been described by Johnson in
his Life of Addison:—"That general knowledge which now circulates in
common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not professing
learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world any
acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured." Steele
and Addison had to form the taste of the new generation that they were
addressing. They knew that there was a large class craving amusement,
who might at the same time be refined and instructed without the
pretensions of "the budge doctors of the stoic fur." They meddled little
with politics. They left the furious discussions about Church and State
to papers with an earnest political purpose, of which Charles Leslie, a
violent Tory, thus spoke in his 'Rehearsals:'—"The greatest part of the
people do not read books; most of them cannot read at all: but they will
gather together about one that can read, and listen to an Observator or
Review, as I have seen them, in the streets." The Tatler has been
described as a great success; but we may measure that success by that of
the more popular Spectator. In No. 555 of that work Steele says,—"The
tax on each half-sheet has brought into the Stamp-Office, one week with
another, above 20_l._ a-week, arising from the single paper,
notwithstanding it at first reduced it to less than half the number that
was usually printed before the tax was laid." The tax being a halfpenny,
this would only show a daily circulation of 1600, and of about 3000 when
it was unstamped. But the sale in volumes, according to the same
statement, was as high as 9000 of each volume. This fact gives us a
higher notion of the popularity of these charming papers, and of the
consequent extent of general reading, than any other circumstance in the
literary history of that period. But even the comparatively small daily
sale was of importance, as showing that the great middle class was
beginning to seek something better than could be found in the coarse and
meagre news-sheets. The annals of 'The Gentlemen's Society at Spalding'
record that in April, 1709, some residents there heard of the Tatlers,
and ordered them to be sent to the coffee-house in the Abbey-yard:—"They
were accordingly had, and read there every postday, generally aloud to
the company, who could sit and talk over the subject afterwards." The
narrative goes on to say that "in March, 1711, the Spectator came out,
which was received and read here as the Tatler had been." Such are the
beginnings of popular knowledge. What the Tatler and Spectator were to
the gentlemen of Spalding, the Penny Magazine and Chambers' Journal were
to many a mechanic a hundred and twenty years after. One of this class
has recorded the influence of such works, which addressed a far larger
number than could be addressed at the beginning of the eighteenth
century:—"The Penny Magazine was published. I borrowed the first volume,
and determined to make an effort to possess myself with the second.
Accordingly, with January, 1833, I determined to discontinue the use of
sugar in my tea, hoping that my family would not then feel the sacrifice
necessary to buy the book.... I looked as anxiously for the issue of the
monthly part as I did for the means of getting a living."[27] It is this
spirit in the great mechanical class of this country that, in spite of
some popular reading that is corrupting, and much that is frivolous,
will ultimately raise and purify even the meanest sheet of our cheap
literature, and compel those who have the responsibility of addressing
large masses of the people to understand that an influential portion do
feel that the acquirement of knowledge is worth some sacrifice.

The 'Complete Catalogue of Modern Books, published from the beginning of
the century to 1756,' contains 5280 new works. In this Catalogue "all
pamphlets and other tracts" are excluded. We can scarcely, therefore,
compare this period, as to the number of books published, with that of
1680. The average number of the first 57 years of the 18th century was
93 new works each year. At the beginning of the century, the price of a
folio or quarto volume ranged from 10_s._ to 12_s._; an octavo from
5_s._ to 6_s._; and a duodecimo from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._ We have the
original 'Tatler' before us, with its curious advertisements of books,
sales by the candle, cordial elixirs, lotteries, and bohea tea at 24_s._
a-pound. Whitelocke's 'Memorials,' folio, is advertised at 12_s._;
Rowe's edition of Shakspeare, 8vo., is 5_s._ per volume; 'The Peerage of
England,' 8vo., 6_s._; Shakspeare's Poems, 12mo., 1_s._ 6_d._; 'The
Monthly Amusement,' each number containing a complete novel, is 1_s._;
Sermons are 2_d._ each. We learn, from other sources, that the first
edition of 'The Dunciad' was a sixpenny pamphlet; whilst 'The Governor
of Cyprus, a Novel,' and 'The Wanton Fryar, a Novel,' were each 12_s._
The number printed of an edition was, no doubt, very moderate, except
chiefly of books that were associated with some great popular
excitement. Sacheverell's Trial is said to have sold 30,000; as, in a
later period, 30,000 were sold of Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution
in France.' The old booksellers were cautious about works of imagination
when they were expected to pay handsomely for copyright. The manuscript
of 'Robinson Crusoe' was pronounced dangerous by the whole tribe of
publishers, till one ventured upon an edition. The demand was such that
the copies could only be supplied by dividing the work amongst several
printers. One of Defoe's numerous assailants, in attempting to ridicule
him, gives the best evidence of his popularity: "There is not an old
woman that can go to the price of it but buys 'The Life and Adventures,'
and leaves it as a legacy with the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" Richardson's
'Pamela,' published in 1741, sold five editions in one year. There are
fabulous accounts of Millar, the publisher, clearing 18,000_l._ by 'Tom
Jones.' In those times the Dublin pirates were as assiduous in their
plunder of English copyrights as the American publishers have been in
plundering the English, and the English the American, in our days.
Richardson was driven wild by the publication of half 'Sir Charles
Grandison' in Ireland, in a cheap form, before a single volume was
issued in England. There was a regular system of bribery in the English
printing-offices, through which the Dublin booksellers organised their
robberies. They sold their books surreptitiously in England and
Scotland; and from their greater cheapness they had the command of their
own market. This system lasted till the Union.

The prices of books do not appear to have much increased at the
beginning of the reign of George III. In some cases their moderation is
remarkable. We have seen how small was the demand for the first volume
of Hume's 'History' in 1754. We have a number of 'The Gazetteer and New
Daily Advertiser' at hand, May 9, 1764; and there we learn, from an
advertisement, what a change ten years had produced. A new edition of
the third and fourth volumes, in quarto, is advertised at 1_l._ 5_s._;
but "the proprietor, at the desire of many who wish to be possessed of
this valuable and esteemed history, is induced to a monthly publication,
which will not exceed eight volumes." These volumes were 5_s._ each. It
is manifest that the bookseller had found a new class to address when he
issued the monthly volumes. Hume says, "Notwithstanding the variety of
winds and seasons to which my writings had been exposed, they had still
been making such advances that the copy-money given me by the
booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England." He had
complained of the neglect of the "considerable for rank or letters." His
publisher saw that a history with such charms of style—so freed from
tedious quotations from state-papers and statutes—so unlike the great
folios of Carte and Rapin—was a book for a new race of readers.
Coleridge humorously enough says—"Poets and philosophers, rendered
diffident by their very number, addressed themselves to 'learned
readers;' then, aimed to conciliate the graces of 'the candid reader;'
till, the critic still rising as the author sank, the amateurs of
literature collectively were erected into a municipality of judges, and
addressed as 'the Town.' And now, finally, all men being supposed to
read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous 'Public,' shaped
into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal despot on
the throne of criticism."[28] There is a great truth beneath the
sarcasm. The enduring patronage of the public was beginning when Andrew
Millar was bold enough to publish Hume's History in monthly
five-shilling volumes. But there are still many evidences that the
commerce of books at that period, and subsequently, did not contemplate
the existence of a large class of buyers, beyond those who were at ease
in their fortunes. In that farrago of sense and absurdity, 'The Life of
James Lackington, the present Bookseller, Finsbury-square, London,
written by himself' (1791), there is a remarkable disclosure of the mode
in which books were prevented being sold cheaply, after the original
demand had been satisfied:—"When first invited to these trade-sales, I
was very much surprised to learn that it was common for such as
purchased remainders to destroy one-half or three-fourths of such books,
and to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as
they kept on hand. And there was a kind of standing order amongst the
trade that, in case any one was known to sell articles under the
publication price, such a person was to be excluded from trade-sales—so
blind were copyright holders to their own interest." In the same manner,
it is within the memory of many living persons that there was an
invariable high price for fish in London, because the wholesale dealers
at Billingsgate always destroyed a portion of what came to market, if
the supply were above the average. The dealers in fish had not
recognised the existence of a class who would buy for their suppers what
the rich had not taken for their dinners; and knew not that the stalls
of Tottenham Court Road had as many customers ready for a low price as
the shops of Charing Cross for a high price. The fishmongers had not
discovered that the price charged to the evening customers had no effect
of lowering that of the morning. Nor had the booksellers discovered that
there were essentially two, if not more, classes of customers for
books—those who would have the dearest and the newest, and those who
were content to wait till the gloss of novelty had passed off, and good
works became accessible to them, either in cheaper reprints, or
"remainders" reduced in price. But books and fish have one material
difference. Good books are not impaired in value when they are
cheapened. Their character, which has been established by the first
demand, creates a second and a larger demand. Lackington destroyed no
books that were worth saving, but sold them as he best could. We have no
quarrel with his self-commendation when he says, "I could almost be vain
enough to assert that I have thereby been highly instrumental in
diffusing that general desire for reading now so prevalent among the
inferior orders of society."

What Lackington thought "a general desire for reading" was,
nevertheless, a very limited desire. "The inferior orders of society"
who had the desire did not comprehend many of the mechanics, and none of
the husbandry labourers. It may be doubted whether the Magazine
Literature that the eighteenth century called forth ever went beyond the
gentry and the superior traders. Kippis says of the magazines, "they
have been the means of diffusing a general habit of reading through the
nation." There appears to have been a sort of tacit agreement amongst
all who spoke of public enlightenment in the days of George III. to put
out of view the great body of "the nation" who paid for their bread by
their weekly wages. The magazines were certainly never addressed to this
class. But for the general book-buyers of the time, Cave's project of
'The Gentleman's Magazine' was a great step in popular literature. The
booksellers would not join him in what they held to be a risk. When he
had succeeded, and sold 10,000, then they set up the rival 'London
Magazine.' Cave threw all his energy into the magazine, and was
rewarded. "He scarcely ever looked out of the window, but with a view to
its improvement," said Johnson. 'The Gentleman's Magazine' commenced in
1731. Then came, year after year, magazines "as plenty as
blackberries:"—'The London,' 'The Universal,' 'The Literary,' 'The
Royal,' 'The Complete,' 'The Town and Country,' 'The Ladies',' 'The
Westminster,' 'The European,' 'The Monthly.' The first popular review,
'The Monthly,' was published in 1749, and 'The Critical' in 1756. The
public were now firmly established as the real patrons of letters. There
was an end of poor authors knocking at great men's doors with a bundle
of books. There was an end to paid Dedications and gratulatory Odes.
Johnson could afford to launch his Dictionary without the help of the
Earl of Chesterfield. Hume became "not only independent but opulent"
through the "copy-money" of the booksellers.

The publication of Collections of the Poets was another proof of the
extension of the reading public. The man who first projected such a
Collection went for cheapness. In 1777 John Bell announced an edition of
'The Poets of Great Britain; complete from Chaucer to Churchill.' The
London booksellers, to the number of forty, held a meeting, to resist
what they considered an invasion of their literary property—some works
within the time of the statute of Anne being legally theirs—others their
copyright by courtesy. They resolved to combine their various interests;
and they produced that edition of the Poets, in 68 volumes, which is
called Johnson's, though, according to Malone, he never saw a line of
the text. The 'Lives,' which Johnson wrote for two hundred guineas, will
endure as a great classic work, however deformed by hasty or prejudiced
judgment. Many of the Poets given in the series have no pretension to be
looked upon again, except as a part of literary history, which may show
how the most feeble may attain reputation in an age of mediocrity. The
booksellers spoke contemptuously of Bell's edition, which they called
"trifling." They boasted their superior printing; but they gave no place
in their Collection to Chaucer, Spenser, or Donne, as Bell had done.
They did not care to direct the public taste;—they printed what they
thought would sell. The demand for such Collections has always been one
of the proofs of a healthy condition of public intelligence; but the
want has not often been supplied with any judgment beyond that of the
rude commercial estimate of the prevailing fashion in poetry. It is
extremely difficult to deal with such matters. All literary students
have a proper horror of abridgments and analyses. They want all of an
author, or none. You can neither make Chaucer extremely popular by an
entire reprint, nor command a large sale by partial extract. But John
Bell was right, in 1777, to risk the printing of three great early
poets, whilst the booksellers began with Waller. Here were poets that
can never be wholly obsolete. But the rubbish called poetry that found
its way, by trade preferences, into Johnson's edition—the inanities of
the drivellers between Pope and Gray—let not these be reproduced in our
time, when such Collections are coming again into fashion, and showing,
as they showed before, an extension of readers.

The Circulating Library—what a revolution was that in popular
literature! How this new plant appeared above the earth, where it first
budded, where it bore its early fruit—how it grew into a great tree,
like that in the old title to Lilly's Grammar, where the apples of
knowledge are being gathered by little climbing-boys—would be difficult
to trace and to record. There it was—this great economiser of individual
outlay for books—in most market-towns at the beginning of the century.
The universal adoption of the name is the best proof of the common
recognition of the idea. It changed the habits of the old country
booksellers. It found them other occupation than keeping a stall in the
market-place, as did their worthy forefathers. They dealt no longer in
tracts and single sermons. It sent the chap-books into the villages. It
made the 'Seven Champions of Christendom' and 'The Wise Masters of
Greece' vulgar. It created a new literature of fiction. It banished
'Robinson Crusoe' to the kitchen, and 'The Arabian Nights' to the
nursery. It built up great printing-houses in Leadenhall-street; and
held out high rewards for rapid composition, at the rate of five pounds
per volume, to decayed governesses who had seen the world, and
bank-clerks of an imaginative turn of mind. These could produce a
wilderness of Italian bandits, with unlimited wealth and beauty, who had
won the hearts of credulous countesses, and only surrendered to the
hangman when whole armies came out to take them. These could unveil all
the mysterious luxuries of great mansions in Grosvenor-square, or of
sumptuous hotels in Bond-street. There was ever and anon a "bright
particular star" in the Milky Way of popular fiction. But the
circulating library went on its own course, whether the empyrean of
romance were dim or brilliant. "What have you got new?" was the
universal question put to the guardian of the treasures of this
recently-discovered world of letters. When the bower-maid of the
luxurious fair one, who lolled upon the sofa through a long summer's
day, as Gray did when he was deep in Crébillon, came to "change" the
book, great sometimes was the perplexity. It was not a difficult task to
"change," but the newness was puzzling. The lady and the neat-handed
Phillis pursued their studies simultaneously. They did not like
"poetry;" they did not like "letters." 'Sir Charles Grandison' was as
old and as tiresome as 'Pamela.' 'Tom Jones,' and 'Peregrine Pickle;'
they wondered why they were allowed to remain in the catalogue. They had
read 'Cœlebs in search of a Wife'—the charming book—but they did not
want it again. Perhaps, suggested the bookseller's apprentice, 'The
Monk' might do once more. And so the circulating library went on, slow
and struggling, till, about 1814, the unlucky desire for "something new"
brought down to the little greasy collection, whose delusive numbers of
volumes ranged from 1 to 3250, a new novel, with the somewhat
unpromising title of 'Waverley, or 'tis Sixty Years since.' At first,
the lady upon the sofa, and the counsellor of her studies, could not
endure it, for it was full of horrid Scotch. It was often "at home," as
the phrase went, for six months of its probation; when, somehow, it was
discovered that a new book of wonderful talent had come out of the
North. Another and another came, and in a few years the old circulating
library was ruined. The Burneys, and Edgeworths, and Radcliffes, and
Godwins, and Holcrofts, who had mixed with much lower company upon the
librarian's shelves, still held a place. But the Winters in London and
Winters in Bath, the Midnight Bells, the Nuns, and the Watch-Towers,
retired from business. There was then a new epoch in the
circulating-library life. The literature of travels and memoirs timidly
claimed a place by the side of the fashionable novel, which asserted its
dignity by raising its price to a guinea and a half. The old legitimate
stupidity, which did very well before the trade was disturbed, would no
longer "circulate." But the names of the producers of the higher fiction
were not "Legion." "Something new" must still be had. To meet the
market, every variety of west-end authorship was experimented upon. The
number to be printed could be calculated with tolerable exactness,
according to the reputation of the writer,—and this calculation
regulated the payment of copyright, from fifty pounds, and five hundred
printed, to the man without a name, up to fifteen hundred pounds, and an
impression of three thousand, to "the glass of fashion." But in this
department of the commerce of literature,—as it will be in the end with
every branch upon which the growth of popular intelligence is
operating,—the rubbish is perishable, has perished; the good endureth.

