Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
Near Shoe Lane lived one of Caxton's disciples. Wynkyn de Worde, who is
supposed to have been one of Caxton's assistants or workmen, was a
native of Lorraine. He carried on a prosperous career, says Dibdin, from
1502 to 1534, at the sign of the "Sun," in the parish of St. Bride's,
Fleet Street. In upwards of four hundred works published by this
industrious man he displayed unprecedented skill, elegance, and care,
and his Gothic type was considered a pattern for his successors. The
books that came from his press were chiefly grammars, romances, legends
of the saints, and fugitive poems; he never ventured on an English New
Testament, nor was any drama published bearing his name. His great
patroness, Margaret, the mother of Henry VII., seems to have had little
taste to guide De Worde in his selection, for he never reprinted the
works of Chaucer or of Gower; nor did his humble patron, Robert Thorney,
the mercer, lead him in a better direction. De Worde filled his
black-letter books with rude engravings, which he used so
indiscriminately that the same cut often served for books of a totally
opposite character. By some writers De Worde is considered to be the
first introducer of Roman letters into this country; but the honour of
that mode of printing is now generally claimed by Pynson, a
contemporary. Among other works published by De Worde were "The Ship of
Fools," that great satire that was so long popular in England;
Mandeville's lying "Travels;" "La Morte d'Arthur" (from which Tennyson
has derived so much inspiration); "The Golden Legend;" and those curious
treatises on "Hunting, Hawking, and Fishing," partly written by Johanna
Berners, a prioress of St. Alban's. In De Worde's "Collection of
Christmas Carols" we find the words of that fine old song, still sung
annually at Queen's College, Oxford,--
"The boar's head in hand bring I,
With garlands gay and rosemary."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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