Some years before Sir Thomas More wrote his "Utopia," an Englishman, who had long lived abroad and had there learnt a new industry, unknown in his own land, returned to England and settled in Westminster. He and his trade were destined to exercise a very important influence on the diffusion of literature, and especially on the development of romances. His art was printing, and his name was Caxton. We can judge of the amazement he produced among his countrymen by his new art, from his own wonder; one of his prefaces shows clearly enough how extraordinary his performance seemed to himself: "And for as moche, says he, as in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery & not stedfast, myn eyen dimed with overmoche lokyng on the whit paper & my corage not so prone & redy to laboure as hit hath ben & that age crepeth on me dayly & febleth all the bodye, & also be cause I have promysid to diverse gentilmen & to my frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I myght this sayd book, therfore I have practysed & lerned at my grete charge & dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see, & is not wreton with penne & ynke as other bokes ben, to thende that every man may have them attones, ffor all the bookes of this storye named the recule of the historyes of troyes thus enpryntid as ye here see were begonne in oon day & also fynysshid in oon day."[21] The list of his books shows that he was no less intent upon diverting his customers than upon improving their knowledge and morals. The part allotted to fiction was extremely large, not perhaps quite so extensive as that occupied by the novel proper in the publishers' lists of to-day; but regarding it as merely a beginning, it must be admitted to be very promising. Not only did he print the tales of Chaucer, the confessions of Gower, with their numerous stories, several poems of Lydgate, a number of mediaeval epic romances in verse, but he also issued from his press the prose story of "Reynard the Fox," which contains so much excellent dialogue and so many fine scenes of comedy; and, besides, the most remarkable prose romance that had yet been written in the English language, the famous "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. Its appearance marks an epoch in the history of English romance literature.