The year 1480 saw a considerable change in Caxton's methods of printing. Hitherto he had been content to print his books without signatures, although these were generally in use abroad, but their obvious utility appears to have impressed him, and henceforward he always printed them. The earlier books were of course signed, but the signatures were written in by hand, a very laborious process compared with setting them up with the type, and the greater clearness of the printed letter must have been an advantage to the bookbinder. About this time also he began to decorate his books with illustrations, a concession perhaps to popular taste, for his own inclination seems to have led him more to the literary than the artistic side of book production.

Another matter also may have helped to bring about this change, the settlement of a rival printer in London. Two other presses had before this started in England, one at Oxford in 1478, and one at St. Alban's about a year later, but their distance rendered them little dangerous as rivals, while the nature of their productions was mainly scholastic and little suited to the popular taste. But with a press setting up work some two miles away matters were quite different. There was no knowing what it might not print.

John Lettou, this first London printer, came apparently from Rome, bringing with him a small, neat gothic type, which had already been used in that city to print several books. To judge from his name, he was a native of Lithuania, of which Lettou is an old English form. He was certainly a practised workman, and his books are very foreign in appearance, and quite unlike the work of any other early English printer.

Caxton's first piece of work in 1480 was a broadside Indulgence, issued by John Kendale by authority of Sixtus IV., to all persons who would contribute towards the defence of Rhodes, which was being besieged by the Turks. The copy in the British Museum, which is the only one at present known, is filled in with the names of Symon Mountfort and Emma, his wife, and is dated the last day of March. Another example which was in existence about 1790, but has now disappeared, was filled in with the names of Richard and John Catlyn, and dated April 16th. This Indulgence begins with a wood-cut initial letter, the first to be used in England.

John Kendale, in the proclamation of Edward IV. of April, 1480, which relates to this appeal for assistance, is styled "Turcopolier of Rhodes and locum tenens of the Grand Master in Italy, England, Flanders, and Ireland," and he was at a later date implicated in a plot against the King's life. He is the subject of the earliest known existing contemporary English medal, which was struck in 1480. No sooner had Caxton issued this Indulgence, which is printed in the large No. 2* type, and very unsuitable for that kind of work, than the rival printer, John Lettou, issued two editions printed in his small, neat type. This attracted Caxton's attention, and he immediately set to work on a new small type, No. 4, which came into use soon afterwards.

Two books only in this new type are without signatures, so that they may presumably be taken to be the earliest; these are a Vocabulary in French and English, and a Servitium de Visitatione Beatae Mariae Virginis. The first is a small folio of 26 leaves, of which the first is blank, and consists of words and short phrases in the two languages, arranged in opposite columns. It is an uninteresting book to look at, but must have been useful, for it was reprinted in the fifteenth century both by Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, and also in the early sixteenth. Four copies are known, in Bamburgh Castle, Ripon Cathedral, the Rylands Library, and an imperfect copy in the Duke of Devonshire's library.

The second book, the Servitium, has, I think, been always wrongly described. All that now remains of it are seven leaves in the British Museum, the last being blank; and the whole book was considered to have consisted of a quire of eight leaves, the first being wanting. The Servitium was a special service intended to be incorporated into the Breviary and Missal. The Pope had announced it in 1390, but it was not until 1480 that the Archbishop of Canterbury received from the Prolocutor a proposal to order the observance of July 2d as a fixed feast of the Visitation, "sub more duplicis festi secundum usum Sarum, cum pleno servitio." The book would therefore contain the full service for the day itself, the special parts for the week days following (except the fourth which was the octave of SS. Peter and Paul), and the service for the octave. Almost the whole of the principal service, which would have occupied a considerable space, is wanting, so that it may be assumed that the book consisted originally of at least two quires, or sixteen leaves. An edition of the Psalter must have been printed about this time, and is perhaps the first book in which Caxton made use of signatures; it is at any rate the only one, with the exception of Reynard the Fox, in which he went so far wrong as to necessitate the insertion of an extra leaf in one quire. This book, a quarto of 177 leaves, has a handsome appearance, as it is printed throughout with the formal church-type No. 3, the only complete book in which this type alone is used. The only copy known is in the British Museum, to which it came with the Royal Library, having belonged at one time to Queen Mary, whose initials are on the back of the binding.

