Caxton

“ I am sure Mrs. Caxton will never think of such a thing, sir," said my father, almost indignantly; "she's much too good a wife to behave so. Once in a way it is all very well; but twice—and as it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days: I, too, who can only write cuspide duriuscula,—and the baker coming twice to me for his bill, too! The Ilithyiae, are troublesome deities, Mr. Squills."
"Who are the Ilithyiae?" asked the accoucheur.
"You ought to know," answered my father, smiling,—"the female daemons who presided over the Neogilos, or New-born. ”

“ Caxton was skillful with skillets, and knew how to build and bank fires with great precision, and economy of effort. But surely some kindlier guardian could have been found for Peter and Susan, some guardian less harsh, self-centered, and downright mean.
In the rust-red desert camps were gruff, friendly, grizzled-bearded men who would have taken delight in dangling both children on their knees. In the camps were men who would have said: "Hello, Susan! Hello, Tommy! Isn't it a grand day for hiking? ”

“ Caxton, "except to make it stronger. If he were the right sort of man, he would not have you do so. There is no rule that we should make other people's wishes our standard of right."
"But aunt Caxton, I have done Mr. Carlisle grievous wrong. O, I feel that!—"
"Yes. What then?"
"Am I not bound to make him all the amends in my power?"
"Short of doing further wrong. Keep right and wrong always clear,
Eleanor. They never mean the same thing." ”

“ Caxton's master died before he had finished his apprenticeship, so he had to find a new master, and very soon he left England and went to Bruges. There he remained for thirty-five years. In those days there was much trade between England and Flanders (Belgium we now call the country) in wool and cloth, and there was a little colony of English merchants in Bruges. There Caxton steadily rose in importance until he became "Governor of the English Nation beyond the seas." As Governor he had great power, and ruled over his merchant adventurers as if he had been a king. ”

“ The Lord himself says, Come."
"Aunt Caxton, I understand, I think; but I do not feel; not anything but fear,—and desire."
"This is the mere statement of truth, my dear; it is like the altar with the wood laid in readiness and the sacrifice—all cold; and till fire falls down from heaven, no incense will arise from earth. But if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."
"I am a poor creature, aunt Caxton!" said Eleanor, hiding her face again. And again Mrs. Caxton's arm came tenderly round her. ”

“ All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord."
"But aunt Caxton," said Eleanor, who felt herself taken down a little, as a secure talker is apt to be by a manner very composed in his opponent—"it is surely the habit of refined persons in these times not to get excited—or not to express their feelings very publicly?"
"A very good habit," said Mrs. Caxton. "Nevertheless I have seen a man—a gentleman—and a man in very high standing, in a public assembly, go white with anger and become absolutely speechless, with the strength of passion, at some offence he had taken." ”

“ I would not have descended from that turncoat Stanley to be lord of all the lands the earls of Derby can boast of. Sir, in loyalty, men fight and die for a grand principle and a lofty passion; and this brave Sir William was paying back to the last Plantagenet the benefits he had received from the first!”
“And yet it may be doubted,” said I, maliciously, “whether William Caxton the printer did not—”
“Plague, pestilence, and fire seize William Caxton the printer, and his invention too!” cried my uncle, barbarously. ”

“ I had not found my tongue before we had ascended a broad flight of stairs under the portico, passed a spacious hall adorned with statues and fragrant with large orange-trees, and, entering a small room hung with pictures, in which were arranged all the appliances for breakfast, my companion said to a lady, who rose from behind the tea-urn: “My dear Ellinor, I introduce to you the son of our old friend Augustine Caxton. Make him stay with us as long as he can. Young gentleman, in Lady Ellinor Trevanion think that you see one whom you ought to know well; family friendships should descend.” ”

“ On his arrival in England, Caxton settled in Westminster, within the precincts of the Abbey, at the sign of the Red Pale, and from thence, on November 18th 1477, he issued The Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers, the first book printed in England. It was a folio of 76 leaves, without title-page, foliation, catchwords or signatures, in this respect being identical with the books printed in conjunction with Mansion. Type 2, in which it was printed, was a very different fount to that which is seen in the Recuyell and its companion books. ”

“ Let no man set his hand to aught that shall go upon our presses save only that which is assured truth. In this way shall our venture ever be pleasing to the Most High, and I do verily believe,”—and here Caxton’s voice sank lower as if he were thinking aloud,—“in the long run, it will be mighty good for our circulation.” ”

“ And you forget, sir,—the saffron bag!”
Squills leaped up, and wiping his eyes with one hand, gave me a sounding slap on the shoulder with the other.
“I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such sentiments are a proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of order. When a man’s tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, he slips through misfortune like an eel.” ”

“ Thus you perceive that our natural position was one highly creditable to us, proving the soundness of our finances and the gentility of our pedigree,—of which last more hereafter. At present I content myself with saying on that head that even the proudest of the neighboring squirearchs always spoke of us as a very ancient family. But all my father ever said, to evince pride of ancestry, was in honor of William Caxton, citizen and printer in the reign of Edward IV.,—Clarum et venerabile nomen! an ancestor a man of letters might be justly vain of. ”

