[1] “The multiplication of printed books and the consequent still greater multiplication of readers, created, what may be termed a literary public throughout England, and when the printed copies of a book from Caxton’s press were spread throughout this public, each member of it used a copy that was uniform with the copies used by all the rest. But before printing was known, and while copies of a book could be made in manuscript only, the transcribers were apt to introduce changes of spelling, of syntax, and of phrase, according to the dialect of the part of the country to which each copyist belonged. And the dialects of different parts of England differed then from each other in a far greater degree than any amount of variation which can at present be detected by the most zealous philologist. Moreover, each author wrote in his own dialect, or to speak more correctly, in the pure native English of his own part of England. Hence the diction of an author of those times in many cases appears to us more archaic than the diction of his contemporaries, or even of some of his predecessors. But in proportion as men of letters became familiar in their reading with the nearly uniform English language of printed books, they followed or approached that uniform English in their own writings. The language continued to receive changes by the introduction of new words and phrases, and by the zeal for imitating Latin models, which grew to excess in many of our prose writers not long after the close of the Fifteenth century. Many more modifications of etymology, and some of syntax, took place before the modern English language can be said to have been substantially established throughout the country; but that amount of uniform establishment never could have been effected at all, without the intervention and the extended use of the art of printing.”--Sir Edward S. CREASY’s _History of England_. 8vo. 1870. vol. ii. pp. 556-7. What the Art of Printing did in this respect for England, it likewise did in all other countries to which it was carried, in greater or lesser degrees, according to the amount of freedom it enjoyed, or of restriction to which it, and the people to whom it spoke, were subjected. [2] _Vide_ Reformation of Poland, by Count V. KRASINSKI, 2 vols. 8vo. _Nisbet_, 1838-40. [3] For assistance in this matter, I am much indebted to my father, Mr. ROBERT SKEEN, under whose able teachings I was thoroughly instructed in, and made a master of my craft--the Art of Printing. I have also to acknowledge, with thanks, the material aid received from Mr. H. W. CASLON, the eminent Type-founder, as well as from my publishers, Messrs. TRÜBNER and Co., of Paternoster Row. [4] SOUTHEY’S “Colloquies.”