As early as the twelfth century, during such reigns as those of Henry I. (Beauclerc) and Henry II., there was in England a very considerable production of literature, under such various headings as chronicles, satires, sermons, works of science and of medicine, treatises on style, prose romances, and epics in verse. Jusserand points out that a large proportion of these compositions were written in Latin.[400] This would indicate a wider general understanding of Latin than prevailed three centuries later when Caxton’s printing-press began its work; for, as will be noted in the chapter on Caxton, the proportion of Latin books issued by Caxton was very much smaller than was the case with the contemporary publishers in France and in Germany. Such an active and varied literary production as that described by Jusserand would also, of course, imply the existence of a considerable body of trained scribes in addition to those who were at work in the monastic _scriptoria_ on the chronicles and books of devotion. The very large measure of attention given to the production of legends and romances, and the great popularity of these among almost all classes of the people, was the distinctive feature of the literature of England during the three centuries preceding the introduction of printing. The scenes of many of these romances are laid in classic times, and their characters bear classic names; but the stories are hardly constructed on classic lines, and very little attempt is made to preserve what the dramatic critic in _Nicholas Nickleby_ calls “the oneness of the drama.” Antiquity is presented in the garb of the Middle Ages. As Jusserand remarks: “Everything in these poems was really translated; not only the language of the ancients but their raiment, their civilisation, their ideas. Venus becomes a princess: the heroes are knights, and their costumes, pictured in the illuminations, are so much in the fashion of the day that they serve us to date the poems.”