The circulating library is now, in many instances, a real instrument of
popular enlightenment. Yet in some of the smaller towns, and in
watering-places where raffles have their charm, and a musical
performance is patronised in the 'Fancy Repository,' by "audience fit
though few"—there the circulating library may be studied in its ancient
brilliancy. There, are still preserved, with a paper number on their
brown leather backs, and a well-worn bill of the terms of subscription
on their sides, those volumes, now fading into oblivion, whence the
writers of many a penny journal of fiction are drawing and will still
draw their inspiration. Many of these relics of a past age will live
over again in shilling volumes with new titles. The heroes and heroines
will change their names; the furniture of the apartments in which they
utter their vows of love will be modernised; every sentence which in the
slightest degree approaches the vulgar will be softened down or
obliterated. There is a great deal yet to be done in this way; and the
metamorphosis will go on and prosper. In the mean while the circulating
libraries, both in London and the provinces, are supporting a higher
literature of fiction than those of the past generation; and they find
also that there are other volumes almost as attractive as the last new
novel. They are doing the same work as the book-clubs. Both these modes
of co-operation have had the effect of making the demand for a book that
is at once solid and attractive more certain than the old demand by
individual purchasers. The certainty of the demand necessarily produces
a gradual reduction of price. An average demand is created, resulting
from an average of taste in those who belong to book-societies and
subscribe to circulating libraries. But these channels for the sale of
new books are not materially influenced by lowness of price. Cheapness
is greatly influential with the private purchaser; but very many are
content with the reading of a new book, through the club or the library,
who would never buy it for their own household. This first demand is one
of the means by which good books may be cheapened for a subsequent large
issue for the permanent home library. In 'The Life of Lackington' there
is the following passage:—"I have been informed that, when circulating
libraries were first opened, the booksellers were much alarmed; and
their rapid increase added to their fears, and led them to think that
the sale of books would be much diminished by such libraries. But
experience has proved that the sale of books, so far from being
diminished by them, has been greatly promoted; as from these
repositories many thousand families have been cheaply supplied with
books, by which the taste of reading has become much more general, and
thousands of books are purchased every year by such as have first
borrowed them at those libraries, and, after reading, approving of them,
have become purchasers."

One of the first attempts, and it was a successful one, to establish a
cheap Book-Club was made by Robert Burns. He had founded a Society at
Tarbolton, called the Bachelors' Club, which met monthly for the
purposes of discussion and conversation. But this was a club without
books; for the fines levied upon the members were spent in conviviality.
Having changed his residence to Mauchline, a similar club was
established there, but with one important alteration:—the fines were set
apart for the purchase of books, and the first work bought was 'The
Mirror,' by Henry Mackenzie. Dr. Currie, the biographer of Burns, in
recording this fact, says, "With deference to the Conversation Society
of Mauchline, it may be doubted whether the books which they purchased
were of a kind best adapted to promote the interest and happiness of
persons in this situation of life." The objection of Dr. Currie was
founded upon his belief that works which cultivated "delicacy of taste"
were unfitted for those who pursued manual occupations. He qualifies his
objection, however, by the remark, that "Every human being is a proper
judge of his own happiness, and within the path of innocence ought to be
permitted to pursue it. Since it is the taste of the Scottish peasantry
to give a preference to works of taste and of fancy, it may be presumed
they find a superior gratification in the perusal of such works." This
truth, timidly put by Dr. Currie, ought to be the foundation of every
attempt to provide books for all readers. We are learning to correct the
false opinions which, for a century or two, have been degrading the
national character by lowering the general taste. Those who maintained
that taste was the exclusive property of the rich and the luxurious,
could not take away from the humble the beauty of the rose or the
fragrance of the violet; they could not make the nightingale sing a
vulgar note to "the swink'd hedger at his supper;" nor, speaking purely
to a question of taste, did they venture to lower the noble translation
of the Bible, which they put into the hands of the poor man, to
something which, according to the insolent formula of those days, was
"adapted to the meanest capacity." A great deal of this has passed away.
It has been discovered that music is a fitting thing to be cultivated by
the people; the doors of galleries are thrown open for the people to
gaze upon Raffaelles and Correggios; even cottages are built so as to
satisfy a feeling of proportion, and to make their inmates aspire to
something like decoration. All this is progress in the right direction.

In the year 1825 Lord Brougham (then Mr. Brougham), in his 'Practical
Observations upon the Education of the People,' explained a plan which
has yet been only partially acted upon. "Book-Clubs or Reading Societies
may be established by very small numbers of contributors, and require an
inconsiderable fund. If the associates live near one another,
arrangements may be easily made for circulating the books, so that they
may be in use every moment that any one can spare from his work. Here,
too, the rich have an opportunity presented to them of promoting
instruction without constant interference: the gift of a few books, as a
beginning, will generally prove a sufficient encouragement to carry on
the plan by weekly or monthly contributions: and, with the gift, a
scheme may be communicated to assist the contributors in arranging the
plan of their association." Simple in its working as such a plan would
appear to be, the instances of these voluntary associations are really
few. In Scotland, Lending Libraries and Itinerating Libraries have, in
some districts, been established successfully; but in England, Lending
Libraries are scarcely to be found, except in connexion with schools, or
under the immediate direction of the minister of a parish or of a
dissenting congregation. In these cases, we fear, comes too frequently
into action the desire, laudable no doubt, to promote "the interest and
happiness of persons in this situation of life." They are not permitted
to choose for themselves. The best books of amusement are kept out of
their sight; and they contrive to get hold of the worst. The timidity
which insists upon supplying these libraries with _pattern_ books
renders the libraries disagreeable, and therefore useless.[29]

[Footnote 27: 'Autobiography of an Artisan.' By Christopher Thomson.
1847.]

[Footnote 28: 'Biographia Literaria,' vol. i. p. 60, ed. 1817.]

[Footnote 29: See page 309.]




CHAPTER IV.

Continued dearness of Books—Useful Knowledge Society—Modern Epoch of
Cheapness—Demand and Supply—The Printing-machine—The Paper-machine—
Revival of Woodcutting.


From the time when Hume's 'History' was published at 5_s._ a volume,
there appears to have been a steady advance in the price of books to the
end of the century. In the eleven years from 1792 to 1802, there was an
average publication of 372 new books per year. The number of new books
had quadrupled upon the average of those published from 1701 to 1756.
But the duodecimo had been increased in price from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 4_s._;
the octavo from 5_s._ or 6_s._ to 10_s._; the quarto from 12_s._ to
1_l._ 1_s._ From 1800 to 1827 there were published, according to the
London Catalogue, 19,860 books, including reprints; for which reprints
deducting one-fifth, there were 15,888 new books, being an annual
average of 588. Books were still rising in price. The duodecimo mounted
up to 6_s._, or became a small octavo at 10_s._ 6_d_.; the octavo was
raised from 10_s_. to 12_s._. or 14_s._; the quarto was very frequently
two guineas. Some of this rise of price was unquestionably due to the
general rise in the value of labour, and to the higher price of paper.
But more is to be ascribed to the determination of the great publishers
not sufficiently to open their eyes to the extension of the number of
readers, and the absolute certainty, therefore, that a system of
extravagantly high prices was an unnatural, bigoted, and unprofitable
system. They paid most liberally for copyright, and they looked only to
an exclusive sale for their remuneration. They did not apply the same
system to periodical works. The two great Reviews, the 'Edinburgh' and
the 'Quarterly,' were as cheap, if not cheaper, having regard to their
literary merit, than the cheapest books of the previous century. They
were certain of their profit through that union of excellence and
cheapness which could not fail to create a large demand. The publishers
generally had not the same reliance upon the increase of readers of
other popular works of original excellence. It has only been within the
last twenty years that their unalloyed confidence in a narrow market has
been first shaken, and then overthrown.

In looking back upon the changes of a quarter of a century, it is
impossible, even for the writer, who was identified with this great
movement in Popular Literature, to forbear speaking of what was
accomplished by 'The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.' One
who has written contemporary history in a broad and liberal spirit
says—"The institution of this Society was an important feature of its
times, and one of the honours belonging to the reign of George IV. It
did not succeed in all its professed objects: it did not give to the
operative classes of Great Britain a library of the elements of all
sciences—it omitted some of the most important of the sciences, and,
with regard to some others, presented anything rather than the elements.
It did not fully penetrate the masses that most needed aid. But it
established the principle and precedent of cheap publication (cheapness
including goodness), stimulated the demand for sound information, and
the power and inclination to supply that demand; and marked a great æra
in the history of popular enlightenment."[30] The Society originated
with Mr. Brougham, in 1826. He gathered around him some of the leading
statesmen, lawyers, and philanthropists of his day. Men eminent in
letters and in science joined the association. And yet its success was
so doubtful in the eyes of those who had been accustomed to consider
high price as a necessary condition of excellence, that one of the
greatest publishing houses refused to bring out the treatises without a
guarantee. The Society wisely went upon the principle, originally, of
leaving all the trade arrangements to its publishers. It placed its
'Library of Useful Knowledge,' its 'Farmer's Series,' its 'Maps,' in the
hands of Messrs. Baldwin, paying the literary and artistical expenses,
and receiving a rent upon the copies sold. Mr. Knight originated the
'British Almanac' and its 'Companion,' 'The Library of Entertaining
Knowledge,' 'The Penny Magazine,' and 'The Penny Cyclopædia;' and he
bore the entire expense and risk of these works, as he did also for 'The
Gallery of Portraits,' and 'The Journal of Education,' paying upon all a
rent when the sale reached a certain number of copies.[31] It is
sufficient to mention these facts to show that the operations connected
with this Society were not upon an insignificant scale, or not fruitful
of large results; and that they were essentially commercial operations.
The cry that was raised against this Society, by those who were
interested in the publication of dear books, was that of "monopoly."
That cuckoo cry was repeated on every side. Fashionable publishers
shouted it; the old conventional school of authors echoed it. Those who
wrote for the Society were called, in derision, "compilers." Scribblers
who never verified a quotation ridiculed patient industry as dulness.

From the time when the Society commenced a real "superintendence" of
works for the people—when it assisted, by diligent revision and friendly
inquiry, the services of its editors—the old vague generalities of
popular knowledge were exploded; and the scissars-and-paste school of
authorship had to seek for other occupations than Paternoster-row could
once furnish. Accuracy was forced upon elementary books as the rule and
not the exception. Books professedly "entertaining" were to be founded
upon exact information, and their authorities invariably indicated. No
doubt this superintendence in some degree interfered with the free
course of original composition, and imparted somewhat of the utilitarian
character to everything produced. But it was the only course by which a
new aspect could be given to cheap literature, by showing that the great
principles of excellence were common to all books, whether for the
learned or the uninformed. In seventeen years the Society accomplished
its main objects. There were considerable gains connected with it, and
there were great losses. These are evanescent. The good which it did
remains. It supplied the new demand for knowledge in a way that had
never before been contemplated; it supplied it at the cheapest rate then
possible; it broke down the distinctions between knowledge for the few
and knowledge for the many; it created a popular taste for art; it sent
its light into the strongholds of ignorance and superstition, by
superseding, for a time, a large amount of weekly trash, and destroying,
for ever, the astrological and indecent almanacs. But, beyond its own
productions, it raised the standard of all popular literature. It has
had worthy co-labourers and successors. It ceased its work when others
were in the field, honestly and successfully carrying forward what it
had begun. He who writes this will ever think it an honour that he long
worked in fellowship with Henry Brougham; and that he was a partaker,
for some years, in the councils of an association of men more or less
eminent, whose objects were never of a selfish, partial, or temporary
nature. He has sate at those councils with five cabinet ministers, who
felt most deeply that the education of the people, in its largest sense,
was as much their business as the imposition of taxes. Where is that
spirit now?

