In Caxton's day several dialects were in use, and, as we infer from one of his prefaces, he was doubtful which was most suitable for literature or most likely to become the common speech of England. His doubt was dissolved by the time he had printed the _Canterbury Tales_ and the _Morte d'Arthur_. Many other works followed in the same "King's English"; his successor at the printing press, Wynkyn de Worde, continued in the same line; and when, less than sixty years after the first English book was printed, Tyndale's translation of the New Testament had found its way to every shire in England, there was no longer room for doubt that the East-Midland dialect had become the standard of the English nation. We have been speaking and writing that dialect ever since. [Illustration: THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER Caxton's printing office From an old print] [Sidenote: STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS] The story of how printing came to England, not as a literary but as a business venture, is a very interesting one. Caxton was an English merchant who had established himself at Bruges, then one of the trading centers of Europe. There his business prospered, and he became governor of the _Domus Angliae_, or House of the English Guild of Merchant Adventurers. There is romance in the very name. With moderate wealth came leisure to Caxton, and he indulged his literary taste by writing his own version of some popular romances concerning the siege of Troy, being encouraged by the English princess Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, into whose service he had entered. Copies of his work being in demand, Caxton consulted the professional copyists, whose beautiful work we read about in a remarkable novel called _The Cloister and the Hearth_. Then suddenly came to Bruges the rumor of Gutenberg's discovery of printing from movable types, and Caxton hastened to Germany to investigate the matter, led by the desire to get copies of his own work as cheaply as possible. The discovery fascinated him; instead of a few copies of his manuscript he brought back to Bruges a press, from which he issued his _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy_ (1474), which was probably the first book to appear in English print. Quick to see the commercial advantages of the new invention, Caxton moved his printing press to London, near Westminster Abbey, where he brought out in 1477 his _Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_, the first book ever printed on English soil. [Footnote: Another book of Caxton's, _The Game and Playe of the Chesse_ (1475) was long accorded this honor, but it is fairly certain that the book on chess-playing was printed in Bruges.] [Sidenote: THE FIRST PRINTED BOOKS]