An edition of the Book of Hours of Salisbury use was printed about the same time in the same type, but nothing remains of it now except two fragments found in the binding of a Caxton Boethius in the Grammar School at St. Alban's, and since purchased by the British Museum. It was a quarto of the same size as the Psalter, and a full page contained 20 lines.

On the 10th of June, 1480, Caxton finished his first edition of the Chronicles of England, a folio of 182 leaves, which, as he says in his preface, "Atte requeste of dyverce gentilmen I have endevourd me to enprinte." Though mainly derived from the ordinary manuscript copies, the history has been brought down to a later date, and this continuation may very well have been written by Caxton himself. In August of the same year, the Description of Britain was issued. It is taken from Higden's Polycronicon, and was clearly intended to form a supplement to the Chronicles, with which it is commonly found bound up. More copies of it appear to have been printed than of the Chronicles, for it is found also with the second edition of the Chronicles, though it was not reprinted.

John Lidgate's poem, Curia Sapientiae, or The Court of Sapience, a poem in seven-line stanzas, containing descriptions of animals, birds, and fishes, with a survey of the arts and sciences, was published about this time. It is a folio of 40 leaves, of which the first and last two are blank. Three copies only are known, all of which are in public libraries.

Early in 1481 Caxton finished his translation of The Mirror of the World, and it must have been printed immediately after. The work was a commission from his friend Hugh Bryce, a fellow-member of the Mercers' Company, and who must often have met Caxton on his official visits to Bruges. In this book for the first time the printer made use of illustrations. These are of two kinds. The first consists of little pictures, rudely designed and coarsely cut, of masters engaged in teaching their pupils various sciences, or of single figures engaged in scientific pursuits. These are original and introduced by Caxton. The second series are diagrams more or less carefully copied from the MSS. In his prologue he says that there are twenty-seven figures, "without whiche it may not lightly be understande." Curiously enough, he himself goes astray, for in the first part, which should contain eight diagrams, he puts the second and third in their wrong places and omits the fourth. The nine diagrams of the second part are wrongly drawn, and in some cases misplaced, owing to the original text having been misunderstood. The diagrams of the third part are most correct, but although ten are mentioned, only nine appear.

An interesting point about these diagrams is, that they have short explanations written in them in ink, and in all copies where these inscriptions are found they are in the same handwriting. Oldys, who first drew attention to this peculiarity, supposed the handwriting to be that of Caxton himself, and though this is not impossible, it is more probable that this simple and monotonous task would be done by one of his assistants.

The History of Reynard the Fox was translated by Caxton in 1481 from the Dutch edition printed at Gouda in 1479 by Gerard Leeu, a printer who later on at Antwerp reprinted some of Caxton's English books. The story of Reynard was extremely popular and widely spread, yet it appears that no manuscripts exist with the story in the form given by Caxton. Five copies of this book are known; one of them, the fine copy which was in the Spencer collection, is part of the spoil obtained from Lincoln Minster. A mistake of the printer necessitated the insertion of a half printed leaf in all copies between leaves 48 and 49.

On the 12th of August, 1481, Caxton issued a translation of two treatises of Cicero, De senectute and De amicitia, and a work of Bonaccursus de Montemagno, entitled De nobilitate. The translation of the first two into French was made by command of Louis, Duke of Bourbon, in 1405, by Laurence de Premierfait, and the last by Jean Mielot. The English translation seems to have been made by Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, at the desire of Sir John Fastolfe, for whom his son-in-law, Scrope, a kinsman of Tiptoft, had translated the Dictes or Sayengis. Cicero apparently did not appeal so much to the popular taste as such stories as Reynard, so that it is now one of the commonest of Caxton's books, some twenty-five to thirty copies being known.

