and this is the first known specimen of typograhy which bears the date printed upon it.

The progress of investigation has, in the main, led to the assertion being made with less and less hesitation, that Gutenberg first of all cast printing-types in moulds and matrices-the one critical step in advance which converted printing into a great art. And his type-mould was not merely the first; it has remained, essentially, the only practical mechanism for making types. Assuming, as we have been content to do, that Gutenberg was the prime inventor of printing,1 it is plain that there were many contemporary rivals in the art, who were already, as it were, on tiptoe at the threshold of the invention. Conspicuous among such rivals were Fust and Schoeffer, the printers of the admirable Mainz or Mentz Psalter of 1457. It is tolerably plain that Schoeffer had learnt the mystery of printing at the fountain-head-in the workshop of Gutenberg. Two rival printing-offices having once been established in Mainz, it was not likely that the process could long be kept secret. It was communicated to Stras

1 The merit of Gutenberg's invention was largely due to his superior method of making types by means of punch, matrix, and mould. When he began his experiments, he found already in common use paper, printing-ink, engraving in relief, some form of printing-press, and the art of printing playing-cards and block-books. It is possible even that isolated types were in use before his day (if anywhere, presumably at Haarlem and Avignon); but they could not be used to profit, because they were not scientifically made and sufficiently exact. That Gutenberg derived advantage from the successful experiments of the block-book printers of the preceding epoch is probable, but he must have added to the common stock of knowledge much more than he found. His type-founding methods were the only key to the invention of practical typography. He himself speaks of the new art as dependent upon the admirable proportion, harmony, and connection of the punches and matrices. (See De Vinne, Invention of Printing, 2d ed., 1877.)

burg by Mentelin and Eggestein in 1458, by Pfister to Bamberg in 1461, by Ulric Zell to Cologne in 1462, by Keffer to Nuremberg in 1469, and by Zainer to Augsburg about the same time.

The introduction of printing opened a new sphere of literary activity everywhere, but especially in England, for there it preceded, by just enough time to enable it to disseminate, the Renaissance and Reformation movements. It coincided with the formation of modern English, and followed by less than a hundred years the masterpieces of the transitional English tongue, which were still green in the popular memory, and which in its zeal for popularity it hastened to incorporate among its productions.

The English of the two centuries before Caxton's time was transitional between the Gothic dialect of AngloSaxon (akin to the Low Dutch and Frisian, still spoken on the shores of the Baltic and in North Holland), and modern English. The old English or Anglo-Saxon of Alfred's day, which had been spoken in England roughly from A. D. 800 to 1200, had become wholly unintelligible to the English speaking the various dialects of Edward III.'s day. Under the early Plantagenets, English had sunk almost entirely to rustic and provincial use. Latin was used by the learned and by the clergy; French was the language of the schools, the law courts, the merchants, and the court. No English king, indeed, spoke English habitually before Henry IV. The town class and gentry of the thirteenth century were probably bilingual: they spoke French and English. It seemed doubtful which would predominate. During the century before Chaucer, however, English was rapidly gaining ground. The mixture of peoples Kad rubbed off the inflections of the old language. Anglo-Saxon was deficient in elegant, martial, and abstract terms. French supplied these, and Latin, through French, enriched the native dialects still more.

The current English of London and the Eastern Midlands completely dropped the germanic syntax-the practice of putting the verb at the end of the sentence. It modified the old pronunciation and abandoned the old complexity of genders and cases.

The bed-rock or stony skeleton of the language was still Teutonic, but it was filled up and enriched by a soil of French words, phrases, and usages. By Chaucer's time the mixture was far forward, and we have arrived at a language with a mixed vocabulary and a straightforward accidence that we can almost call "English," in a modern

sense.

1

We can thus say that by a happy chance the Age of Caxton coincides for all practical purposes with the era of Modern England: for did it not witness, approximately at any rate, the fixation of the English speech as we now have it; the presentation in print of such speechmasters of aforetime as were still intelligible to the multitude; the sunset of the old religion and the old romance; the dawn of the new learning and of the knowledge of the new world; and the rise of our own little despotic and insular Tudor dynasty? Numerous tomes have been written about the Tower of Babel, and even of the time before the Flood, in the annals of "English Literature" (so called). We have chosen deliberately to pass by Hengist and Horsa and the Heptarchy and to begin with the era when-even although three kinds of vernacular speech, wholly unconnected with English, remained unsubdued in our island -the blended English language of Shakespeare and the Bible had triumphed definitely alike over Anglo-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Danish, and Anglo-Norman.

1 Of these we estimate that four and four only can be said directly to modulate the literary life and thought of a later age-namely, Wyclif, Langland, Chaucer, and Gower; these four we have treated retrospectively.