Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM GAXTON. 1410-1490. JVEKY English boy and girl who possesses a book and knows how to read it, ought to honour the name of William Caxton, our first great English printer. What we owe to him is second only to what wo owe to Guttenberg, Faust, and Schceffer. They were the inventors of the noble art. Caxton put it in practice, and became the founder of English printed literature. There is a large district in the county of Kent which has been known from time immemorial by the name of the Weald, from a Saxon word signifying wood or forest. And a forest it was, ?for how long I would not venture to say. But the woodman’s axe has done its sturdy work; and the railway train rushes screaming and clattering where once boars and deer wandered undisturbed. In some part of this wild district Caxton was born, about the year 1410; but at what precise date appears to be unknown. Caxton went to school?a village school, without books, but not without reading; for at that time the Company of Stationers, who lived in London near St. Paul’s, wrote and sold texts, the Lord’s Prayer, and other lessons for learners. We next hear of Caxton as an apprentice to a London merchant, who, a few years after, left the young man a considerable legacy. With this sum Caxton started in life for himself as a mercer, and travelled some time on the Continent. Industry and integrity, combined with business knowledge, reaped their reward, and the country lad suddenly reappears on the page of history as a Royal Commissioner for concluding a commercial treaty between Edward IV. and the Duke of Burgundy. In the year 1464 he attended at the marriage of the young duke with Margaret Plantagenet, sister of the king, and a lady who Mercers’ Hall. henceforth appears as Cax- ton’s patroness and friend. About …