wer, he was received by the Elector of Nassau,
the generous Adolphus. The elector created him his counsellor of state
and chamberlain, in order to enjoy in an honorable familiarity the
conversation of this surpassing genius, who was afterward to hold
converse with all times and all places. This shelter afforded to
Gutenberg sheds everlasting lustre on Nassau and its prince. We meet in
history with instances where a generous hospitality has given happiness
and immortal fame to the most insignificant potentates and to the
smallest of states.

Gutenberg continued printing with his own hands, at Nassau, under the
eyes of his Maecenas, the elector, during several years of peace and
quiet. He died at the age of sixty-eight, leaving his sister no
inheritance, but bequeathing to the world the empire of the human mind,
discovered and achieved by a workman.

"I bequeath," he says in his will, "to my sister all the books which I
printed at the monastery of St. Arbogast." The poor inventor's only
legacy to his surviving relative was the common property of almost all
inventors like himself--wasted youth, a persecuted life, a name
aspersed, toil, watchings, and the oblivion of his contemporaries.

WILLIAM CAXTON

(1412-1491)

[Illustration: William Caxton.]

William Caxton, to whom England owes the introduction of printing, was
born, according to his own statement, in the Weald of Kent. Of the date
of his birth nothing is known with certainty, though Oldys places it in
1412. Lewis and Oldys suppose that between his fifteenth and eighteenth
years he was put apprentice to one Robert Large, a mercer or merchant of
considerable eminence, who was afterward, successively, sheriff and lord
mayor of London, and who upon his death, in 1441, remembered Caxton in
his will by a legacy of 20 marks. Caxton at this time had become a
freeman of the Company of Mercers. His knowledge of business, however,
induced him, either upon his own account or as agent of some merchant,
to travel to the Low Countries for a short time. In 1464 we find him
joined in a commission with one Robert Whitehill, to continue and
confirm a treaty of trade and commerce between Edward IV. and Philip,
Duke of Burgundy; or if they find it necessary, to make a new one. They
are styled in it ambassadors and special deputies. This commission at
least affords a proof that Caxton had acquired a reputation for
knowledge of business. Seven years afterward Caxton describ