The modern epoch of cheap literature may be held to have commenced,
however partially, in 1827, when Constable issued his 'Miscellany,' and
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge their 'Library of
Useful Knowledge.' In a few years followed 'The Library of Entertaining
Knowledge,' Mr. Murray's 'Family Library,' and Lardner's 'Cabinet
Cyclopædia.' These books were properly published under a tentative
system. Not one of them rushed to that extreme cheapness which is
indicated by quantity alone. They each had to feel their way to a demand
proportioned to the expense of their production. That production was
necessarily expensive. The cheapness consisted in the employment of the
best writers to produce books of original merit at a price that was
essentially low, by comparison with the ordinary rate at which books for
the few were sold. Though Constable, in his grand style, talked of
millions of buyers, he charged his little volumes 3_s._ 6_d._ each. He
was right. The millions were not ready to buy such books at a shilling,
nor even at sixpence. They are not ready now. 'The Library of Useful
Knowledge' was charged at the rate of 3_d._ a sheet. Taking mere
quantity of paper and printing into account, some of the penny journals
of the present day are six times as cheap. 'The Library of Entertaining
Knowledge' was 4_s._ 6_d._ a volume. The copyright of each volume
ordinarily cost 200_l._, and the woodcuts as much, and even more. 'The
Family Library,' at 5_s._, was, no doubt, equally costly. The same
costliness applies to Lardner's 'Cyclopædia,' published at 6_s._ In
these new undertakings, conceived in a totally different spirit from
anything which had preceded them, there were large expenses which have
been surprisingly reduced by scientific discovery and extended
competition at the present day. There were about twenty woodcutters in
London in 1827, who were real artists, paid at artists' prices.
Woodcutting is now a manufacture. Paper, then, paid the high rate of
duty, and was 50 per cent. dearer. Steam-printing was not universal, and
was only applied to common works. Each of these series was offered to
the very numerous body of those who, having become better educated than
the same classes in a previous generation, were desirous of real
improvement. They had a certain success, but a variable one. Every
experiment of this sort has shown that such collections of separate and
independent works cannot rely upon a sale as a series. They come to be
bought, each work by itself, according to its attractions for individual
purchasers. Thence all those irregularities of sale, and consequent
accumulations of stock, which press heavily upon the profits of those
volumes which are successful. The republication of the 'Waverley Novels'
in 5_s._ volumes was an exception to this rule. They constituted an
integral work. Their sale was vast, although the total cost was 12_l._
Scott and his publisher saw the immense field that was before them, in
giving their books to the world at a price that would carry them into
thousands of households, instead of limiting them to the circulating
libraries. They originally appeared in seventy-four volumes, at an
aggregate cost of 34_l._ 10_s._ Had they remained in their original
form, and at their first price, those heroic efforts which lifted a
mountain of debt off the shoulders of that great man who, perhaps, more
than all men, might have claimed the motto which Burke said should be
his—"Nitor in adversum"—those labours which wore him out, would not have
been successful. Neither would the success have come so soon had the
later publication in twenty-five volumes for 5_l._ been tried in the
first instance. If the 'Waverley Novels' go through new phases of
cheapness, it will be because there is now a larger public to buy; and
because the first natural price for all works of extraordinary merit,
that of authorship, has been already paid largely and liberally. The
question of price is then mainly reduced to a question of paper and
print. But miserable would it be for a nation whose "chiefest glory is
its authors," at a time when the nature of that glory is properly
understood, if a passion for premature cheapness, to be measured by mere
quantity, were to possess the minds of the people, and to be the
expression of the "Vox populi." There was a much larger public always
ready to purchase these enchanting fictions than have been, at any time
during the last quarter of a century, ready for the purchase of books of
information, however agreeably presented. We doubt whether the Family
Libraries, and the Libraries of Entertaining Knowledge, and the Cabinet
Cyclopædias, would have sold better at the time of their publication, if
they had been produced at half the original price. The experiment was
tried, when the number of readers was largely increased, in 'Knight's
Weekly Volume'—a series published at one-third the price of Constable's
'Miscellany.' The majority of books in that series were, for the most
part, of intrinsic merit; many also carrying the recommendation of
popular names as their authors. "Why Mr. Knight did not profit largely
by the speculation is a problem yet to be solved," says the writer of a
recent paper on 'Literature for the People.' The solution is, that the
people did not sufficiently buy them. So far from twenty thousand copies
being sold of many volumes, as asserted, there were not twenty volumes,
out of the hundred and forty, that reached a sale of ten thousand, and
the average sale was scarcely five thousand. They were not cheap enough
for the humble, who looked to mere quantity. They were too cheap for the
genteel, who were _then_ taught to think that a cheap book must
necessarily be a bad book. It is impossible not to remember that, even
ten years ago, the majority of publishers, and many of their supporters
in the public journals, hated cheap books. The 'Weekly Volumes' were
welcomed very generally by those who were anxious for the enlightenment
of the people. Societies were set on foot for their circulation. But all
experience has shown that no associations for recommending books, and
forcing their sale, can be successful. The people, of every grade, will
choose for themselves. It is useless to urge an adult, whether male or
female, to buy a solid book when an exciting one is longed for. It is
worse than useless to give books of improvement away to the poor. They
always suspect the motive. Very wisely did a witness before the "Select
Committee on Newspaper Stamps," 1851, say, "There are classes which you
cannot reach, unless you go to them with something which is the nearest
thing to what they want." If they want fiction, they will not look at
science or history. At the time of the issue of 'The Weekly Volume,' the
sale of books at railway stations was unknown; and if it had been known,
they scarcely presented sufficient attractions for the travelling
readers for amusement. They were published also in too quick succession.
It was a plausible theory of the editor, that, if good books, extremely
cheap, were issued rapidly enough to form a little library, many such
libraries would be formed. Those who have to deal with 'Literature for
the People' must bear in mind that time as well as money has to be
economised by those who of necessity must labour hard either by hand or
head. What may be called furniture books may be bought by the luxurious,
to put upon their shelves, and looked at when wanted. The earnest
workers buy few books that they are not desirous to read, and to read at
once. They bought such a book in 1830, to the extent of 50,000 copies.
'The Results of Machinery,' written by the author of this volume, was
addressed to great human interests. It was not professedly amusing; but
it was the first attempt to take Political Economy out of its hard and
logical track. It is now recorded, as a wonderful instance of the
application of cheapness to a dry subject, that Mr. M'Culloch's 'Essay
on the Rate of Wages,' is republished at a shilling. It is in no spirit
of self-laudation that we presume to think that the vaunted cheapness of
1854 had some previous examples.

In this principle, that the great mass of the people will read as they
buy, lies the secret of the enormous success of the weekly sheets of
that great epoch of cheapness which began about twenty years ago. It is
the principle which is the foundation of the extensive demand, growing
year by year, for all periodical literature. It made the essayists. It
made the magazines. It made the newspapers. It caused a sale of three
hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1834. It is causing a sale of fourteen
hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1854. Before we proceed in the
examination of this remarkable epoch of popular literature, let us
glance at the influence of mechanical and scientific improvement on the
cheapening of books during the last thirty or forty years.

Those who have followed us in our notices of the early history of
printing will scarcely have failed to see how the ordinary laws of
demand and supply have regulated the progress of this art, whose
productions might, at first sight, appear to form an exception to other
productions required by the necessities of mankind. There can be little
doubt, we think, that when several ingenious men were, at the same
moment, applying their skill to the discovery or perfection of a rapid
mode of multiplying copies of books, there was a demand for books which
could not well be supplied by the existing process of writing. That
demand had doubtless been created by the anxiety to think for themselves
which had sprung up amongst the laity of Catholic Europe. There was a
very general desire amongst the wealthier classes to obtain a knowledge
of the principles of their religion from the fountain-head,—the Bible.
The desire could not be gratified except at an enormous cost. Printing
was at last discovered; and Bibles were produced without limitation of
number. The instant, therefore, that the demand for Bibles could be
supplied, the supply acted upon the demand, by increasing it in every
direction; and when it was found that not only Bibles but many other
books of real value, such as copies of the ancient classics, could be
produced with a facility equal to the wants of every purchaser, books at
once became a large branch of commerce, and the presses of the first
printers never lacked employment. The purchasers of books, however, in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were almost wholly confined to the
class of nobles and those of the richer citizens and scholars by
profession. It was a very long time before the influence of the press
had produced any direct effect upon the habits of the great mass of the
people. It was not till the system of periodical literature was fairly
established, and that newspapers first, and magazines and reviews
subsequently, had taken hold of the popular mind, that the productions
of the press could be said to be in demand amongst the people generally.
Up to our own times that demand has been limited to very narrow bounds;
and the circumstances by which it has been extended are as remarkable as
those which accompanied the progress of the original invention of
printing. The same principle of demand going before supply, and the same
reaction of supply upon demand, will be found to have marked the
operations of the printing-press in this country, during the last
twenty-five years, as distinctly as they marked them throughout Europe
in the latter part of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the
sixteenth. We will shortly recapitulate these circumstances.

A few years after the commencement of the present century, a system of
education, which is now known throughout Europe as that of _mutual_
_instruction_, was introduced into this country. In whatever mode this
system was called into action, its first experiments soon demonstrated
that, through it, education might be bestowed at a much cheaper rate
than had ever before been considered practicable. This success
encouraged the friends of education to exertions quite unexampled; and
the British and Foreign School Society, and the National Society, had,
in a very few years, taught some thousands of children to read and
write, who, without the new arrangements which had been brought into
practice, would in great part have remained completely untaught. A
demand for books of a new class was thus preparing on every side. The
demand would not be very sudden or very urgent; but it would still
exist, and would become stronger and stronger till a supply was in some
degree provided for it It would act, too, indirectly but surely, upon
that portion of society whose demand for knowledge had already been in
part supplied. The principle of educating the humblest in the scale of
society would necessarily give an impulse to the education of the class
immediately above them. The impulse would indeed be least felt by the
large establishments for education at the other end of the scale; and
thus, whilst the children of the peasant and the tradesman would learn
many valuable lessons through the influence of a desire for knowledge
for its own sake, and of love for their instructors, many of the boys of
our great public schools would long remain acquiring only a knowledge of
words and not of things, and influenced chiefly by a degrading fear of
brutal punishment. The demand for knowledge thus created, and daily
gathering strength amongst the bulk of the people, could not be
adequately supplied forty years ago by the mechanical inventions then
employed in the art of printing. Exactly in the same way as the demand
for knowledge which began to agitate men's minds about the middle of the
fifteenth century produced the invention of printing, so the great
extension of the demand in England, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, produced those mechanical improvements which have created a new
æra in the typographical art. These improvements consist in the process
of stereotyping, and in the printing-machine, as distinguished from the
printing-press.

As several approaches had been made before the time of Faust to the
principle of printing books from moveable types, so the principle of
producing impressions from a cylinder, and of inking the types by a
roller, which are the great principles of the printing-machine, had been
discovered in this country as early as the year 1790. In that year Mr.
William Nicholson took out a patent for certain improvements in
printing, the specification of which clearly shows that to him belongs
the first suggestion of printing from cylinders. But this inventor, like
many other ingenious men, was led astray by a part of his project, which
was highly difficult, if not impracticable, to the neglect of that
portion of his plan which, since his time, has been brought into the
most perfect operation. Nicholson's patent was never acted upon. The
first maker of a printing-machine was Mr. Koenig, a native of Saxony;
and the first sheet of paper printed by cylinders, and by steam, was the
'Times' newspaper of the 28th November, 1814. The machine thus for the
first time brought into action was that of Mr. Koenig. It has been
superseded by machines of improved construction.

Let us imagine a state of things in which the demand for works of large
numbers should have gone on increasing, while the mechanical means of
supplying that demand had remained stationary—had remained as they were
at the beginning of the present century. Before the invention of
stereotyping it was necessary to print off considerable impressions of
the few books in general demand, such as bibles and prayer-books, that
the cost of composition might be so far divided as to allow the book to
be sold cheap: with several school-books, also, it was not uncommon to
go to press with an edition of 10,000 copies. Two men, working eight
hours a-day each, would produce 1000 perfect impressions (impressions on
each side) of a sheet per day; and thus, if a book consisted of twenty
sheets (the size of an ordinary school-book), one press would produce
the twenty sheets in 200 days. If a printer, therefore, were engaged in
the production of such a school-book, who could only devote one press to
the operation, it would require very nearly three-quarters of a year to
complete 10,000 copies of that work. It is thus evident, that if the
work were to be published on a given day, it must begin to be printed at
least three-quarters of a year before it could be published; and that
there must be a considerable outlay of capital in paper and in printing
for a long time before any return could be expected. This advance of
capital would have a necessary influence on the price of the book, in
addition to the difference of the cost of working by hand as compared
with working by machinery; and there probably the inconvenience of the
tedious progress we have described would stop. But take a case which
would allow no time for this long preparation. Take a daily newspaper,
for instance, of which great part of the news must be collected, and
written, and printed within twenty-four hours; calling into operation
reporters at home, correspondents abroad, expresses, electric
telegraphs. Formerly, the number printed of the most popular daily paper
would be limited to five thousand; and this number could not be produced
in time without the most perfect division of labour aiding the most
intense exertion, provided that paper were printed by hand. The 'Times'
newspaper now produces forty thousand copies in less than four hours,
from one set of types.

If the difficulties that existed in producing any considerable number of
newspapers before the invention of the printing-machine were almost
insurmountable, equally striking will the advantages of that invention
appear when we consider its application to the cheap weekly sheets, of
which the 'Penny Magazine' was the type. Let us suppose that the
education of the people had gone on uninterruptedly in the schools of
mutual instruction, and that the mechanical means for supplying the
demand for knowledge thus created had sustained no improvement. If the
demand for knowledge had led to the establishment of the 'Penny
Magazine' before the improvement of printing, it is probable that the
sale of twenty thousand copies would have been considered the utmost
that could have been calculated upon. One thousand perfect copies could
only have been daily produced at one press by the labour of two men. The
machine produces sixteen thousand copies. If the demand for a penny
sheet, printed thus slowly by the press, had reached twenty thousand, it
would have required two presses to produce that twenty thousand in the
same time—namely, ten days—in which one hundred and sixty thousand are
produced by the machine; and it would have required one press to be at
work one hundred and sixty days, or sixteen presses for ten days, to
effect the same results as the machine effects in ten days. But, in
point of fact, such a sale could never have been reached under the old
system of press-work. The hand-labour, as compared with the machine,
would have added at least forty per cent. to the cost of production,
even if the sixteen presses could have been set in motion. Without
stereotyping for duplicates, no attempt would have been made to set them
in motion; for the cost of re-engraving woodcuts, and of re-composing
the types, would have put a natural commercial limit to the operation.

The invention of the paper-machine was concurrent with the invention of
the printing-machine. Without the paper-machine, the material of books,
and newspapers, and journals, could never have been supplied with any
reference to cheapness. Chemistry, too, has converted the coarsest rags,
and the dirtiest cotton-wool, into fine pulp. The material of which this
book is formed existed a few month ago, perhaps, in the shape of a
tattered frock, whose shreds, exposed for years to the sun and wind,
covered the sturdy loins of the shepherd watching his sheep on the
plains of Hungary;—or it might have formed part of the coarse blue shirt
of the Italian sailor, on board some little trading-vessel of the
Mediterranean;—or it might have pertained to the once tidy _camicia_ of
the neat straw-plaiter of Tuscany, who, on the eve of some festival,
when her head was intent upon gay things, condemned the garment to the
_stracci-vendolo_ (rag-merchant) of Leghorn;—or it might have
constituted the coarse covering of the flock-bed of the farmer of
Saxony, or once looked bright in the damask table-cloth of the burgher
of Hamburgh;—or, lastly, it might have been swept, new and unworn, out
of the vast collection of the shreds and patches, the fustian and
buckram, of a London tailor; or might have accompanied every revolution
of a fashionable coat in the shape of lining—having travelled from St.
James's to St. Giles's, from Bond Street to Monmouth Street, from Rag
Fair to the Dublin Liberty, till man disowned the vesture, and the
kennel-sweeper claimed its miserable remains. In each or all of these
forms, and in hundreds more which it would be useless to describe, this
sheet of paper a short time since might have existed. No matter, now,
what the colour of the rag—how oily the cotton—what filth it has
gathered and harboured through all its transmutation—the scientific
paper-maker can produce out of these filthy materials one of the most
beautiful productions of manufacture. But he has a difficulty in
obtaining even these coarse materials. The advance of a people in
civilisation has not only a tendency to make the supply of rags
abundant, but, at the same time, to increase the demand for rags. The
use of machinery in manufactures renders clothing cheap; the cheapness
of clothing causes its consumption to increase, not only in the
proportion of an increasing population, but by the scale of individual
expenditure; the stock of rags is therefore increasing in the same ratio
that our looms produce more linen and cotton cloth. But then the
increase of knowledge runs in a parallel line with this increase of
comforts; and the increase of knowledge requires an increase of books.
The principle of publishing books and tracts, to be read by thousands
instead of tens and hundreds, has already caused a large addition to the
demand for printing-paper. Science made paper cheap in spite of
taxation. The government has worked against science to keep books dear.

