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Read Ebook: Ο Βασιλιάς Ανήλιαγος by Polemes Ioannes
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Ebook has 65 lines and 12551 words, and 2 pages
An exactly analogous case occurs in regard to the introduction of printing into Scotland. The first printer, Andrew Myllar, while preparing for the publication of the Aberdeen Breviary, which was issued at Edinburgh in 1509-10, published in 1508 a series of small pamphlets, consisting of stories and poems by Dunbar, Chaucer, and others. As might naturally be expected, such small books were especially liable to destruction, both on account of their size and the popularity of their subjects. It is not surprising to find that the majority have been preserved to us in single copies only. All the ten Edinburgh books are unique, and almost all the early Caxton quartos, so that it is impossible under these conditions to estimate what the output of Caxton's first year's working may have been. In writing of these earliest books, it will be perhaps best to take the folios first, and then the numerous small works, since, as they all agree so exactly as regards printing, they cannot be arranged in any definite order.
The book contains 150 leaves, of which the first and last are blank, and a full page has 29 lines. Like all early Caxtons, it has no signatures, which were not introduced until 1480; no headlines, which were rarely used; no numbers to the pages, which occur still more rarely; and no catch-words, which were never used at all.
As in all other early printed books, spaces were left for the insertion of illuminated initials at the beginnings of the chapters. Now, while in contemporary French, Italian, and Low Country books such spaces were often filled with the most gracefully designed and beautifully illuminated initials, rich in scrollwork and foliage, and ornamented with coats of arms or miniatures, there is not, so far as I know, any early English book in existence containing any attempt at such decoration. As a rule, the spaces were left blank as they came from the printer. In some cases, where the paragraph marks have been filled in by the rubricator, he has roughly daubed in the initial with his brush, making no attempt at ornament, or even neatness in the letter itself.
It is curious that with one exception no copy of this first edition has a colophon. The copy in which it occurs was in Lord Spencer's library and is now at Manchester, but beyond this small addition, it varies in no way from the other copies. All the examples of the second edition, which was issued a few years later, contain a reprint of this colophon.
"Of these sayynges Cristyne was aucteuresse Whiche in makyng hadde suche Intelligence That thereof she was mireur and maistresse Hire werkes testifie thexperience In frenssh languaige was writen this sentence And thus Englished dooth hit rehers Antoin Widevylle therl Ryvers.
"Go thou litil quayer and recommaund me Unto the good grace of my special lorde Therle Ryveris, for I have enprinted the At his commandement, followyng eury worde His copye, as his secretaire can recorde At Westmestre, of feuerer the xx daye And of kynd Edward the xvjj yere vraye."
Another point to be noticed about this book is the date, which here, fortunately, is quite clear. Among the early printers there is very considerable variation as to the day on which the new year began. Putting on one side the foreign and considering only the English printers, the dates narrow themselves to two, January 1st and March 25th, so that any date falling between these two may be in two different years, according to the habit of the printer. For instance, March 1, 1470, will really mean 1470 if the printer began his year on January 1st. If, on the other hand, he did not begin it until March 25th, the real date will be 1471.
As has been said earlier, it is probable that Caxton began his printing in England with small pamphlets, and of these a considerable number have come down to our time, but as the majority are unique, it is impossible to conjecture how many may have utterly perished. The most considerable collection is in the University Library, Cambridge, which owns a series, originally bound in one volume, which was in the collection of Bishop Moore presented to the University in 1715 by George the First. This library was peculiarly rich in early English books; indeed, the great majority of those now at Cambridge formed part of it, and their acquisition was mainly due to the exertions of that much maligned person, John Bagford, whom Moore employed to search for such rarities, and who did so with conspicuous success.
All these little poetical pieces agree typographically. They contain nothing but the bare text, and are without signatures, headlines, or pagination. Probably they were all issued at intervals of a few days, and not many printed, so that the second editions may have been issued only a few months after the first.
It could not have been printed anywhere by Caxton before 1475, and everything seems to point to its having been printed at Westminster in 1476-1477, perhaps at the instance of the author himself, then Bishop of Rochester.
It is a little quarto tract of four leaves, and two copies only are known, one belonging to the Earl of Leicester at Holkham, the other, formerly in the Spencer Library, now at Manchester. This latter was originally bound up, apparently by mistake, amongst the blank leaves of a note-book used for miscellaneous manuscript treatises of the fifteenth century, which run on over the first and last blank pages of the tract itself. It appeared, unrecognized, at the Brand sale in 1807, and was described amongst the MSS., "A work on theology and religion, with five leaves at the end a very great curiosity, very early printed on wooden blocks, or type." It was bought by Lord Blandford for forty-five shillings, and purchased at his sale in 1819 by Lord Spencer for ?126.
Blades speaks of it as in its original binding, a quite inexplicable mistake, for it was bound between the years 1807 and 1819 in resplendently gilt morocco, double, with gauffered gilt edges! The copy at Holkham, which used to be in an old vellum wrapper, has also been rebound, and the two inner leaves, by some unfortunate mistake, transposed.
The book is a folio of 124 leaves, and besides the copy at Cambridge, one other is known, now in the University Library at Upsala.
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.
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