Music printing began early, the earliest specimen of music type occurring in Higden's "Polychronicon," printed by Wynken de Worde at Westminster in 1495. Notes had been printed from wooden blocks twenty-five years earlier, though some books had spaces left to be filled in by hand. About 1500 a musical press was established at Venice. Toward the end of the century special types and presses of many kinds for music were invented. The great English printer of this time, William Caxton, is a characteristic type of the scholarly printers of the period. We know almost nothing about his life. He records his thanks to his parents for having given him an education that fitted him to earn a living, though he does not say where or how he was educated. Just about the beginning of Columbus' Century he settled at Bruges, going into business on his own {152} account, and soon became prosperous. He had been an apprentice to Robert Large, a wealthy London mercer of the time, who was one of the influential men of the period. In 1453 Caxton returned to England for his formal admittance as a member of the Mercers' Company. His story after this is not unlike that of Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy in our own time. He retired from business apparently with a competency, entered the service of Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, probably in order to have more time for his literary work, and the next year he finished his translation from the French of the "Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye," which was dedicated to Margaret. His book was very much sought after and circulated in manuscript. The task of copying it was too great and entirely too slow for the demand. With true business instinct, Caxton then "practysed & lerned at grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte." His book was printed at Bruges in 1474. The next year his second book, the "Game & Pleye of Chess," which he had also translated from the French, was printed.