because it was a time of rebirth and new life as well as a time
of war and death. For it was in the fifteenth century that
printing was discovered. Then it was that the listening time was
really done. Men began to use their eyes rather than their ears.
They saw as they had never before seen.

Books began to grow many and cheap. More and more people learned
to read, and this helped to settle our language into a form that
was to last. French still, although it was no longer the
language of the court or of the people, had an influence on our
speech. People traveled little, and in different parts of the
country different dialects, which were almost like different
languages, were spoken. We have seen that the "Inglis" of
Scotland differed from Chaucer's English, and the language of the
north of England differed from it just as much. But when printed
books increased in number quickly, when every man could see for
himself what the printed words looked like, these differences
began to die out. Then our English, as a literary language, was
born.

It was Caxton, you remember, who was the first English printer.
We have already heard of him when following the Arthur story as
the printer of Malory's Morte d'Arthur. But Caxton was not only
a printer, he was author, editor, printer, publisher and
bookseller all in one.

William Caxton, as he himself tells us, was born in Kent in the
Weald. But exactly where or when we do not know, although it may
have been about the year 1420. Neither do we know who or what
his father was. Some people think that he may have been a mercer