"The fifty years of freedom from 1484 to 1534 not only brought us the finest specimens of printing we possess, but compelled the native workman in self-protection to learn, and when competition was done away with his ambition rapidly died also. Once our English printing was protected, it sank to a level of badness which has lasted, with the exception of a few brilliant experiments, almost down to our own day."[54] As a rule, whatever Mr. Duff writes about English printing is incontrovertible, but this particular pronouncement seems curiously unfounded. Whether we consider what they printed or how they printed it, the work of the English presses from 1535-57 is better, not worse, than the work of the corresponding period, 1512-34. There is nothing in the earlier period to compare with the Great Bibles, and the books of Berthelet and Reyner Wolfe are fairly equal to those of Pynson. If we take 1557 as a fresh point of departure, the books issued from then to about 1580 present a still more remarkable advance. While the work of the rest of Europe deteriorated, that of England, in the hands of such men as Day, Denham, and Bynneman, improved, and alike for their typography, their illustrations and decorations and their scholarship, they surpass those of any previous period since the days of Caxton, and deserve far more attention from collectors than they have yet received. FOOTNOTES: [46] For English provincial printing after 1500 see Chapter XIII. [47] A fourth treatise, that on Fishing with an Angle, is often included in the attribution with even less reason. This was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496, with the following curious explanation of its being tacked on to the _Book of St. Albans_: "And for by cause this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enprynted allone by it self & put in a lytyll paunflet, therfore I haue compyled it in a greter volume of dyuerse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men, to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fyshynge sholde not by this meane utterly destroye it." [48] Two points may be noted about Rood: (i) he does not put his name in his earliest books, and as there is a change of type in his signed work, it is possible, though unlikely, that the books in type 1 are from another press; (ii) he is not to be identified, as was once proposed, with a certain Theodoricus of Cologne, lately proved by Dr. Voullieme to be Theodoricus Molner, a stepson of ther Hoernen. [49] The place-name here is an early misreading for "Eynsham." [50] This statement should perhaps be modified to admit of the possibility that Julian Notary was English rather than French, as is generally assumed.