'Hearken,' said Wynkyn. The day our good master was buried I had no stomach for my home. I could not eat. I could scarcely look on the sunshine. There was a chill at my heart. I took the key of our office, for you all were absent, and I came here in the deep twilight. I sat down in Master Caxton's chair. I sat till I fancied I saw him moving about, as he was wont to move, in his furred gown, explaining this copy to one of us, and shaking his head at that proof to the other. I fell asleep. Then I dreamed a dream, a wild dream, but one that seems to have given me hope and courage. There I sat, in the old desk at the head of this room, straining my eyes at the old proofs. The room gradually expanded. The four frames went on multiplying, till they became innumerable. I saw case piled upon case; and form side by side with form. All was bustle, and yet quiet, in that room. Readers passed to and fro; there was a glare of many lights; all seemed employed in producing one folio, an enormous folio. In an instant the room had changed. I heard a noise as of many wheels. I saw sheets of paper covered with ink as quickly as I pick up this type. Sheet upon sheet, hundreds of sheets, thousands of sheets, came from forth the wheels -flowing in unstained, like corn from the hopper, and coming out printed, like flour to the sack. They flew abroad as if carried over the earth by the winds. Again the scene changed. In a cottage, an artificer's cottage, though it had many things in it which belong to princes' palaces, I saw a man lay down his basket of tools and take up one of these sheets. He read it; he laughed, he looked angry; tears rose to his eyes; and then he read aloud to his wife and children. I asked him to show me the sheet. It was wet; it contained as many types as our " Mirror of the World." But it bore the date of 1844. I looked around, and I saw shelves of books against that cottage wall-large volumes and small volumes; and a boy opened one of the large volumes and showed me numberless blockcuts; and the artificer and his wife, and his children gathered round me, all looking with glee towards their

books, and the good man pointed to an inscription on his bookshelves, and I read these words,

66

6

MY LIBRARY A DUKEDOM.

6

I woke in haste; and, whether awake or dreaming I know not, my master stood beside me, and smilingly exclaimed, This is my fruit." I have encouragement in this dream.' Friend Wynkyn,' said Pynson, these are distempered visions. The press may go forward; I think it will go forward. But I am of the belief that the press will never work but for the great and the learned, to any purpose of profit to the printer. How can we ever hope to send our wares abroad? We may hawk our ballads and our merry jests through London; but the citizens are too busy to heed them, and the apprentices and serving men are too poor to buy them. To the country we cannot send them. Good lack, imagine the poor pedler tramping with a pack of books to Bristol or Winchester! Before he could reach either city through our wild roads, he would have his throat cut or be starved. Master Wynkyn, we shall always have a narrow market till the king mends his highways, and that will never be.' 'I am rather for trying, Master Wynkyn,' said Lettou, some good cutting jest against our friends in the Abbey, such as Dan Chaucer expounded touching the friars. That would sell in these precincts.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Wynkyn: 'the good fathers are our friends; and though some murmur against them, we might have worse masters.'

'I wish they would let us print the Bible, though,' ejaculated Pynson.

The time will come, and that right soon,' exclaimed the hopeful Wynkyn.

So be it,' said they one and all.

'But what fair sheet of paper is that in your hand, good Wynkyn?' said Pynson.

'Master Richard, we are all moving onward. This is English-made paper. Is it not better than the brown thick paper we have had from over the sea? How he would

have rejoiced in this accomplishment of John Tate's longing trials! Ay, Master Richard, this fair sheet was made in the new mill at Hertford; and well am I minded to use it in our Bartholomæus, which I shall straightly put in hand, when the Formschneider is ready. I have thought anent it; I have resolved on it; and I have indited some rude verses touching the matter, simple person as I am :— For in this world to reckon every thing

Pleasure to man, there is none comparable
As is to read and understanding

In books of wisdom-they ben so delectable,
Which sound to virtue, and ben profitable;
And eld that love such virtue ben full glad
Books to renew,
and cause them to be made.

And also of your charity call to remembrance

The soul of William Caxton, first printer of this book
In Latin tongue at Cologne, himself to advance,

That every well-disposed man may thereon look:
And John Tate the younger joy mote [may] he brook,
Which hath late in England made this paper thin,
That now in our English this book is printed in.'
'Fairly rhymed, Wynkyn,' said Lettou.
Tate the younger is a bold fellow.
can never support a Paper-mill of its own.'
Come, to business,' said William of Mechlin.

'But John Of a surety England

*He always in these marks, associated the device of Caxton with his own; glorying, as he well might, in succeeding to the business of his honoured master, and continuing for so many years the good work which he had begun.

I HAVE a great affection for the Pastons. They are the only people of the old time who have allowed me to know them thoroughly. I am intimate with all their domestic concerns their wooings, their marriages, their household economies. I see them, as I see the people of my own day, fighting a never-ending battle for shillings and pence; spending lavishly at one time, and pinched painfully at another. I see them, too, carrying on their public relations after a fashion that is not wholly obsolete ;--intriguing at elections, bribing and feasting. I see them, as becomes constitutional Englishmen, ever quarrelling by action and writ; and, what is not quite so common in these less adventurous times, employing the holy law of pike and gun' to support the other law, or to resist. I see them, in their pride of family, despising trade and yet resting upon its assistance. I see the ladies leading a somewhat unquiet and constrained life till they have become comfortable in the matter of marriage; and I see the young gentlemen taking a strict inventory of the amount of ready cash that is to be paid down with a bride, and deciding upon eligi

bility by this simple rule of the scales. This is all very edifying; and I am truly obliged to this gracious family, who, four hundred years ago, communicated with each other and with their friends, in the most frank manner, upon every subject of their varied lives.

The Paston Letters * carry us through three generations who lived during the turbulent period of the Wars of the Roses. The first generation makes us acquainted with Sir William Paston, a judge of the Common Pleas, and his wife Agnes. This is a wonderful woman. We see her, at the very opening of the correspondence, scheming for the marriage of her sons, and holding her daughters in terrible durance. The judge passes on to that assize where no more 'fur sit on the bench and latro stand at the bar.' But then comes on the scene, John Paston, his elder son; and he, for a quarter of a century, dwelling now in the Inner Temple and now in Norwich, is carrying on a fight about disputed titles to broad lands in Norfolk and Suffolk, whilst his wife Margaret is writing him little tender remembrances of her affection, or warning him against his enemies, or opening to the worldly man in London quiet glimpses of boys wanting new

and

my meofte reveron

maxstomyly John pafton

Mode of Folding and Sealing a Letter.

clothes, and girls growing up to be troublesome in the fancy that a little love is necessary to their existence. The old grandmother Agnes is still busy amongst them. Then

* Original Letters written during the Reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III.; with Notes, by John Fenn, Esq. A new edition, by A. Ramsay, 2 vols., 1840.