quently lost, of the Holy Scriptures into Italian. Of the Legenda Aurea which at present chiefly concerns us, we shall presently say something more.
William Caxton
William Caxton was also a spiritual light, though one of humbler degree than the saintly Genoese prelate, and though his activities lay along more secular lines. He began life and spent a considerable portion of it as a mercer. Towards the year 1450 he was in touch with the Low Countries, then the most flourishing centres of trade and commerce; and when an English princess became Duchess of Burgundy, he followed her to the Continent, and lived there for some time as a high-placed member of her household. It is not known how he came to take up the work which has rendered him famous—the introduction of the art of printing into his native England. But it is not surprising that a man who combined keen wits and a practical turn with a love of literature should have been strongly impressed by the possibilities of an invention which, in 1470, had become familiar on the Continent along the Rhine, in Paris, in Rome, in Venice. He doubtless felt ashamed that England was lagging so far behind the leaders. Her unsatisfactory and backward state was largely ascribable to the Wars of the Roses, which had lasted some thirty years and caused widespread confusion.[1] They had helped to destroy the tradi-
- ↑ It is worth remarking, however, that civil wars do not invariably lead to backwardness or decline in letters and arts. Of this ancient Greece and the mediæval Italian republics may afford us sufficient
