The first name on the list of early English printers, it is hardly necessary to say, is that of Caxton. In his _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, the late Mr Blades has told all there is to be known of Caxton's life, and a great deal about Caxton's work; and although as regards the latter half of the subject there are authorities who dissent from some of the theories he advances, Mr Blades' monograph remains the standard work on the matter of England's first printer and the recognised source of information concerning him and his books. But notwithstanding Mr Blades' industry and learning, our knowledge of the early part of Caxton's life is very scanty, and is derived mainly from what Caxton himself tells us in the prologue to his first literary production, the English translation of the French romance by Le Fevre, entitled _Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_, or, Anglicised, _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_. Speaking of his boldness in undertaking the work, he refers to the "symplenes and vnperfightness that I had in both langages, that is to wete in frenshe and in englissh, for in france was I neuer, and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond." He was born probably in 1422 or 1423, and further than this we know nothing of him till his apprenticeship to Robert Large, a London mercer. Large died before Caxton's term of apprenticeship expired, and the next we hear of young Caxton is that he was living on the Continent, probably at Bruges. At the time he wrote the prologue from which quotation has just been made, that is about 1475, he had been for thirty years "for the most parte in the contres of Braband, flanders, holand, and zeland." Yet notwithstanding so long a residence in the Low Countries, he describes himself as "mercer of ye cyte of London."