We cannot pass over the mechanical and other scientific improvements in
typography, which preceded and accompanied the great epoch of cheapness
of the last quarter of a century, without more particularly noticing the
revival, for so it may be called, of the art of woodcutting. In the
'Penny Magazine' of 1836, the editor says that no expense or labour has
been spared to attain every improvement of which the art of woodcutting
is susceptible—that the engravings of 305 numbers have cost 12,000_l._
(about 40_l._ a number)—that many difficulties have been overcome in
adapting the character of the engravings to the rapid movements of the
printing-machine—and that the art, in connexion with the cheapest form
of printing, has been carried further than at one time was thought to be
possible. This was written in 1836. Let any one look at a common book
with woodcuts, printed thirty years ago, and he will understand what
difficulties had to be overcome before 'The Penny Magazine' could
present successful copies of works of art. This 'Penny Magazine,' which
some even now affect to sneer at, produced a revolution in popular art
throughout the world. It created similar works, to which it supplied
stereotype casts, in Germany, France, Holland, Livonia (in Russian and
German), Bohemia (in Sclavonic), Italy, Ionian Islands (in Modern
Greek), Sweden, Norway, Spanish America, the Brazils, the United States.
It raised up imitators on every side, and directed the union of art and
letters into new channels. It was the forerunner of 'Punch,' and of 'The
Illustrated London News.' A great art-critic of 1836 proclaimed, with
oracular solemnity, "As there is no royal road to mathematics, so we
say, once for all, there is no Penny Magazine road to the Fine Arts—the
cultivation of the Fine Arts must be carried on by a comparatively small
and gifted few, under the patronage of men of wealth and leisure." Many
eminent designers—amongst whom are the honoured names of Harvey,
Cruikshank, Doyle, Leech, Tenniel, Anelay, Gilbert—have gone the "Penny
Magazine road," and found it quite as sure a highway to distinction, and
far more pleasant, than the old by-way of patronage, so weary to the
gifted few. It is wonderful how long and how tenaciously, both in
literature and art, men clung to that idol Patronage. They are gone—the
Chesterfields who kept Johnson seven years waiting in outward rooms,—and
the Mansfields who grudged Wilkie thirty guineas for 'The Village
Politicians:'—

  "Peor and Baälim
  Forsake their temples dim."

[Footnote 30: Miss Martineau's 'History of the Peace,' vol. i. p. 580.]

[Footnote 31: 'Address of the Committee,' June 1, 1843.]




CHAPTER V.

London Catalogue, 1816-1851—Annual Catalogues, 1828-1853—Classes of
Books, 1816-1861—Periodicals, 1831, 1853—Aggregate amount of Book-trade—
Collections and Libraries—International Copyright—Readers in the United
States—Irish National School-books.


'The London Catalogue of Books published in Great Britain, 1816 to
1851,' furnishes, in its alphabetical list, with "sizes, prices, and
publishers' names," that insight into the character and extent of the
literature of a generation which we cannot derive from any other source.
We have already given some of the calculations of past periods. Let us
endeavour to trace what the commerce of books has been in our own time.

Every book in this 'London Catalogue' occupies a single line. There are
72 lines in a page; there are 626 pages. It follows that the Catalogue
contains the titles of 45,072 books. In these 36 years, then, there was
an average annual publication of 1252 books. This number is more than
double the average of the period from 1800 to 1827. There is also
published, by the proprietor of 'The London Catalogue,' an Annual
Catalogue of New Books. From two of these catalogues we derive the
following comparative results for the beginning and the end of a quarter
of a century:—

 1828. New publications                                        842
 1853.       "                                                2530
 1828. Total number of volumes                                1105
 1853.       "       "                                        2934

 1828. Total cost of one set of the new publications     £668 10 0
 1853.         "            "           "                1058 17 9
 1828. Average price of each new work                       0 16 0
 1853.         "            "                               0  8 4½
 1828. Average price per volume of the new publications     0 12 1
 1853.         "            "           "                   0  7 2½

Such calculations are not arrived at without the labour of many hours;
but the labour is not ill-bestowed by us, for they afford better data
for opinion than loose talk about the number, quality, and price of
books. Hence we learn, that, in 1853, there were three times as many
books published as in 1828; that the comparative increase in the number
of volumes was not so great, showing that of the new books more single
volumes were published; that the total cost of one set of the new
publications had increased by more than one-half of the former cost;
that the average price of each new work had been reduced nearly
one-half; and that the average price per volume had fallen about 5s.
below the price of 1828. A further analysis of this Annual List shows
that, of the 2530 books published in 1853, only 287 were published at a
guinea and upwards; and that of these only 206 were books of general
information; while 28 were law-books, and 53 of the well-accustomed dear
class of guinea-and-a-half novels. Decidedly the Quarto Dynasty had died
out.

As a supplement to the 'London Catalogue, 1816-1851,' there is published
a 'Classified Index.' Through this we are enabled to estimate in round
numbers the sort of books which the people were buying, or reading, or
neglecting, in these 36 years.[32] We find that they were invited to
purchase in the following proportion of classes:—

 Works on divinity                              10,300
 History and geography                           4,900
 Fiction                                         3,500
 Foreign languages and school-books              4,000
 Drama and poetry                                3,400
 Juvenile books                                  2,900
 Medical                                         2,500
 Biography                                       1,850
 Law                                             1,850
 Science.—Zoology                           550
    "      Botany                           700
    "      Chemistry                        170
    "      Geology                          280
    "      Mathematics                      350
    "      Astronomy                        150
    "      Natural philosophy               300
                                            ———  2,450
 Arts,&c.—Antiquities                       350
    "      Architecture                     500
    "      Fine arts                        450
    "      Games and sports                 300
    "      Illustrated works                500
    "      Music                            220
    "      Genealogy and heraldry           140
                                            ———  2,460
 Industry.—Mechanics, &c.                   500
    "      Agriculture                      250
    "      Trade and commerce               600
    "      Political economy, statistics    700
    "      Military                         300
 Moral Sciences.—Philology, &c.             350
          "       Education                 300
          "       Moral philosophy          300
          "       Morals                    450
          "       Domestic economy          200
                                            ———  1,400
 Miscellaneous (so classed)                      1,400
                                                ——————
                                                45,260

But the Catalogues of New Books fall very short of affording a complete
view of the state of popular literature at any given period. We must
apply to other sources of information.

The publication of 'The Penny Magazine,' and of 'Chambers' Journal,' in
1832, was concurrent with a general increase in the demand for
periodical works. At the end of 1831 there were issued 177 monthly
publications, a single copy of which cost 17_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ At the end
of 1833 there were 236 monthly periodicals, a single copy of which cost
23_l._ 3_s._ 6_d._ At the end of 1853 there were 362 of the same monthly
class, a single copy of which cost 14_l._ 17_s._ 6_d._ In 1831 the
average price of the monthly periodicals was 2_s._; in 1833, 1_s._
11½_d._; and in 1853, 9½_d._ Can there be any doubt of the adaptation of
periodical literature, during these years, to the wondrous extension of
readers?

It appears from 'The London Catalogue of Periodicals,' published by
Messrs. Longman and Co., from which we derive the calculations we have
now made, that there are 56 _weekly_ periodicals. There were 21 in 1833.
But this list, which is adapted for what is known as 'The Trade,' is far
from including all the cheap sheets that are issued weekly from the
London press. There is a very large class of such publications that are
very rarely found in the shops of regular booksellers, either in town or
country. Many of these periodicals have the taint upon them of the names
of their publishers; and some of them a few years ago were infamous. We
do not find in the 'London Catalogue of Periodicals' the names of
several works, and of one especially, which present the most remarkable
example in our times of the extent to which cheap literature is offered
to the people in marts which are comparatively unknown to the upper and
middle classes. The facilities of communication have sent an
unparalleled quantity of weekly sheets through the land, at a rate of
cheapness which defies all competition of literary quality against
weight of paper and crowding of print. In every shop of every
back-street of London and the larger towns, where a tradesman in tobacco
or lollipops or lucifer-matches formerly grew thin upon his small amount
of daily halfpence, there now rush in the schoolboy, the apprentice, the
milliner, the factory-girl, the clerk, and the small shopkeeper, for
their 'London Journal,' 'Family Herald,' 'Reynolds' Miscellany,' and
'Cassell's Paper.' We have ascertained, from sources upon which we can
rely, that of these four sheets a million copies are sold weekly. Of the
contents of these, and other cheap works, we shall have presently to
speak.

When we look back at the various periods of English publication, and
consider how amazingly the aggregate number of books published in any
one period has increased, we must also regard the size and price of the
works published to form any adequate notion of the progress of cheap
literature. With a general reduction of price during the last twenty
years—with the substitution of duodecimos for quartos—and with single
volumes beyond all former precedent—there is little doubt that the
annual returns of the publishing trade, in all its departments (we
include newspapers), are double what they were in 1833. They were
estimated then at 2,500,000_l._ We should not be wide of the mark in
considering them at present to have reached to 5,000,000_l._ As the
silk-trade is now to be estimated, not by the number of ladies of
fashion who wear brocade on court-days, but of the millions who buy a
silk dress for ordinary use; so is the book-trade to be estimated, not
by the number of the learned who once bought folios, and of the rich who
rejoiced in exclusive quartos, but of the many to whom a small volume of
a living author has become a necessity for instruction or for amusement,
and who desire to read our established literature in editions well
printed and carefully edited, though essentially cheap. This number of
readers is constantly increasing, and as constantly pressing for a
reduction of price upon modern books of high reputation. Mr. Macaulay's
'Essays' were originally published at 1_l._ 16_s._; they then appeared
in one large volume at 1_l._ 1_s._ Messrs. Longman now advertise a
"People's Edition," in 7 monthly parts at 1_s._, and in numbers at
1½_d._ They do so, they say, "on the recommendation of correspondents
who have expressed their desire to possess them, but who have found the
existing editions beyond their means."

In turning over the leaves of the London Catalogue from 1816 to 1851, we
rejoice to see how much has been done in this direction, whatever may be
the greater amount yet to be done. Of the Poets—Byron, Campbell, Crabbe,
Coleridge, Moore, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, are obtainable at the most
reasonable prices, in collected editions. The elder Poets may be had in
the Aldine Series, and in new collections, now in course of publication.
The most popular of the recent Novelists—Scott, Dickens, D'Israeli,
Lytton, Thackeray—are in volumes whose cheapness introduces them to many
a fireside where the original editions would find no place. Wilkinson's
'Egypt,' Alison's 'History of Europe,' the works of Chalmers, and many
extensive theological books, have been reproduced at cheap rates. The
various 'Libraries' which have been published and are still
publishing—Bohn's Antiquarian, Classics, Classical, Ecclesiastical,
Illustrated, Scientific, and Standard; the Library of Entertaining
Knowledge; the Family Library; the Edinburgh Cabinet Library; Lardner's
Cyclopædia; Family Classical Library; Knight's Weekly Volumes; Jardine's
Naturalist's Library; Murray's Home and Colonial Library; Sacred
Classics; Christian Family Library; Smith's Standard Library; Tegg's
Standard Library; National Illustrated Library; Reading for the Rail;
Traveller's Library; Standard Novels; Chambers' Miscellany of Facts;
Papers for the People; Instructive Library; Weale's Rudimentary Series:
these, the more important of the various Collections that can be called
cheap, comprise no fewer than 1400 volumes. It would require an
enumeration which is the province of the future bibliographer, to show
how many separate books, in every department of knowledge, have been
issued during the last twenty years, with a distinct reference to the
means of the greatest number of readers. But the process here, as in
other cases, has necessarily been gradual. The general cheapening of
books must be gradual to be safe. The soundings of the perilous sea of
publishing must be constantly taken. There is no chart for this
navigation which exhibits all the sunken rocks and quicksands.

In addition to the Collections just enumerated, we have the new
Libraries, whether known as Cheap Series, Parlour Library, Pocket
Library, Railway Library, or Readable Books. These are, for the most
part, devoted to novels, old and new, and to American reprints. In this
form 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' rushed into a circulation which no book—with
the exception of the Bible and Prayer-Book, and perhaps some
Spelling-Book—ever before attained. Here Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is to
reach a popularity which no novelist ever before reached; and to be paid
"the extravagant sum of 20,000_l._ for the exclusive sale of his works
for the next ten years," as we are assured in 'The Times.' We hear of
enormous profits made, and fortunes realised, by these books. They meet
the eye on every railway stall and in every stationer's window,
glittering in green and crimson. But we also sometimes hear of large
stocks of unsaleable ventures, and of consequent evil-fortune, in spite
of one or two profitable undertakings. We have great confidence in the
largest sale of the cheapest edition of an attractive book by an author
of reputation; but we have no confidence in the large individual sale of
a great number of such distinct books, each jostling the other in the
race for popularity. We believe that the sale of many such works has
been much exaggerated. We hear that the margin of profit, as commercial
men say, is very narrow, and leaves little surplus to cover risk. Of one
thing we are clear. Whatever sum may be paid for a great name, the
natural sale of books of this class can afford very little for the
payment of copyright in ordinary cases. The paper, machine-work, and
binding, we are informed, of one of the shilling volumes will cost, for
an impression of 10,000, about 220_l._, and the trade expenses and
advertising will raise that cost to 250_l._ This is 6_d._ per copy. They
are sold wholesale at 8_s._ for 13 copies, which leaves a surplus of
about 60_l._ But the setting up the types and the stereotyping will cost
about 40_l._ There is 20_l._ then left for the publisher upon 10,000_l._
If he sells 20,000_l._ there is 80_l._ Where is the fund for the payment
of authorship? Is it to be assumed that a sale of 40,000 or 50,000
copies may at present be attained for such works under ordinary
conditions? If not, is the cheapest supply of reading for these kingdoms
to be kept up by piracies from America or republications of expired
copyrights? We doubt if this trade generally is in a healthy position:
at any rate, we fear that we must scarcely look to this class of books
for making "Cheap Literature" what it might be made by judicious
management—an instrument of great public good. Piracy from American
authors has been, within these few years, chiefly confined to the
shilling Railway Volumes; and it had a great success while all the
elements that combine to produce an anti-slavery enthusiasm were in
operation. But it has lost the charm of novelty, and the fashion of
American novels is now somewhat stale. In the mean while the United
States never relax in their course. In Mr. Carey's 'Letters on
International Copyright,' published at Philadelphia in 1853, we have
some details of the advantage of the fraudulent cheapness to the
American public. He says, Mr. Dickens sells 'Bleak House' in England for
21_s._ (5 dollars); comparing the book with copyright books in America,
of which the sale is large, he would expect 3 dollars under the
international system. The number of 'Bleak House' supplied to American
readers in newspapers and magazines, as well as in the book form, is not
less than 250,000, at half a dollar, giving for the whole 125,000
dollars. Mr. Dickens would charge 750,000 dollars:—

                                                         Dollars.

 Difference to the American public upon 'Bleak House'    625,000.

