Caxton died in 1491, when he was nearly seventy years of age. He was at work until within a few hours of his death upon the translation of the _Vitæ Patrum_. His assistant and successor, Wynken de Worde, in the colophon to the edition of this volume, makes the following record of his master, the translator: “Thus endyth the moost vertuous hystorye of the dewoute and right renowned lyves of holy faders lyvynge in deserte, worthy of remembraunce to all wel dysposed persones which hathe be translated oute of Frenche into Englisshe by William Caxton of Westmynstre late ded, and fynysshed at the laste daye of hys lyff.” The list of Caxton’s publications, as compared with the lists of the first printers in Germany, Italy, and France, is noteworthy in a number of respects. Caxton did not undertake a single edition of the Scriptures or of any portion of the Scriptures, while the books of the Bible had formed the first and most important ventures of all the early printers of the continent. Caxton’s judgment that the England of his day was not asking for Bibles, was confirmed by his immediate successors, and no edition of the Bible was printed in England before the close of the fifteenth century. The list contains also no theological works, no editions of the Fathers, and, with the exception of a single treatise of _Cicero_ and a volume of _Boëthius_, no works belonging to the older classics. Its most distinctive feature is the long series of romances and legends translated from the French, the translations of which were largely the work of the printer himself. Noteworthy also, of course, is the appreciation of the abiding literary importance of Chaucer, the recognition of the availability for popular sale of Gower, and the discovery and prompt utilisation of Malory. Caxton was not only his own translator, but he was his own adviser, that is, he seems to have been dependent for his selections chiefly upon his own knowledge of the literature of France and of Flanders. While the earlier issues from the presses of Mayence, Basel, Paris, and Venice, restricted almost exclusively to the Scriptures, to editions of the Fathers, and of classics, were in Latin, Caxton’s books were, with hardly an exception, printed in English. It was evidently his purpose to reach not the circles of scholars and theologians (circles which undoubtedly were at the time small in England), but as large a proportion as possible of the English public. I can but think, in looking at the long series of romances and poems and treatises on love, and the like, that Caxton had in mind the taste and requirements of women readers as well as of the men. In fact, in the fifteenth as in the nineteenth century, there must have been a larger share of leisure for the “fair ladyes” than for the noble gentlemen, and it is to be borne in mind that the first incentive towards his literary and publishing undertakings came to Caxton from a woman, his noble friend the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy.