Specimens of English literature from the 'Ploughmans crede' to the ...

';IX.WILLIAM CAXTON.A.D.I47I.A COLLECTION of Specimens like the present, would be incompletewithout a genuine extract from a book printed by WilliamCaxton. He was bom in the Weald of Kent about 1422, anddied in 1491 or 1492. He is chiefly celebrated for introducingprinting into England in 1477, but he was also an author, and anindefatigable translator, there being upwards of twenty-two foliovolumes among those printed by him, which he himself translatedfrom French, Dutch, or Latin originals. The first book he printed(and the first ever printed in the English language) was his translationof a work entitled * Le Recueil des Histoires de Troye,compose par RaouUe le Feure [Fevre], chapellein de Monseigneurle due Philippe de Bourgoigne, en I'an de grace mil cccclxiiii[1464]. This was a compilation from various romances on thesubject of the Trojan war, made somewhat after the fashion ofSir Thomas Malory's ' Morte Darthur'; the chief foundationbeing the Latin romance of Guido de Colonna. Caxton madethe translation of the first two parts in 1468 and 147 1, and thatof the third part shortly afterwards. The whole ' Recuyell' musthave been printed before 1477, probably at Bruges. The extract(from a copy in the Cambridge University Library) is taken fromnear the end of the volume, and narrates the actual taking ofTroy and the death of Priam. It may be compared with Surrey'stranslation of Virgil's second iEneid, printed belovv'. I givethe punctuation of the original, that the reader may see exactlywhat it is like.