 Reckoning in the same way, the following differences are estimated:—

                                                         Dollars.
 Upon Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's last work, 166,000 copies   350,000
 Upon Mr. Macaulay's History            125,000   "      400,000
 Upon Sir A. Alison's History            25,000   "      500,000
 Upon Jane Eyre                          80,000   "       75,000
                                                         ——————-
                  Total difference on five books       1,950,000

This is a difference of 409,500_l._ sterling. Mr. Carey deduces from
these figures this logical consequence: "Under the system of
international copyright, one of two things must be done: either the
people _must_ be taxed in the whole of this amount for the benefit of
the various persons, abroad and at home, who are now to be invested with
the monopoly power, or they _must_ largely diminish their purchases of
literary food." He would not have a healthy cheapness, produced in both
countries by an open commerce and a fair competition. He would not have
a cheapness produced by the publishers of both countries reckoning upon
an extended market, and a consequent division of the first expenses of a
book. He would have a piratical cheapness—the cheapness of the smuggler
and the illicit distiller—"for the general interests of the American
people." This ingenious gentleman has a ready defence. There is no
copyright in the facts of a book. Copyright is given for the clothing in
which the body is produced to the world. Mr. Macaulay has contributed
nothing to positive knowledge. Mr. Dickens has gone into a large garden,
and made a bouquet of the flowers, although he paid no wages to the man
who raised them. He who makes a book uses the common property of
mankind, and all he furnishes is the workmanship. Mankind has,
therefore, a right to say to the authors, whenever they seek an
extension of their privileges, "Be content, my friends; do not risk the
loss of a part of what you have, in the effort to obtain more." Mr.
Carey is further obliging enough to tell us that in England authors,
with a few brilliant exceptions, are condemned to almost hopeless
poverty, which he attributes to our system of centralization. Why do not
the wealthy people of England give a shilling a head towards paying for
the copyright of books, instead of bringing the poverty of authors
before the world, and demanding from other countries an extension of the
monopoly they have at home? The people of England, through
centralization, have become so poor and wretched that there is no demand
for books, and no power to compensate the people who make them. Authors
there are badly paid and insolently treated. Science is in no request in
England, and hence the diminution of supply. In contrast with the
limited sale of English books at home is the great extent of sale here.
_Argal_, let the authors starve at home; why should we, the great
American people, tax ourselves for their aid? We give them _fame_, and
that is enough. Let not _our_ writers, adds this candid and modest
gentleman, desire to barter our great market for literature for one in
which Hood was permitted to starve, and Tennyson and others submit to
the degradation of receiving public charity in the shape of pensions.
The wretched English authors may come and live amongst us, and
participate in our advantages. American authorship is Belgrave Square;
let it not make a treaty with the Grub Street of England, to have a
dinner from our well-furnished tables. We think Mr. Carey, "Author of
Principles of Political Economy," has done service by this astounding
effrontery. If he reflected the mind of the Government or the people, we
should be hopeless of any attempt to unite England and America in the
protection of a common literature founded upon a common language. But
Mr. Carey does not reflect this mind. He does not even speak for the
great body of American authors or publishers. He speaks for the
proprietors of the newspapers, which, all over the Union, are filled,
week by week, by the piracy of modern English Literature, and especially
of English fiction. To keep up this robbery, writers and orators will
alike prostitute themselves to defend, unblushingly, what they know to
be a disgrace.

But in one point Mr. Carey is right. He shows us, upon representations
which we cannot doubt, that the works of popular authors, citizens of
the United States, and so protected as copyright, are sold in much
larger numbers than similar works in our own country, however cheap. How
is this? The American people are much more universally readers than the
English people. They are better educated. They have a Government that
considers it a duty to educate the young without distinction, and to
afford the adult every means of intellectual improvement. The American
Government has created a reading nation. Our Government has created a
people that rush to low casinos in the towns, and to sottish beer-shops
in the country. The American Government accords all honour to them who
have laboured in the enlightenment of the masses. Our Government wholly
passes over every such claim to recognition. It is of little
consequence, in the end, what Cabinets or Parliaments do for the advance
of education, or the encouragement of men of letters. But it is somewhat
unwise, to say the least of it, to provoke, by neglect and by injury,
comparison with a nation that cultivates the same language under
different institutions, and that can proclaim, in its energetic youth,
that it has raised up an intelligent people out of the great mental
inheritance to which our rulers have been faithless.

By injury? it will be said. The British Government may ignore letters,
undervalue writers, barter away its patronage upon ignorance and
incapacity—but assuredly it cannot attempt to inflict direct injury upon
literature and learning? And yet it does all this. The sale of
school-books in the United States has reached an almost fabulous extent.
Families have been raised to affluence by the enormous circulation of a
Spelling-book or a Dictionary. A successful Grammar is a fortune. He who
can produce sensible and amusing Reading-Lessons is better paid than a
Secretary of State. Does the Government bestow any gratuities upon such
services? Certainly not. But it does not discourage and annihilate them.
It does not, as our Government does, interfere with competition by
attempting to regulate prices. It does not do the silly thing which M.
Louis Blanc wished to do in France for "the organization of literary
labour." It has established no manufactory of school-books, produced
cheaply, by the tax-payers helping the production. It has no Board of
Commissioners, as we have, "to supply the National Schools in Ireland,
_and the public generally_, with works in harmony with an improved
system of education, cheap in price and superior in execution."[33] We
ask, what possible right has the State to produce such books, and sell
them in the open literary markets of this country, to the injury of all
who produce similar books by the fair workings of capital and labour?
School-books were formerly too dear; but as schools multiplied, cheaper
books than the old standard works came into the market, and many took
root and flourished. Much of this property has been destroyed by the
Government operation; which is not confined to 'Reading Lessons,' but
embraces 'Biographical Sketches of Poets'—'Selections from the
Poets'—'Epitome of Geographical Knowledge'—'Grammar,' 'Arithmetic,'
'Geometry,' 'Mensuration,' 'Agriculture,' 'Maps.' The compilers of these
books and maps are salaried state-servants; the books are printed at the
lowest contract; the usual trade allowances are withheld; profit does
not enter into price. A book of 17½ sheets demy, or 420 pages, bound in
cloth, is sold for _sevenpence_, as we learn from the Commissioners'
Catalogue. This is exactly the cost price for the paper, machine-work,
and binding, in the very cheapest market. There is nothing for
trade-management, and not one fraction for copyright. Commercial
competition is impossible. We say, this is a fraudulent cheapness. All
cheapness in books is fraudulent which sets aside a payment for literary
labour. This is the cheapness of piracies, whether here or in the United
States. It is a cheapness that, if carried out, as it might be by a
Government, would degrade literature to the lowest condition,
annihilating all invention and improvement. Once concede the principle
that the State has a right to produce educational books, except for the
supply of schools paid by the State—and even then the policy is very
doubtful—and there is no individual literary enterprise that may not be
paralyzed and destroyed by this new agency. In England, the only
commercial undertaking of the State is that of the Post Office. It is
conducted with a profit; it is conducted with a precision and cheapness
which really leave few things to be amended. There are especial reasons
why the conveyance of letters through the whole civilized world should
be the work of the State. No company, no individual, could grapple with
such a gigantic task. But is there any other branch of commercial
enterprise which the State could undertake with the slightest
benefit—without most serious injury? If the end sought is to employ
labour to a profit, individual enterprise will accomplish that end far
better than the State. If the object is to employ labour that shall be
unprofitable, who is to supply the deficiency in the funds that have
called into activity the profitable labour? There would indeed be the
equality of employments, but it would be the equality of universal
poverty. The skilled and the unskilled would be reduced to the same
level. There would be no prizes in the social wheel;—the blanks would be
something worse than the mere absence of superfluities.

[Footnote 32: The 'Classified Index' contains only about 40,000
references; while the number of books in the 'Catalogue' is 45,000. The
book referred to in the Index is only once mentioned, in whatever form
it has appeared. To equalize the number, we have added 10 per cent. to
each division of the Index, in our calculation.]

[Footnote 33: These are the words of an official puff, in 16 pages,
called 'An Analysis of the Irish National School-books.' A more impudent
document was never put forth by the Curlls of a past or present age. The
manufacturers of the Irish Reading Lessons pirated a copyright belonging
to the writer of this volume (occupying 47 pages, in 10 of their
Lessons), 'The Mineral Kingdom,' which was written by Mr. Leonard
Horner. Their 'Analysis' says, that these "most interesting facts and
reasonings relating to Organised Remains are extracted from the writings
of Buckland and other celebrated Geologists."]




CHAPTER VI.

Cheap Fiction—Penny Periodicals.


The Railway Libraries—by which generic term we mean single volumes,
printed in small type on indifferent paper, and sold mostly at a
shilling—are almost wholly devoted to novels, English or American.
Whatever be the quality of the fiction so published, we may ask, without
any general depreciation of such works, if the popularity of this class
of reading has not a tendency to indispose for other reading, however
attractive be the mode in which information, historical, critical, or
scientific, be presented; and is it not a necessary consequence that
books of another character than novels should be compelled to address
themselves to a smaller class of readers, and must, therefore, of
necessity be dearer? If this be true of the railway books, it is equally
true of the weekly sheets. The demand for fiction amongst the largest
class of readers has forced upon every weekly periodical the necessity
for introducing fiction in some form or other. The writers of eminence
cannot put forth their powers in this direction without charging a
higher price for their numbers than those in which inferior writers are
employed at low salaries. The higher price necessarily induces a smaller
sale. The dealers in cheap periodicals say, "you have no chance for a
sale unless you give _as much paper_ as the others give for a penny!" In
this respect, some of the more extensively circulated of these sheets
would appear to defy all reasonable competition. They are sold for
50_s._ per thousand; their paper and machine-work cost, at the very
least, 45_s._ Out of this 5_s._ per thousand they have to pay their
publishing expenses, their writers, their woodcuts, their composition,
their stereotype casts. It is a neck-and-neck race for a very doubtful
"plate;" and what may appear a slight addition to the weight of the
"riders," in the shape of another halfpenny a pound upon their paper,
would "distance" the greater number of them. When the popular estimate
of a publication is that of the square inches which it contains of
print, it requires no critical judgment to be assured that the amount of
genius or knowledge engaged in its production is not very great. Hence,
for the most part, a deluge of stories, that, to mention the least evil
of them, abound with false representations of manners, drivelling
sentimentalities, and impossible incidents. And yet they are devoured
with an earnestness that is almost incomprehensible. The moralist may
say—

  "England, the time is come when thou shouldst wean
    Thy heart from this emasculating food."

How is the weaning to be set about for this babyhood of the popular
intellect?

The insuperable obstacle to a successful competition with the existing
class of penny periodicals is their pre-eminence in _external_
cheapness. They were all founded upon the principle of attraction by low
price alone. They employed the meanest "slaves of the lamp" in their
production. Sheets came out double the size of any other penny sheet,
badly printed on the thinnest paper, but nevertheless they were the
largest sheets; their roots were thus planted in the popular earth. Some
who bought them turned away from their filth and their folly; others
welcomed these qualities. Gradually the sense of the better class of
artisans operated, whilst they continued their offences, to reduce their
number of customers. They changed their style; they became decent, but
they remained stupid. The weeds were kept down, though not rooted out,
in that garden: a few gaudy flowers were planted; fruit there was
little. They have maintained their hold, by their external cheapness,
against any attempt to produce a higher literature, with better paper
and print. They have beaten almost every competitor who has sought to
address _the same class_ of buyers with something higher, intrinsically
as cheap, but not so cheap to the eye. The unequal war is still being
waged.

In June, 1846, the last number of 'The Penny Magazine' was published.
Mr. Knight, who had been its editor from the commencement, in 1832, thus
writes in his concluding 'Address to the Reader,' after stating that
there then were published 14 three-halfpenny and penny miscellanies, and
37 weekly sheets, forming separate books:—"It is from this competition
that the 'Penny Magazine' now withdraws itself. Its editor most
earnestly wishes success to those who are keeping on their course with
honesty and ability.... He rejoices that there are many in the field,
and some who have come at the eleventh hour, who deserve the wages of
zealous and faithful labourers. But there are others who are carrying
out the principle of cheap weekly sheets to the disgrace of the system,
and who appear to have got some considerable hold upon the less informed
of the working people, and especially upon the young. There are
manufactories in London whence hundreds of reams of vile paper and
printing issue weekly; where large bodies of children are employed to
arrange types, at the wages of shirt-makers, from copy furnished by the
most ignorant, at the wages of scavengers. In truth, such writers, if
they deserve the name of writers, _are_ scavengers. All the garbage that
belongs to the history of crime and misery is raked together, to diffuse
a moral miasma through the land, in the shape of the most vulgar and
brutal fiction." This is a curious and instructive record. 'The Penny
Magazine,' popular as it once was, to the extent of a sale of 200,000,
could not contend with a cheapness that was wholly regardless of
quality; and it could not hold its place amidst this dangerous
excitement. The editor had his hands fettered by the necessity of
keeping up the purely instructive character of that journal. Without a
large supply of fiction it necessarily ceased to be popular. A French
writer, who laments over the "immondices" of the literature of Paris in
1840, calls for romances "appropriés par une imagination souple et
brillante au goût des classes laborieuses;" and he suggests the
principle upon which such works should be founded, viz. "L'étude des
mœurs populaires, entreprise par un esprit pénétrant, et dirigée vers un
but philosophique."[34] The "immondices" have for the most part vanished
from our English penny literature. The host of penny Newgate novels,
whether known as 'The Convict,' 'The Feast of Blood,' 'The Murder at the
Old Jewry,' 'Claude Duval,' 'The Hangman's Daughter,' and so forth, may
continue to be sold; but, as far as we can trace, there are no novelties
in this once popular literature of the gallows. Abominations, called
'Mysteries' and 'Castles,' still lurk in dark corners; but the bulk of
single Penny Novels, and the novels which "drag their slow length along"
in penny journals, are marvellously changed. The most prudish regard to
decency presides over every sentence and syllable. William the Conqueror
has lost the brief ignoble title by which the old Saxons designated
their oppressor, through a special interdict of the proprietor of one of
these papers; and a lady of doubtful character must be mentioned by no
more rugged name than that of a _belle amie_, which may be understood or
not. But the "études des mœurs populaires," and the "but philosophique,"
have not yet entered into the minds of the conductors of these elaborate
works. Their scenes are invariably laid in the lord's palace or the
right honourable's mansion; marriages are made at St. George's, Hanover
Square, and the diamonds are bought at Storr and Mortimer's. If a young
lady, who has the slight misfortune to be connected by the filial tie
with a convicted felon, has a quarrel with her juvenile lover, she
immediately rushes to the arms of an ancient baronet, who conducts her
the next morning to the altar of his parish church. Boileau said of
Mademoiselle Scudery, that she would never let her heroine get out of a
house till she had taken an inventory of all the furniture. So, for the
bewilderment of those who read these weekly novels by the one glimmering
candle upon the deal table, their sick ladies recline in easy chairs,
"astral" lamps diffuse their rich glow upon crimson curtains, and
aromatic perfumes fill the air from pastiles burning in miniature
castles of gilded porcelain. The style of these productions is
magnificent: with golden zones on the summits of the mountains, and
roseate tints edging the canopy of heaven; plants drooping with
voluptuous languor, and shining insects skimming the air, as if borne on
the wings of ardent passion. In all this we are speaking _au pied de la
lettre_. Johnson described three sorts of unnatural style—the bombastic,
the affected, and the weak. Most of these performances unite the three
qualities, and are equally satisfactory to the "love of imbecility,"
which Johnson thought was to be found in many. We have only seen one
penny journal which places its incidents, and somewhat adapts its
language, in consonance with the habits of the classes which these works
seek to interest. In 'The Leisure Hour,' issued by the Religious Tract
Society, we have an Australian story, with 'Sydney by Gaslight.' We are
now amongst convicts, and hear drunken shouts come out from miserable
huts. The success of this publication is considerable. Perhaps those who
really understand such matters may say of the writer of these laudable
attempts to imitate the homely style, something akin to what the great
Pierce Egan said of a fashionable novelist twenty years ago—"Ah! he's
very clever, but uncommon superficial in slang." Nevertheless, it is
satisfactory to find that a mean has been sought, in the quarter where
we might least have expected it, between the representations of humble
and even of low life which are corrupting, and those pretended pictures
of society which exhibit no life at all. In the number of 'The Leisure
Hour' for February 16, 1854, there is a clever woodcut of a night
auction at Sydney, which is as suggestive of a congregation of real
vulgar sellers and bidders, with the necessary accompaniments of gin and
tobacco, as might be connected with any of the exciting scenes of 'Life
in London' at any period. The pictures of the penny sheets which the
masses now greedily buy are quite genteel. This is something to reflect
upon. Some of the members of the Tract Society may think that "Chaos is
come again." We do not. This sort of subject will be attractive to the
better portion of male readers amongst the artisans, and especially
amongst the very large number who belong to "temperance societies;" but
for the girls, who devour the novels of the other penny journals,
certainly not. Those who have been watching the workings of the penny
literature are unanimous in their conviction that very few men read
these mawkish and unnatural fictions. The readers for the most part
belong, in point of cultivation, to the same class of females, who, half
a century ago, gave up their whole leisure—if they did not neglect every
domestic duty—for the ghosts and the elopements of 'The Minerva Press.'
The intelligence of the readers is the same, however widened the
attraction.

