“And then at last another said that he would have eyren.  Then the good wife said that she understood him well.  So what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren?  Certainly it is hard to please every man by cause of diversity and change of language. . . .

“And some honest and great clerks have been with me, and desired me to write the most curious terms that I could find.  And thus between plain, rude, and curious I stand abashed.  But in my judgement the common terms that be daily used, be lighter to be understood than the old and ancient English.”

In another book Caxton tells us that he knows his own “simpleness and unperfectness” in both French and English.  “For in France was I never, and was born and learned my English in Kent, in the Weald, where I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude English as in any place in England.”

So you see our English was by no means yet settled.  But printing, perhaps, did more than anything else to settle it.

We know that Caxton printed at least one hundred and two editions of books.  And you will be surprised to hear that of all these only two or three were books of poetry.  Here we have a sure sign that the singing time was nearly over.  I do not mean that we are to have no more singers, for most of our greatest are still to come.  But from this time prose had shaken off its fetters.  It was no longer to be used only for sermons, for prayers, for teaching.  It was to take its place beside poetry as a means of enjoyment — as literature.  Literature, then, was no longer the affair of the market-place and the banqueting-hall, but of a man’s own fireside and quiet study.  It was no longer the affair of the crowd, but of each man to himself alone.

The chief poems which Caxton printed were Chaucer’s.  In one place he calls Chaucer “The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English.”  Here, I think, he shows that he was trying to follow the advice of “those honest and great clerks” who told him he should write “the most curious terms” that he could find.  But certainly he admired Chaucer very greatly.  In the preface to his second edition of the Canterbury Tales he says, “Great thank, laud and honour ought to be given unto the clerks, poets” and others who have written “noble books.”  “Among whom especially before all others, we ought to give a singular laud unto that noble and great philosopher, Geoffrey Chaucer.”  Then Caxton goes on to tell us how hard he had found it to get a correct copy of Chaucer’s poems, “For I find many of the said books which writers have abridged it, and many things left out:  and in some places have set verses that he never made nor set in his book.”

This shows us how quickly stories became changed in the days when everything was copied by hand.  When Caxton wrote these words Chaucer had not been dead more than about eighty years, yet already it was not easy to find a good copy of his works.