On the 20th of November, in the same year, appeared another romance, The History of Godfrey of Bologne, or The Conquest of Jerusalem, translated by Caxton from the French. Almost every copy known of this book is imperfect, but there is a beautiful example in the possession of Colonel Holford. It was Edward the Fourth's own copy, and at the end of the fifteenth century had come by some means into the possession of Roger Thorney, a mercer of London and a patron of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde, who printed, at his request, his edition of the Polycronicon. After various changes of ownership, it came into the possession of a noted collector, Richard Smith, and at his auction in 1682 was bought by the Earl of Peterborough for the not excessive sum of eighteen shillings and two pence.

About this time two more illustrated books were issued, a third edition of Burgh's Cato parvus et magnus, and a second edition of the Game of Chess.

The Cato contains two wood-cuts out of the set made for the Mirror of the World. It is a folio of 28 leaves, of which the first was blank, and is wanting in the two known copies, those in St. John's College, Oxford, and the Spencer collection.

The Game of Chess contains twenty-four illustrations, but the wood-cuts used number only sixteen, for many served their purpose twice. The first cut is of the son of Nebuchadnezzar, named Evilmerodach, described in the text as "a jolly man without justice, who did do hew his father his body into three hundred pieces." Most of the remainder are pictures of the various pieces.

The suggestion which has sometimes been made that Caxton's wood-cuts were engraved abroad is quite without foundation. They are very often copied from those in foreign books, but their very clumsy execution would be well within the capacity of the veriest tyro in wood-engraving. Mr. Linton suggested that they might have been cut in soft metal, but as the blocks when found in later books often have marks clearly showing that they had been injured by worm-holes, this conjecture is untenable.

As with all illustrated books, most of the remaining copies of the Game of Chess are more or less imperfect. The dated books of 1482 are two in number, and both historical; these are Higden's Polycronicon and the second edition of the Chronicles of England.

The first was finished on the 2d of July, and is a large, thick folio of 450 leaves. The work was originally compiled by Ralph Higden in the fourteenth century from various earlier sources, and was translated into English in 1387 by John of Trevisa, chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley. The whole of this Caxton revised, and continued the chronicle up to the year 1460, this continuation 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. A copy which belonged to Tutet contained the inscription, "Presens liber pertinet ad Willelmum Perde emptus a Willelmo Caxton, Regio impressore vicessimo Novembrio anno Regis Edwardi quarti vicessimo secundo." This would be November 20, 1482, immediately after the issue of the book.

The printing of the second edition of the Chronicles was finished on October 8, 1482. It agrees exactly with the first edition, and curiously enough, almost the same number of copies are known, though none are quite perfect.

The Pilgrimage of the Soul came out on June 8, 1483, during Edward the Fifth's short reign. It was an adaptation by Jehan de Gallopes from the larger work of Guillaume de Deguilleville, translated into English by Lidgate. Five copies are known, of which the finest is in the British Museum.

I traced out some time ago the history of two copies of this book, which is worth mentioning as showing the extraordinary manner in which Caxtons were mutilated and made up. About the year 1750 there were in existence two copies, A and B. A had two leaves in the middle, 52 and 53, taken from B, and after these leaves had been taken B came into the possession of W. Herbert, the bibliographer. A still wanted one leaf at end; B wanted three at the beginning, the two taken from the middle, and the leaf at the end.

In 1814 B belonged to Heber, the celebrated collector, who parted with it to Lord Spencer in exchange for some other books. In the same year Lord Spencer obtained a duplicate last leaf from the British Museum, which he added to this copy B.

In 1819, at the "White Knights" sale, Lord Spencer bought copy A, took out the last leaf from B and inserted it in A, thus making A practically complete. B was then sold as a duplicate, repurchased by Heber, and is now in the splendid library formed by Mr. Christie Miller at Britwell Court.

Fortunately in these days collectors are beginning to recognize that such doctored and made-up books are of little value or interest compared to genuine even if imperfect copies. Like paintings which have been "restored," the charm is gone. A few wealthy buyers who acquire libraries as part of the suitable furniture of a great house, and to whom the name and fine appearance of a rare book is all that is necessary, keep up such books to a fictitious value, but their day is slowly but surely passing and giving way to intelligent appreciation.