But, with all their bad taste, there is partial merit and manifest
utility in some portions of the best of these penny journals. 'The
Family Herald' has constantly a serious article of great good sense and
shrewdness. This paper, and one or two others, have pages of "Answers to
Correspondents," which, for the most part, contain useful information
and judicious advice. Real young ladies often pour their doubts into the
ear of this "Family" oracle, about love, and courtship, and marriage;
and, as far as we can judge, receive very safe counsel. In the whole
range of these things we can detect nothing that bears a parallel with
what used to be called "the blasphemous and seditious press." Neither,
although these papers do not wholly abstain from comment upon what is
passing in the world, can they be called newspapers. We see, however,
that the new trump of war is calling up again one or two of the old
class of unstamped violators of the law. In quiet times they cannot
flourish. They may be difficult to suppress,

  'Now all the youth of England are on fire.'

[Footnote 34: Frégier, 'Les Classes Dangereuses.']




CHAPTER VII.

Degrees of Readers—General Improvement—Newspaper Press—Newspaper Press
National—Agricultural Readers—General desire for Amusement—Supply of
real Knowledge.


Our readers can scarcely have failed to make for themselves the
deduction which naturally arises out of this survey of the progress of
popular literature—that there always have been, still are, and always
will be, various classes of readers and purchasers; and that the
invariable progress of knowledge and intelligence—from the learned to
the rich, from the rich to the middle classes, from the middle classes
to the multitude—has produced as invariably a corresponding change in
the number of books published, their quality, and their price. As the
rich began to gather knowledge, books ceased to be wholly adapted to the
learned or professional student; as the burgesses began to employ their
leisure in reading, books ceased to be dependent upon courtly influence;
as the multitude acquired the rudiments of instruction, books became
less conventional, and began to adapt themselves to all classes. But it
cannot, without a judicial blindness, be assumed that we are arrived at
that state in which there are no degrees of intellectual advancement. It
is said, to use the language of the most popular journal of our day,
that the masses "do not yet feel the assurance that, if they go in
thousands to the counters of the great publishing houses, as they
congregate around the more plebeian shops, they will get the exact
article they want, or what _they_ consider value for their money." Here
is the point. The masses, who are yet more imperfectly educated than
some of their own class, and most of the class above them, would not
consider, as they have never yet considered, solid and instructive
reading "value for their money." Unquestionably "books to please the
million must not only be good but attractive." The chief popular labour
of the last quarter of a century has been to convert the ponderous ores
of learning into the fine gold of knowledge. The multitude have been
reached in many directions; and the influences of "good but attractive"
books have penetrated where the books themselves have not yet had a
direct influence. But the multitude stand precisely in the same relation
to works of instruction, even the most attractive, as they do to
Mechanics' Institutes and Athenæums. In Manchester and its dependencies,
in 1851, there were 3447 members of these Institutions, and 1793 pupils
in classes.[35] But the great mass of the youth of both sexes in
Manchester were frequenting the Casinos. Here they neither drank, nor
danced, nor gambled: they listened to recitations and comic songs at a
penny an hour. They wanted mere amusement, and they found it. It is the
same with the great bulk of the readers of cheap books. "It is most
worthy of note," says the writer just mentioned, whose anxiety for cheap
literature we honour and appreciate, "that, when there has been no doubt
of the substantial value of the commodity issued from the Row or
Albemarle Street, the sale of the books has been by no means equivocal."
Certainly not. Macaulay and Layard have found large numbers of
purchasers, and will find them, in their cheap form. But are these
purchasers what are called, in the same breath, "the multitude"—"the
needy"? Not at all. Even the most successful of the periodical works
above a penny—'Chambers' Journal,' 'Household Words,'—reach only the
advanced guard of this class. Mr. Dickens collected around him at
Birmingham such an audience as never before waited upon an author. He
read his beautiful, humanizing 'Christmas Carol' to two thousand
working-men. They felt every point—they laughed, or they grew serious,
with understanding. But are we to suppose that the whole mass of the
mechanical classes—men, women, and children—throughout the kingdom,
would rush by millions to buy 'The Christmas Carol' at a penny or two—at
a price that would compensate in fame what was wanting in profit? Its
sterling merit—its nature, its simplicity, its purity, its quiet
humour—require a far higher amount of taste and cultivation to
appreciate than the immaturity of mind to which the coarseness and
imbecility of the penny journals are acceptable. An author of less
popular acceptation published a poem at a farthing, but we never heard
that he employed a steam-press in its production. The multitude have
their own weekly literature, and we have seen what it is. Are the novels
of the author of 'Pelham' to be speedily found in every cottage of the
farm-labourer, and in every garret of the Lancashire cotton-spinner? The
time may come, but it is not as yet. If a despotic government, in the
desire to disseminate knowledge, were to follow the example which our
free Government has set with regard to the 'School-books published by
authority of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland,' they
might produce sound popular literature as cheap again as the most
adventurous of publishers. But if they left competition free to what
they considered unsound knowledge—if they permitted the lowest-priced
Fiction, however bad or indifferent, to circulate without their unequal
competition—we believe the free-traders would beat the monopolists in
point of numbers; and it would be found an easier task, even with every
commercial disadvantage of price, to "tickle and excite the palate" than
"strengthen the constitution."

Do such considerations as these make us hopeless of the steady progress
of a sound as well as cheap popular literature? Decidedly no. There is
improvement all around us. The halfpenny ballad of Seven Dials is not
yet extinct; but let the collectors look sharply about them, for that
relic of the chap-books, with the woodcuts that have served every
generation, will soon be gone. In its place has come the decent penny
book of a hundred songs. The shades of Scott, and Moore, and Campbell
will not quarrel with this new popularity. There are "flash" songs; but
they are not for the penny buyers. Thackeray has described the dens in
which these abominations are current. The whole aspect of the humbler
press has changed within these few years. Unquestionably the people have
changed. Visit, if you can, the interior of that marvellous human
machine, the General Post-Office, on a Friday evening, from half-past
five to six o'clock. Look with awe upon the tons of newspapers that are
crowding in to be distributed through the habitable globe. Think
silently how potent a power is this for good or for evil. You turn to
one of the boxes of the letter-sorters, and your guide will tell you,
"this work occupies not half the time it formerly did, for everybody
writes better." General education furnishes the solution of the
otherwise doubtful origin of the improvement, in all the more manifest
characteristics of improvement, of all popular literature.

In 1801 the annual circulation of newspapers in England and Wales was 15
millions, and in Scotland 1 million. In 1853 the annual circulation of
England and Wales was 72 millions, and of Scotland 8 millions, that of
Ireland being also about 8 millions. In September, 1836, the stamp-duty
on newspapers was reduced to one penny. Immediately previous to the
reduction the annual circulation of newspapers in Great Britain was
about 29 millions. The increase, therefore, in seventeen years, has been
51 millions. We have cast up the twenty-two folio pages of the 'Return
of the number of Newspaper Stamps, at one penny, issued in 1853,' and we
find these results, as derived from the stamps, excluding supplements,
used by 913 newspapers in England, 18 in Wales, 146 in Scotland, and 121
in Ireland, making a total number of 1198. But it must be borne in mind
that about one-half of the publications in this return, called
newspapers, are not newspapers in any sense of the word. Every
publication can be stamped as a newspaper, for which the proprietor and
printer give the necessary legal securities; and thus hundreds of
price-currents, catalogues, and circulars—and many literary journals
which are only partially stamped, and which none but political pedants,
calling for a definition, term newspapers—find their way into this
Official Return. There are, in round numbers, 600 newspapers proper in
the United Kingdom. There are in London 14 daily papers, 6 twice and
thrice a week, and 71 weekly; and about 500 provincial papers in the
United Kingdom. Of the London Daily Papers, about 24 millions are
annually circulated, of which the 'Times' has the lion's share of 14
millions. There are four weekly papers, published at the surpassingly
cheap rate of threepence, which circulate 13 millions. The 'Illustrated
London News' has a circulation of 4 millions; and eleven other leading
weekly papers issue, annually, 6 millions. There are 6 religious papers,
which have a circulation of about a million and a quarter. Thus, 36
London publications engross 48 million stamps, out of 71 millions. Of
the Provincial English Press there are 26 great towns which number 80
papers, and these 80 consume 13 millions of stamps. We have, therefore,
only 10 millions more to distribute amongst the entire newspaper press
of England. The Welsh annual circulation is under a million.

We have abstracted from the Official Return the number of stamps used
annually by papers published in great cities and towns, especially the
large marts of commerce and manufactures:—

   Towns.     Number of separate      Aggregate annual
                   papers.                  sale.

 Birmingham           3                    871,000
 Bristol              4                    596,075
 Cambridge            2                    216,500
 Carlisle             2                    263,500
 Derby                4                    249,700
 Doncaster            2                    178,500
 Exeter               3                    398,315
 Hereford             2                    278,000
 Hull                 2                    347,000
 Leeds                3                  1,107,875
 Leicester            4                    240,500
 Liverpool            8                  1,702,588
 Manchester           3                  1,741,300
 Newcastle            4                    684,542
 Norwich              3                    419,950
 Nottingham           3                    324,000
 Oxford               3                    252,000
 Plymouth             4                    309,500
 Preston              3                    469,500
 Sheffield            3                    580,950
 Stamford             1                    571,826
 Stafford             1                    384,000
 Sunderland           4                    191,142
 Wolverhampton        3                    181,500
 Worcester            3                    320,052
 York                 3                    465,200
                      —                    ———————
                     80                 13,245,015

The altered tone and ability of newspapers would open too wide a subject
to be here dwelt upon in detail. One of the weekly threepenny papers has
attained an enormous sale—a sale of 4½ millions annually—by discarding
what was offensive to public morals, under the management of a man of
letters who has a reputation to maintain. The Satirists and Paul Prys
are gone. The extension of the mental labourers for newspapers, in
proportion to the extension of the demand, has followed the same course
as that of every other production of the press, from the days of the
first printers. At the beginning of the present century the local
newspapers "had no editorial comments whatever,"[36] and scarcely an
original paragraph. The conductors of our 500 provincial journals are
now watching for every particle of news in their own districts;
reporting public meetings; waiting for electric telegraphs; pondering
upon grave questions of social economy; and, to the best of their
judgment, fairly representing the course of events. How much of this
intelligent and honourable spirit they owe to the London Newspaper Press
is not for us to decide. We believe the newspaper influence upon the
people to be for good, because the Newspaper Press is National. A
witness, giving evidence before the Select Committee on Newspaper
Stamps, 1851, said, "If the Committee were to look at 'The Weekly
Dispatch' twenty years ago, its general character was very much worse
than it is now. Then it was a so-called radical, almost a blasphemous,
scurrilous, and contemptible paper, but with an enormous circulation.
Now other papers have so much improved, that 'The Weekly Dispatch' has
been compelled, in its own defence, very materially to change its tone."
But what improved the "other papers," and compelled them to seek honest
means of "an enormous circulation"? We answer—The advanced intelligence
of the people. Books had begun their own work in the career of public
enlightenment. Now, newspapers and books are working together for the
same object. It is desired by some to make newspapers supersede books,
by abolishing the stamp, and thus converting all popular literature into
news. We have no faith in the process. An American told the Committee on
Stamps that "the only knowledge which the working-classes would
appreciate is contained in newspapers; they address themselves much more
to politics than to science or literature." The witness had his own
country in his mind, where the assertion is to some extent true. But in
the American newspapers, almost universally, there is something more
than "politics." All over the Union the newspapers are filled, week by
week, by the piracy of modern English literature, especially of English
fiction. Whether the "working classes" read the politics, and neglect
the literature, maybe doubted. If politics are independent of science
and literature, the study is worth little. It is degrading. We doubt if
this disposition, carried to excess, will make a wise people, or a happy
people. The opinion of an American is worth little upon such a question
in England. There is no parallel in the condition of the people of the
United States. The geographical position, and the separate constitutions
of individual states, necessarily demand many newspapers. Thus the
newspapers of the United States, even with their large circulation, are
essentially local. The English papers, we repeat, are national. The
papers of the capital are the papers of the empire. They chiefly, with
their wonderful organization, supply the material for the twenty-seven
millions of these islands, and the other millions of our race spread
over the habitable globe in our colonies, to learn, to consider, to know
their rights, to perform their duties. Could this unequalled instrument
of knowledge be kept efficiently at work, while every petty printer of
every parish was ready to make a venture for a thousand penny
subscribers to his Argus or his Luminary, without incurring any of the
prodigious cost of a London daily morning paper? If the time should come
when the land should be filled with penny newspapers, it would be the
same with newspapers as it is now with the weekly unstamped sheets.
Quantity, not quality, would be the criterion of excellence. The lower
grade of literary labourers would be multiplied tenfold. Unscrupulous
employers would rise up on every side, who would go for the "immondices"
if decency failed; and for disorder if tranquillity were growing
unprofitable. The rich would be set against the poor, and the poor
against the rich. Those who now organise strikes by their eloquence
would work more effectually with their pen; and employers would not be
without their organs to defend harshness and oppression. Sects would
denounce each other in weekly journals, to be sold by the pew-opener;
and the Snoreum Vestry would enter upon a wordy war with their
neighbours of Muggleton. Let us "study to be quiet."

