THE LIBRARY. (H. Milford. 5s. net.)
In a recent issue the Library contains a valuable paper by Professor H. B. Lathrop on The First English Printers and their Patrons." The American scholar is chiefly concerned with the question whether Caxton printed what he thought good for the public or whether he merely produced books demanded by wealthy patrons and such works as were obviously saleable. Professor Lathrop is inclined to minimize Caxton's claim to have been an arbiter of taste and morals. Our first printer clearly depended on the favour of the Court and of the rich merchants ; twenty of his seventy-seven books were published at the request of patrons, and most of the others were devotional or educational works for which there was a ready market. On the other hand, it is to be noted that Caxton's editions of Chaucer, Lidgate and Gower were issued at his own initiative. Moreover, unlike most of his successors, he was a literary man as well as a printer ; he might never have left the cloth trade had not the success of his translation of a French version of the fall of Troy induced him to learn the new art of printing so as to multiply copies of the book. Professor Lathrop shows that Caxton's immediate followers, if they owed very little to patrons, did not share his literary tastes and printed only what they thought would sell. Abroad. Of course, the scholar-printer, like Aldus, Froben, the Etiennes or the Elzevirs, flourished for generations after this time, but in England the printer was content to be a mechanic and a salesman. The Library, which contains the proceedings of the Bibliographical Society, is a most interesting quarterly.
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