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.

And if stories changed, the language changed just as quickly.
Caxton tells us that the language was changing so fast that he
found it hard to read books written at the time he was born. His