It is proposed to establish penny newspapers for the especial benefit of
the agricultural labourers. How are they to be circulated? If postage is
to be paid in addition to the price, there is little gained over the
present system; for there are published, weekly, about 300,000
newspapers at 3_d._ If they do not go by post, how are they to reach the
scattered hamlets? This is really the difficulty, with regard to all
periodical literature, in raising up agricultural labourers into a
population of readers. It is satisfactory to know that the keys to
knowledge—the power of reading and writing—are being as freely imparted
to the rural population as to those of towns. There is progress. In 1841
the proportion, to all marriages, of those who signed the
marriage-register with marks, was—men, 33 per cent.; women, 49 per cent.
In 1853 the proportion was—men, 30 per cent.; women, 45 per cent. In
1863 the effect of the education of the last ten years will be
tested upon the same principle. But it is to be noted, in the
Registrar-General's Returns for 1853, that in the Agricultural
South-Eastern Division, as well as in other agricultural districts,
there was slight difference in the proportion between males and females;
while in the North-Western Manufacturing Division the number of females
who could not write was nearly double that of the males. In the
South-Eastern Division, comprising the rural parts of Surrey and Kent,
Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire, in the cases of 11,537 marriages, 3457
men and 3749 women signed with marks. In the North-Western Division,
comprising Cheshire and Lancashire, in the cases of 24,877 marriages,
8729 men and 15,443 women signed with marks. There cannot be a greater
proof of the influence of a resident clergy, looking diligently to
National Schools, and perhaps stimulated by the zeal of dissent in the
same useful direction, than this fact. It makes us hopeful of the
eventual advance of the rural population to the condition of a reading
people. But the question always arises—What are they to read? What will
they read? Is the edge of the cup not only to be honeyed, but is the
whole cup to be filled with sweets? How are we to find the mean between
what is dry and what is useless—what is plain and what is childish? A
witness of well-known intelligence told the Committee on Newspaper
Stamps that in his village he tried the experiment of reading 'The
Times' to an evening-class of adult labourers, and that he could not
read twenty lines without feeling that there were twenty words in it
which none of his auditors understood. He wanted, therefore, cheap
newspapers, that would be so written as not to puzzle the hearers or
readers by such words as "operations," "channel," or " fleet." For
ourselves, we would rather endure as much book ignorance as we endured
in the first quarter of this century, than believe that knowledge might
be promoted by writing down to the intelligence of the least instructed
class; and that they could be raised up into enlightenment upon this
plan of Mr. Hickson, to have newspapers that would reach their minds
like "school-primers, containing words of one or two syllables." Such
partial enlightenment would be general degradation.

Upon looking around upon all the various phases of Cheap Literature
which now present themselves in these kingdoms, we cannot shut our eyes
to the fact that, in proportion as the number of readers has increased,
the desire of the mass of the population has been rather for passing
amusement than solid instruction. There is one very obvious reason for
this. The people of this country work harder than any other people, not
only from the absolute necessity of the competition around them, but
through the energy of their race. It cannot, therefore, in the nature of
things, be expected that much of the reading of all classes should be
other than for amusement. Further, when we consider how recent has been
the training for any reading amongst a large proportion of those who
have become readers, we can scarcely look for a great amount of serious
application in their short leisure after a hard working-day. The
entertainment which is now presented to all, whether it be in the shape
of a shilling novel or a penny journal, is not debasing; it may enfeeble
the intellect, but it does not taint it. How are we to deal with this
universal desire for amusement? Not, we think, by any direct efforts at
its counteraction, either by individuals or societies. We have before us
three volumes, just completed, of a most excellent penny weekly
publication of 'The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,' entitled
'The Home Friend.' It is cheap, even by comparison with the cheapest of
the class. It consists of twenty-four octavo pages, and is excellently
printed on superior paper. The old patronising style of such works is
given up. It deals with grave subjects in an agreeable spirit. In the
preface to the first volume, the editor rejoices that the Society is
enabled to publish a work attainable by "the tenant of the lowliest
cottage, which a century ago could only be purchased by the opulent
few." But it is not a matter of congratulation that this work, like
others professing the same aims, has not had any great success, from the
absolute want of buyers. It was thought that the members of the Society
could have commanded a great weekly circulation amongst their
neighbours. The average sale never went beyond 12,000. What, then, is to
be the course of the real friends of popular instruction? We think it
is, to let the existing cheap literature purify itself. We have got
beyond the scurrilous stage—the indecent stage—the profane stage—the
seditious stage. Let us hope that the frivolous stage, in which we are
now to some extent abiding, will in time pass on to a higher taste, and
a sounder mental discipline. "Confidence," said Chatham, "is a plant of
slow growth." So is taste; so is a love of knowledge for its own sake.
Let us make real instruction as attractive as we can; but let us have no
compromises under the pretence of gilding the pill. Study is study, and
amusement is amusement. Let the people learn, and learn they will, in
time; but let us abandon all the old, childish attempts of cheating them
into learning. The circle of those who are attaining sound knowledge is
steadily widening. Already, as the circle has widened, the means of
acquiring information have been offered to "the masses," and even to
"the needy," at a rate of cheapness quite unequalled by any previous
attempts to make sound knowledge popular. We now especially allude to
'The Penny Cyclopædia'—a work of which the literature and engravings
alone cost the publisher, as he has recorded, the large sum of
42,000_l._ Those who affect to believe that nothing has been done for
the cheapening of books, should recollect that, before the existence of
this Cyclopædia, no great work of reference of this nature could be
obtained under 40_l._ But 'The Penny Cyclopædia,' large as was its sale,
was not profitable; it involved an enormous loss. The writer, in his
'Struggles of a Book,' has stated that the paper-duty operated as a
burthen upon 'The Penny Cyclopædia' to the extent of 32,000_l._ He
adds,—"Had that sum of 32,000_l._ been actually saved to me, I should
not have been a pound richer by the publication of 'The Penny
Cyclopædia.' But with the saving I should not have been to that amount
poorer." Compared with the vast outlay, 'The Penny Cyclopædia' was set
at too low a price for the probable demand. The class of buyers for
instruction was not large enough to carry off 40,000  copies, which
would have yielded adequate profit. The very word "Penny" was then
repulsive, and implied something low, as apprehended by the rich vulgar.
Moreover, the book occupied eleven years in its issue, and its sale fell
from 50,000  at the beginning to less than 20,000 in the end. No work
that occupied more than four or five years in its completion was ever
successful in this country. In the publication of 'The English
Cyclopædia,' which is founded upon 'The Penny Cyclopædia,' a more
prudent course has been adopted. The new book is issued in four
divisions, which will form four separate Cyclopædias of Geography,
Natural History, Sciences, and Biography, each of which will be
completed in little more than two years from its commencement. Comparing
the two books—'The Penny' and 'The English'—we can readily see the vast
augmentations of knowledge during twenty years that render the complete
re-modelling of such a work absolutely necessary. In every branch of
exact knowledge this re-modelling has become indispensable; and upon
other works of instruction many earnest labourers are so engaged.
Publishers cannot now afford to let their books, especially their
educational books, remain without improvement. It is thus that, in spite
of the tendency to light reading, the supply of real knowledge is kept
up. Those who find an ally of knowledge in the purer and more ennobling
fiction, such as our literature, past and present, abundantly supplies,
are gradually brought into the extending circle of earnest readers. The
great region beyond is still little cultivated; but even there the
subsoil-plough has been at work, and there is some grain amidst the
weeds. The weeds cannot be rooted out by any sudden husbandry.

[Footnote 35: Hudson's 'Adult Education.']

[Footnote 36: 'Life of Edward Baines;' a valuable record, by his son and
successor, of an honest and able worker in building up the independence
of the provincial press.]






CHAPTER VIII.

Free Libraries—In Towns—In Rural Districts—Influences of the best Books.


It is difficult to point out a direct practical remedy for much that is
injurious in our cheapest popular literature; and especially any remedy
that could be supplied by the State. We cannot cure folly by enactments,
however we may try to repress crime. "These things will be, and must be;
but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists
the grave and governing wisdom of a State. To sequester out of the world
into Atlantic and Utopian policies, which never can be drawn into use,
will not mend our condition, but to ordain wisely as in this world of
evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably."

This noble sentence, from Milton's 'Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing,' suggests some remarks which, however painful to utter, no one
who thinks honestly upon the subject of popular enlightenment can
disguise. There is NO "grave and governing wisdom" in the English
State—there is NO desire "to ordain wisely"—in any matter connected with
the educational advancement of the people. The greatest discouragement
in the first stage,—the most niggardly support in the second,—have been
given to the education of the young. With the exception of Schools of
Design, which, however useful, have a very limited object, the education
of the adult has been retarded by every possible legislative effort,
direct or indirect. In 1849 a Select Committee of the House of Commons,
to inquire into "the best means of extending the establishment of
libraries, freely open to the public, especially in large towns, in
Great Britain and Ireland," came to the unanimous resolution that "our
present inferior position is unworthy of the power, the liberality, and
the literature of the country." An Act had been passed in 1845, by which
Town Councils, in Municipal Boroughs having 10,000 inhabitants and
upwards, in England and Wales, were empowered to establish _Museums_ at
their own discretion. In 1850, seconding the Report of the Committee of
1849, a Bill was brought in "for enabling Town Councils to establish
_Public Libraries_ and Museums," in towns of the like large population.
The proposal was damaged by the device of requiring that a poll of the
burgesses should first have been duly taken on the question, and that a
rate of one halfpenny in the pound should be the maximum to be levied by
a majority of votes. The consequence was obvious. Those of the
rate-payers who had the low shopkeeping jealousy of extending knowledge
to those they presumed to call beneath them, rejected the proposition
for establishing Free Libraries at Birmingham and at Exeter. In the mean
time the difficulties have been surmounted in four great Lancashire
towns, Manchester, Liverpool, Salford, Bolton, where 50,000_l._ have
been raised, chiefly by voluntary subscription, for Free Libraries and
Museums; and 60,000 volumes have been purchased for the open and
unrestricted use, in the libraries and at home, of every member of the
community, from the highest to the humblest. The experiment has been
completely successful. One of the most satisfactory results has been
that, amidst the hardest worked population in the world—those who come
from their factories with the honourable stain of labour on their hands
and brows—the most exemplary care has been taken of the books borrowed.
If Free Libraries are good for the greatest marts of industry, are they
not good for the smaller? Mr. Ewart, the unwearied mover in this object,
brings in a Bill in the Session of 1854, to extend the Act of 1850 to
towns of less population and to the metropolitan boroughs; and, further,
to remedy a great defect in the former Bill, that the money raised by
the halfpenny rate might be applied to purchase books as well as to
provide buildings. On the 5th of April the House of Commons throws out
this Bill, under the most frivolous pretexts; the real object being to
truckle to the prejudices of those who in all times have systematically
opposed the progress of knowledge, when there is a chance of extending
it to _the people_ universally.

  "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
  England hath need of thee."

It is in connexion with all we have said in the preceding pages, about
the character and tendency of cheap popular literature, that we have
looked forward with hope to the general establishment of Free Libraries
in town and country. Mechanics' Institutes, and Literary and Scientific
Institutions, valuable as they have been, do not embrace the class for
which they were originally intended. According to returns prepared by
Dr. Hudson, Secretary of the Manchester Athenæum, in 1851, there were
720 such institutions, with 120,000 members, and they possessed 815,000
volumes of books. But the same zealous person honestly tells us that the
majority of Literary Institutions comprise professional men, the higher
shopkeepers, and the managers of large firms; that the clerk and the
shopman will not go where they have a chance of being looked coldly on
by their employers or superiors in service, and resort to Mechanics'
Institutes, where their presence effectually drives out the fustian
jackets. To remedy this was one of the especial objects of Free
Libraries, where books should be liberally provided for _all_, whether
for reference or home reading. A large majority of the borrowers of
books from the Manchester Free Library belong to the operative class. Is
it not of some importance that the warehousemen, packers, artisans,
machinists, mill-hands male and female, assistants in shops male and
female, dressmakers,—should have access to the standard works of English
literature, and the current books of the modern press? Is there no great
beneficial effect to be produced by the 77,232 volumes that in the first
year were issued from the same Manchester Free Library, comprising—in
theology, 1130; philosophy, 845; history, 22,837; law, politics, and
commerce, 839; sciences and arts, 4319; and general literature,
including poetry, fiction, essays, and periodicals, 47,262? Is it of no
importance that, in the same period, 61,080 volumes have been used in
the reference department? How long are those who are apt to think that

  "The wealthiest man among us is the best,"

to influence the better thoughts, and control the higher impulses, of
those who have no vain fears that knowledge, however widely extended,
may produce evil to society? The object of the general diffusion of
knowledge is not to render men discontented with their lot—to make the
peasant yearn to become an artisan, or the artisan dream of the honours
and riches of a profession—but to give the means of content to those
who, for the most part, must necessarily remain in that station which
requires great self-denial and great endurance; but which is capable of
becoming not only a condition of comfort, but of enjoyment, through the
exercise of these very virtues, in connexion with a desire for that
improvement of the understanding which, to a large extent, is
independent of rank and riches. It is a most fortunate circumstance, and
one which seems especially ordained by Him who wills the happiness of
his creatures, that the highest, and the purest, and the most lasting
sources of enjoyment are the most accessible to all. The great
distinction that has hitherto prevailed in the world is this,—that those
who have the command of riches and of leisure have alone been able, in
any considerable degree, to cultivate the tastes that open these common
sources of enjoyment. The first desire of every man is, no doubt, to
secure a sufficiency for the supply of the physical necessities of our
nature; but in the equal dispensations of Providence it is not any
especial portion of the condition even of the humblest among us who
labours with his hands to earn his daily bread, that his mind should be
shut out from the gratifications which belong to the exercise of our
observing and reflecting faculties. View the agricultural labourer as we
have been too long accustomed to see him—a rude untutored hind. His most
ordinary occupations place him amongst scenes highly favourable to the
cultivation of some of the purest and most peaceful thoughts. The
general introduction of agricultural machinery and agricultural
chemistry has an inevitable tendency to demand a race of skilled
labourers, instead of unintellectual serfs. But how do we deal with the
labourer and his family? We educate the boys and girls up to a certain
point; we give them the rudiments of knowledge; we are now asked to go
further, and to teach them "common things," by which we understand,
chiefly, the practical applications of science. But, once off the
school-form, the rural boy is to find his evening amusement in the
beershop, and the girl to make her way to the next town, in search of
some gaiety that ends fatally. Home has no charms for these. Books might
be some attraction, but how are they to be got? There are books which
well-meaning people will lend—but they are for the most part of an
exclusively serious character. None of the fair features of knowledge
are presented to them; no "perpetual feast of nectared sweets." They are
offered the Sunday sermon without the Sunday holiday. It is clear that
this system will not do; and the most sensible in the country have
abandoned it. We have before us a catalogue of the 'Windsor Park
Library, under the patronage of His Royal Highness the Ranger.' This
Park Library, established by Prince Albert, is for the use of all those
in the local employ of the Crown. These comprise a population of about
300, of which 100 are subscribers to this library, at sixpence a
quarter. It is self-governed, with the assistance of the curate of the
Park, who has the right of approval of the books given or purchased.
Here is an agricultural population of a mixed character—keepers,
bailiffs, woodmen, ploughmen, and field and forest lads. This
hard-working and comfortable population is not crammed with "harsh and
crabbed" knowledge. There are good books in the library—divinity,
history, biography, natural history—but there is abundance of poetry and
fiction. The result is that the library is most popular; that it has a
visible influence on the families of the subscribers; that the
population thus intellectually raised, in the power of happily employing
their small leisure, are a consented home-keeping population. There are,
no doubt, peculiar advantages in their position; but the intelligence
which is thus cultivated amongst their dependants by the highest in the
land would ultimately raise every rural population, if the obvious means
were not too commonly neglected.