“ Caxton's master, Large, was sheriff in 1430 and lord mayor in 1439–40; he lived in a great house in the Old Jewry, and showed the esteem in which he held Caxton, who was still in his indentures at the time of his death (24 April 1441) , by bequeathing him twenty marks. Very soon after his master's death the young apprentice left England for Bruges, where the English mercers had a large commercial connection, and he ‘contynued for the space of xxx. yere’ in the Low Countries. ”

“ Mr Caxton.—"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius! It is not every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it, if he have. But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?"
Pisistratus, stirring the fire in great excitement.—"My title! my title!—what shall be my title!"
Mr Caxton, thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most didactic of tones.—"From a remote period, the choice of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. ”

“ Yet in this wild country Caxton learnt his English, “a broad and rude English, as is anywhere spoken in England.” And in after-life, apologising to his readers for the plain unadorned style which his “simple cunning” uses, he speaks of his early education, “whereof I humbly and heartily thank God, and am bounden to pray for my father’s and mother’s souls, who in my youth sent me to school.” His education, we know, was carried on in London at a later date, but it must have been begun in some very primitive parochial school of Kent, where his companions could only have been rustics. ”

“ Caxton, admiringly; “but still, as to this round piece of silver, don’t we go back to the most barbarous ages in estimating so highly such things as have no real value in themselves,—as could not give us one opportunity for instructing our minds?”
“Could not pay for a pair of boots,” added Uncle Jack.
“Or,” said Mr. Squills, “save you one twinge of the cursed rheumatism you have got for life from that night’s bivouac in the Portuguese marshes,—to say nothing of the bullet in your cranium, and that cork-leg, which must much diminish the salutary effects of your constitutional walk.” ”

“ The whole of this Caxton revised, and continued the chronicle up to the year 1460, this continuation [pg 54] being the only important piece of Caxton's own composition which we possess. This book shares with the Golden Legend the position of being the commonest of Caxton's books, and like it is unrepresented by a single absolutely perfect copy, the blank leaves, five of which occur throughout the book, being always in part wanting. ”

“ It appears that Caxton continued his employment at Westminster, with considerable success, until his death, which occurred in 1491. He seems to have been extensively patronised, and to have been a person of great moral worth. He is supposed to have lived to beyond the age of eighty. ”

“ Festivalis, the Ars Moriendi, and the Fifteen Oes, his only extant book printed with borders, and it was afterwards used by Wynkyn de Worde.
Caxton died in the year 1491, after a long, busy, and useful life. His record is indeed a noble one. After spending the greater part of his life in following the trade to which he was apprenticed, with all its active and onerous duties, he, at the time of life when most men begin to think of rest and quiet, set to work to learn the art of printing books. ”

“ In the prologue to Charles the Great, Caxton thanks his parents for having given him a good education, whereby he was enabled to earn an honest living, but unfortunately does not tell us where the education was obtained, though it would probably be at home, and not in London, as some have suggested. After leaving school Caxton was apprenticed to a London merchant of high position in the year 1438. This is the first actual date in his life which we possess, and one from which it is possible to arrive with some reasonable accuracy at his age. ”

“ The Lords Rivers and Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester had been one of Caxton’s warmest patrons, but that nobleman was no more at the time in which printing is said to have been actually introduced into England.] were accomplished in all the “witte and lere” of their age. Princes and peers vied with each other in their patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his brief reign, spared no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention destined to transmit his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all succeeding time. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Whether William Caxton’s father was himself a citizen and freeman, and if so, how the son came to be born in the Weald of Kent, is not known. As the boy was apprenticed to the very richest merchant in the city, and admitted a member of the wealthiest company, it is quite certain that his people were of some consideration in the city: to be received into the house of a great merchant as an apprentice, to be admitted into the Company of Mercers, proves beyond a doubt City connections of an honorable kind. Either Caxton’s father or his grandfather must have been a man of weight and distinction. ”

“ But for the sake of the public! mankind! of our fellow-creatures! Why, sir, England could not get on if gentlemen like you had not a little philanthropy and speculation."
"Papoe!" exclaimed my father; "to think that England can't get on without turning Austin Caxton into an apple-merchant! ”

“ Having now disposed of Caxton’s only rival, let us turn to Caxton himself. It would, I think, be out of place here to recapitulate however shortly the history of Caxton’s early life, since it has been so fully and excellently done in that standard book Blades’s Life of Caxton. What is more to our purpose is to pass on to the time when, as an influential and prosperous man, he laid the foundations of his career as a printer. ”

“ Caxton; "but I cannot wonder at his having doubted. There are a great many questions about going such a journey, my dear."
"And did the lady refuse to go?" said Eleanor bending over her work and speaking huskily.
"I do not think he ever asked her. I almost wish he had."
"Almost, aunt Caxton? Why he may have done her the greatest wrong. She might like him without his knowing it; it was not fair to go without giving her the chance of saying what she would do."
"Well, he is gone," said Mrs. Caxton; "and he went alone. I think men make mistakes sometimes." ”

“ The locket was still on the counter after Vivian had left, when the lady, coming forward, observed it, and saw the names on the surface. She had been struck by the peculiar tone of the voice, which she had heard before; and that very day Mr. Gower received a note from Lady Ellinor Trevanion, requesting to see him. Much wondering, he went. Presenting him with the locket, she said smiling, “There is only one gentleman in the world who calls himself De Caxton, unless it be his son. Ah! I see now why you wished to conceal yourself from my friend Pisistratus. ”