Bosworth field dates in 1485: in the middle of the century (or 1444) John Gutenberg began the printing of a Bible; and a little after, Faust began to dispose of wonderful copies of books, which the royal buyers thought to be manuscripts: and Faust did not perhaps undeceive them: yet copies were so wonderfully alike--one to the other--that book lovers were puzzled, and pushed inquiry, and so the truth of the method came out. In 1477 William Caxton set up the first English printing press--in an old building, close upon Westminster Abbey--a building, which, if tradition is to be trusted, was standing down to near the middle of the present century; and on its demolition in 1846 its timbers were converted into snuff-boxes and the like, as mementos of the first printer. It was in 1477 that William Caxton issued the first book, printed with a date, in England.[64] This Caxton was a man worth knowing about on many counts: he was a typical Englishman, born in Kent; was apprenticed to a well-to-do mercer in the Old Jewry, London, at a time when, he says, many poor were a-hungered for bread made of fern roots;--he went over (while yet apprentice) to the low countries of Flanders, perhaps to represent his master’s interests; abode there; throve there; came to be Governor of the Company of English merchant adventurers, in the ancient town of Bruges: knew the great, rich Flemings[65] who were patrons of letters;--became friend and protégé of that English Princess Margaret who married Charles Duke of Burgundy; did work in translating old books for that great lady; studied the new printing art, which had crept into Bruges, and finally, after thirty odd years of life in the busy Flemish city sailed away for London, and set up a press which he had brought with him, under the shadow of Westminster towers. Fifteen years and more he wrought on there, at his printer’s craft--counting up a hundred issues of books; making much of his own copy, both translation and original, and dying over seventy in 1492. A good tag to tie to this date is--the Discovery of America; Columbus being over seas on that early voyage of his, while the first English printer lay dying. And what were the books, pray, which Master Caxton--who, for a wonder, was a shrewd business man, as well as inclined to literary ways--thought it worth his while to set before the world? Among them we find _A Sequell of the Historie of Troie_--_The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers_--a history of Jason, the _Game and Plays of Chesse_, Mallory’s King Arthur (to which I have previously alluded), a _Book of Courtesie_, translations from Ovid, Virgil and Cicero--also the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (of whom he was great admirer)--coupling with these latter, poems by Lydgate and Gower; many people in those days seeming to rank these men on a level with Chaucer--just as we yoke writers together now in newspaper mention, who will most certainly be unyoked in the days that are to come.