[Footnote IV-38: Edward IV. began to reign 4th March 1461; the twenty-first year of his reign would consequently commence on 4th March 1481; Caxton’s dates therefore do not agree, unless we suppose that he reckoned the commencement of the year from 21st March. If so, his date viii March 1480, and the xxi year of the reign of Edward IV. would agree; and the year of Christ, according to our present mode of reckoning, would be 1481. Dr. Dibdin assigns to the Mirror the date 1481.--Typ. Ant. i. p. 100.] The “xxvii figures” mentioned by Caxton, without which the work might not be easily understood, are chiefly diagrams explanatory of the principles of astronomy and dialling; but besides those twenty-seven cuts the book contains eleven more, which may be considered as illustrative rather than explanatory. The following is a list of those eleven cuts in the order in which they occur. They are less than the cuts in the “Game of Chess;” the most of them not exceeding three inches and a half by three.[IV-39] [Footnote IV-39: Fac-similes of six of those cuts are given in Dr. Dibdin’s edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, vol. i. p. 110-112.] 1. A school-master or “doctor,” gowned, and seated on a high-backed chair, teaching four youths who are on their knees. 2. A person seated on a low-backed chair, holding in his hand a kind of globe; astronomical instruments on a table before him. 3. Christ, or the Godhead, holding in his hand a ball and cross. 4. The creation of Eve, who appears coming out of Adam’s side.--The next cuts are figurative of the “seven arts liberal.” 5. Grammar. A teacher with a large birch-rod seated on a chair, his four pupils before him on their knees. 6. Logic. Figure bare-headed seated on a chair, and having before him a book on a kind of reading-stand, which he appears expounding to his pupils who are kneeling. 7. Rhetoric. An upright figure in a gown, to whom another, kneeling, presents a paper, from which a seal is seen depending. 8. Arithmetic. A figure seated, and having before him a tablet inscribed with numerical characters. 9. Geometry. A figure standing, with a pair of compasses in his hand, with which he seems to be drawing diagrams on a table. 10. Music. A female figure with a sheet of music in her hand, singing, and a man playing on the English flute. 11. Astronomy. Figure with a kind of quadrant in his hand, who seems to be taking an observation.--An idea may be formed of the manner in which those cuts are engraved from the fac-simile on the next page of No. 10, “Music.”