We have spoken strongly about the indifference of the State to the
establishment of Free Libraries in populous towns. But even those who
have most strenuously urged this measure have said nothing about such
institutions in rural districts. We ask, why not?  The necessity is as
great, perhaps greater. A ready access to instructive books, and amusing
books, is the desire which most naturally suggests itself to the young
people who have left the schools which the State recognizes, however
imperfectly. The desire cannot be gratified except through some
occasional benevolence. Thus the neglected mind first grows
listless—then corrupt. Dangerous excitement begins the career which ends
in habitual degradation. There could be nothing easier that to make the
National School a Free Library also. The room is vacant after the hours
of work; the schoolmaster is the ready librarian. It would be the truest
economy in parishes to provide such Free Libraries out of the ordinary
rates, if Parliament were to give them an enabling power. Gratuitous
vaccination, preventive measures against contagion, are cheerfully paid
for. Why not a payment of the most limited amount—a farthing on each
pound of rental—to keep the people sober, to render them domestic, to
raise them gradually but surely to the capacity of discharging those
labours with skill which have been formerly intrusted to mere animal
power? It would be well, we think, to make the experiment.

In thus advocating the general establishment of Free Libraries, we
believe that we are pointing out the only practicable course for
counteracting the tendencies of _cheap periodical literature_. The
principle which is now carried, as we have endeavoured to show, to a
dangerous and ridiculous excess, is to give the greatest possible
quantity at the lowest possible price. The principle is destructive to
the employment of the highest class of literary labour. It involves the
natural mediocrity or positive baseness of that quality which is not
visible on the surface. The counteracting principle is to make the best
_books_ accessible to all; and not to imagine that the evil is not
counteracted if those who have access to the best books prefer the
entertaining to the severe. One of the most eminent cultivators of the
highest knowledge, Sir John Herschel, has told us a great truth in this
matter, which ought never to be forgotten. Defending what he calls "the
invaluable habit of resorting to books for pleasure," as the main desire
of those who "have grown up in a want of instruction, and in a
carelessness of their own improvement," he says—"If we would generate a
taste for reading, we must, as our only chance of success, begin by
pleasing.... In the _higher and better class_ of works of fiction and
imagination, duly circulated, you possess all you require to strike your
grappling-iron into their souls, and chain them, willing followers, to
the car of advancing civilization."

We have said that cheap literature has got beyond its scurrilous,
indecent, profane, and seditious stages. Six years ago it exhibited
every one of these qualities. We think it will not return to them. But
there is an element of danger which, if not so revolting, is far more
formidable. It is that element which has for its materials the disputes
between labour and capital. There is ignorance on both sides of this
question. There is indifference on the part of the State. A period of
great and increasing commercial prosperity has softened down many of the
coarser and fiercer aspects of these disputes; but in no case have they
been reduced to an intelligible philosophy on the part of employers or
of workmen. Let the prosperity of trade be interrupted by war; let our
markets be narrowed; let profits necessarily fall, and wages with them;
and what lessons, we may ask, have been acquired of mutual dependence
and mutual interests, of conciliation and of brotherhood, in the season
which was favourable to instruction? Political economy has been too long
taught in a onesided spirit; but, nevertheless, its great truths remain
unaltered. Are the people unwilling to search them out? Practically, are
they reluctant to apply them? They know, right well, that profits and
wages are distinct matters; that one belongs to capital and the other to
labour; that if they are to have both they must become capitalists. They
try, upon the smallest, and therefore the most hazardous scale, to unite
labour and capital by cooperation. They cannot try the principle upon a
larger scale, through the evil agency of our laws of partnership. The
Legislature inquires into the matter, and there leaves it. The
Legislature complains that strikes are ruinous to all concerned, and
does nothing to bring about that union—a union of feelings as well as
interests—which would destroy strikes. The Legislature says that the
people have no economical or historical knowledge, and forbids Free
Libraries. Sixty years ago, Burke calculated that there were eighty
thousand _readers_ in this country. If Burke had lived in times when
there are fourteen hundred thousand buyers of cheap weekly sheets, whose
readers probably amount to five millions, would his great philosophical
mind have said, as modern legislation says, Do whatever you can to
prevent this reading going in a right direction; you cannot stop
reading, but you can keep the cheap literature debased, by denying the
people access to the great original thinkers who would lift them out of
their intellectual twilight into a brighter day? Would Edmund Burke have
given such counsel? Would he have shrunk from admitting the people to
the safe and enduring equality of a participation in the common property
of mind? He would have said, as he said in 1770—"All the solemn
plausibilities of the world have lost their reverence and effect." He
would now have added—Build your future authority and your respect, not
upon ignorance, but upon knowledge.

For the proper supply of such Free Libraries, we have a new class of
Books rising fast into importance—Books of established value, carefully
edited—the Poets, the Historians, the Critical and Philosophical
Writers. The great Divines will not be neglected in this good work.
There cannot be cheaper books of this class than Mr. Murray's 'British
Classics,' than Mr. Bohn's various series, than several Collections of
the Poets now in course of publication. We rejoice to see _well-printed_
books for the Library appear at half the old prices; and to know that
there is some chance of the eyes of a generation not prematurely
perishing under the inflictions of a typography inferior to the ordinary
newspaper. Free Libraries would create a large and certain demand for
such works. With the majority, the fame of our great writers is little
more than the scrolls upon their tombs. Let our glorious Literature no
longer be, for the People,

  "The Monument of banish'd Minds."


THE END.




 Now Ready, 2 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 10_s._
 ONCE UPON A TIME.
 BY CHARLES KNIGHT.

 "_The old bees die, the young possess the hive._"
 SHAKSPERE.


"'Once upon a Time.' This familiar nursery phrase is employed here to
designate a collection of miscellaneous papers of various length, having
only this in common, that they all refer to the olden time, from the
wars of the Roses, down to the days of Queen Charlotte and Fanny Burney.
They relate to all manner of topics—old folks, old manners, old books;
they present us with a mass of curious facts, tricked out here and there
with pleasant and plausible fiction; and, take them all in all, they
make up as charming a pair of volumes as we have seen for many a long
day."—_Fraser's Magazine_.

"'Once upon a Time' is worth possessing."—_Examiner._

"This varied, pleasant, and, what is not always the case, informing
collection of Essays, is in part a selection from the writings of a man
who has done more to popularise literature than perhaps any other man of
the day. The volumes consist of a number of notices illustrative of
manners or archæology, arranged in chronological order."—_Spectator._

"Mr. Charles Knight's entertaining little work 'Once upon a Time' is
full of various knowledge agreeably told."—_Quarterly Review._

"This pleasant gallery of popular antiquarianism, alternately making our
heart yearn upon the good times that are gone never to return, and
causing us to wonder and to rejoice at the mighty strides the world has
made in the road of improvement."—_John Bull._

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.


 LONDON:
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
 AND CHARING CROSS.




 50, ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON.
 _January, 1854._

 MR. MURRAY'S
 GENERAL LIST OF WORKS.


ABBOTT'S (REV. J.) Philip Musgrave; or Memoirs of a Church of England
Missionary in the North American Colonies. Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._


ABELL'S (MRS.) Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon during the First
Three Years of his Captivity on the Island of St. Helena. _Second
Edition._ Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._


ABERCROMBIE'S (JOHN, M.D.) Enquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers
and the Investigation of Truth. _Fourteenth Edition._ Fcap. 8vo.
6_s._6_d._

—— Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. _Ninth Edition._ Fcap. 8vo. 4_s._

—— Pathological and Practical Researches on the Diseases of the Stomach,
the Intestinal Canal, the Liver, and other Viscera of the Abdomen.
_Third Edition._ Fcap. 8vo. 6_s._


ACLAND'S (REV. CHARLES) Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of
India, Illustrated with Numerous Anecdotes. Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._


ADDISON'S (JOSEPH) WORKS. A New Edition, with a New Life and Notes. By
Rev. WHITWELL ELWIN. 4 Vols. 8vo. _In the Press._


ÆSCHYLUS. (The Agamemnon and Choephoræ). _A New Edition_ of the Text,
with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Philological, for the Use of
Students. By Rev. W. PEILE, D.D., Head Master of Repton School. _Second
Edition._ 2 Vols. 8vo. 9_s._ each.


ÆSOP'S FABLES, for Old and Young. A New Version. By Rev. THOMAS JAMES,
M.A. Illustrated with 100 Woodcuts, by JOHN TENNIEL. Post 8vo. 2_s._
6_d._


AGRICULTURAL (THE) JOURNAL. Published (half-yearly) by the Royal
Agricultural Society of England. 8vo. 10_s._


AMBER-WITCH (THE). The most interesting Trial for Witchcraft ever known.
Edited by Dr. MEINHOLD. Translated from the German by LADY DUFF GORDON.
Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._


ARABIAN NIGHTS. A New Translation. By E. W. LANE. With Explanatory
Notes. 600 Woodcuts. Medium 8vo. 21_s._


ARAGO'S (M.) Historical Eloge on James Watt. Translated from the French,
with Notes by J. P. MUIRHEAD. Portrait. 8vo. 8_s._ 6_d._


ARTHUR'S (LITTLE) History of England. By LADY CALLCOTT. _Seventeenth
Edition._ Woodcuts. 18mo. 2_s._ 6_d._


AUNT IDA'S Walks and Talks; a Story Book for Children. By a LADY.
Woodcuts. 16mo. 5_s._


ADMIRALTY PUBLICATIONS (THE); Issued by direction of the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty:—

1. A MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY, for the Use of Officers in H.M. Navy
and Travellers in General. By Various Hands. Edited by SIR J. F.
HERSCHEL, Bart. _Second Edition._ Post 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._

2. AIRY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE AT GREENWICH. 1836 to 1847.
Royal 4to. 50_s._ each.

3. —— APPENDIX TO THE ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1836, 1837, 1842, 8_s._
each; and 1847, 14_s._ Royal 4to.

 CONTENTS.

 1836.—Bessel's  Refraction Tables. Tables for converting Errors of R.A.
 and N.P.D, into Errors of Longitude and Ecliptic P.D.

 1837.—Logarithms of Sines and Cosines to every Ten Seconds of Time.

 Table for converting Sidereal into Mean Solar Time.

 1842.—Catalogue of 1439 Stars.

 1847.—Twelve Years' Catalogue of Stars.

4. —— MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1840 to 1847. Royal
4to. 50_s._ each.

5. —— ASTRONOMICAL, MAGNETICAL, AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, 1848,
49, & 50. Royal 4to. 50_s._ each.

6. —— REDUCTION OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF PLANETS. 1750 to 1830. Royal 4to.
50_s._

7. —— LUNAR OBSERVATIONS. 1750 to 1830. 2 Vols. Royal 4to. 50_s._ each.

8. BERNOULLI'S SEXCENTENARY TABLE. _London_, 1779. 4to. 5_s._

9. BESSEL'S AUXILIARY TABLES FOR HIS METHOD OF CLEARING LUNAR DISTANCES.
8vo.

10. —— FUNDAMENTA ASTRONOMIÆ: _Regiomonti_. 1818. Folio. 60_s._

11. BIRD'S METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING MURAL QUADRANTS. _London_, 1768. 4to.
2_s._ 6_d._

12. —— METHOD OF DIVIDING ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS. _London_, 1767. 4to.
2_s._ 6_d._

13. COOK, KING, and BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. _London_, 1782.
4to. 21_s._

14. EDWARDS ON THE COMPOSITION OF METALS FOR REFLECTING TELESCOPES. 8vo.
2_s._ 6_d._

15. EIFFE'S ACCOUNT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN CHRONOMETERS. 4to. 2_s._

16. ENCKE'S BERLINER JAHRBUCH, for 1830. _Berlin_, 1828. 8vo. 9_s._

17. GROOMBRIDGE'S CATALOGUE OF CIRCUMPOLAR STARS. 4to. 10_s._

18. HARRISON'S PRINCIPLES OF HIS TIME-KEEPER. PLATES. 1767. 4to. 5_s._

19. HUTTON'S TABLES OF THE PRODUCTS AND POWERS OF NUMBERS. 1781. Folio.
7_s._ 6_d._

20. LAX'S TABLES FOR FINDING THE LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE. 1821. 8vo.
10_s._

21. LUNAR OBSERVATIONS at GREENWICH. 1783 to 1819. Compared with the
Tables, 1821. 4to. 7_s._ 6_d._

22. —— DISTANCES of the MOON'S CENTRE from the PLANETS. 1822, 3_s._;
1823, 4_s._ 6_d._ 1824 to 1835. 8vo. 4_s._ each.

23. MASKELYNE'S ACCOUNT OF THE GOING OF HARRISON'S WATCH. 1767. 4to.
2_s._ 6_d._

24. MAYER'S THEORIA LUNÆ JUXTA SYSTEMA NEWTONIANUM. 4to. 2_s._ 6_d._

25. —— TABULÆ MOTUUM SOLIS ET LUNÆ. 1770. 4to. 5_s._

26. —— ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE AT GOTTINGEN, from 1756 to 1761.
1826. Folio. 7_s._ 6_d._

27. NAUTICAL ALMANACS, from 1767 to 1855. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ each.

28. —— SELECTIONS FROM THE ADDITIONS up to 1812. 8vo. 5_s._ 1834-54.
8vo. 5_s._

29. —— SUPPLEMENTS, 1828 to 1833, 1837 and 1838. 8vo. 2_s._ each.

30. —— TABLE requisite to be used with the N.A. 1766. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._

31. —— _Second Edition, enlarged._ 1781. 8vo. 5_s._

32. —— _Third Edition, corrected._ 1802. 8vo. 5_s._

33. POND'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1811 to 1835. 4to. 21_s._ each.

34. RAMSDEN'S ENGINE for DIVIDING MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS. 4to. 5_s._

35. —— ENGINE for DIVIDING STRAIGHT LINES. 4to. 5_s._

36. SABINE'S PENDULUM EXPERIMENTS to DETERMINE THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.
1825. 4to. 40_s._

37. SHEPHERD'S TABLES for CORRECTING LUNAR DISTANCES. 1772. Royal 4to.
21_s._

38. —— TABLES, GENERAL, of the MOON'S DISTANCE from the SUN, and 10
STARS. 1787. Folio. 5_s._ 6_d._

39. TAYLOR'S SEXAGESIMAL TABLE. 1780. 4to. 15_s._

40. —— TABLES OF LOGARITHMS. 4to. 3_l._

41. TIARK'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS for the LONGITUDE of MADEIRA.
1822. 4to. 5_s._

42. —— CHRONOMETRICAL OBSERVATIONS for DIFFERENCES of LONGITUDE between
DOVER, PORTSMOUTH, and FALMOUTH. 1823. 4to. 5_s._

43. VENUS and JUPITER: OBSERVATIONS of, compared with the TABLES.
_London_, 1822. 4to. 2_s._

44.  WALES' AND BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1777. 4to. 21_s._

45. WALES' REDUCTION OF ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE IN THE SOUTHERN
HEMISPHERE. 1764-1771. 1788. 4to. 10_s._ 6_d._


AUSTIN'S (MRS.) Fragments from German Prose Writers. Translated with
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—— Translation of Ranke's Political and Ecclesiastical History of the
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—— Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000.
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—— Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. _Second Edition._ 8vo. 9_s._ 6_d._

—— Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on some of its
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—— Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the Industry, the Science, and the
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