The accordance of the art of printing with the spirit of the times which gave it birth must be regarded as singularly providential.  The Protestant Reformation in Germany was brought about by Luther’s accidentally meeting, in a monastic library, with one of Gutenberg’s printed Latin Bibles, when at the age of twenty.  “A mighty change,” says Luther, “then came over me,” and all his subsequent efforts are to be attributed to that event.  His recognition of the importance of printing is given in these words:  “Printing is the best and highest gift, the summum et postremum donum by which God advanceth the Gospel.  Thanks be to God that it hath come at last.  Holy fathers now at rest would rejoice to see this day of the revealed Gospel.”

William Caxton, by common consent, is the introducer of the art of printing into England.  He was born about 1422, in Kent, and received what was then thought a liberal education.  His father must have been in respectable circumstances, as there was at that time a law in full force prohibiting any youth from being apprenticed to trade whose parent was not possessed of a certain rental in land.  In his eighteenth year Caxton was apprenticed to Robert Large, an eminent London mercer, who in 1430 was sheriff and in 1439 Lord Mayor of London.  At his death, in 1441, he bequeathed Caxton a legacy of twenty marks—­a large sum in those days—­and an honorable testimony to his fidelity and integrity.  Soon after this the Mercers’ Company appointed him their agent in the Low Countries, in which employment he spent twenty-three years.

In 1464 he was one of two commissioners officially employed by Edward IV to negotiate a commercial treaty with Philip of Burgundy; and in 1468, when the King’s sister, Margaret of York, married Charles of Burgundy, called “the Bold,” he attached himself to their household, probably in some literary capacity, as in the next year we find him busied in translating at her request.  During the greater part of this long period he was residing or travelling in the midst of the countries where the new art of printing was the great subject of interest, and would naturally take some measures to acquaint himself with it.  Indeed, it has been said that he had a secret commission from Edward IV to learn the art, and to bribe some of the foreign workmen into England.  Be this as it may, we know that Caxton acquired a complete knowledge of it while abroad, for he tells us so, and that he had printed at Cologne the Recueil des Histoires de Troye (or Romance History of Troy), in 1465, and in 1472 an English edition of the same, translated by himself.  These two early productions are remarkable as being the first books printed in either the French or English language[26].  The English edition was sold at the Duke of Roxburghe’s sale for one thousand sixty pounds, and is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.