NOTE ON CAXTON'S ABRIDGMENT
Not many copies of this book exist. There is a perfect copy in the British Museum— of which this is a transcription, another belonging to Lord Spencer of Althorp, besides one in the National Library at Paris, and a copy in the Bodleian from which the last page is missing.
Judging from the colophon Caxton has evidently had some French translation of the Speculum Artis Moriendi before him; which he has abridged, all save the prayers. The date given is 1490, that is to say the year before his death, and it is of interest to find that a year later, the actual year of his death, he is making a still further abridgment of this same treatise. There is no title page, and his No. 6 type is the only one used.
It is worth noting that in the complete version of The Craft of Dying there is no exhortation which quite corresponds to the one which Caxton places at the end of this abridgment, and at the beginning of his shorter tract. It occurs, however, both in the block-book, and in Gerson. In the block-book it is found, as here, at the end, and runs thus: '« Sed heu, pauci sunt qui in morte proximis suis fideliter assistunt, interrogando, monendo, et pro ipsis orando; prjEsertim cum ipsi morientes nondum mori velin, et anima: morientum saepe miserabiliter periclitantur."
Gerson's exhortation is longer, and he places it at the beginning of the third part of his Opusculum iripartltum de frecepth deealoni, de confetsione, et icientia mortis (or as some versions have it de arte moriendi.
It is as follows: "Si veraces fidelesque amid cujuspiam egroti, curam diligentium agant pro ipsius vita corporali
