is now, Mr. Grant says, "much exceeding yearly
the annual incomes of most of the ducal dignities of the land." The
legend of the Duke of Newcastle presenting Dr. Giffard, in 1827, with
L1,200 for a violent article against Roman Catholic claims, has been
denied by Dr. Giffard's son in the _Times_. The Duke of Wellington once
wrote to Dr. Giffard to dictate the line the _Standard_ and _Morning
Herald_ were to adopt on a certain question during the agitation on the
Maynooth Bill; and Dr. Giffard withdrew his opposition to please Sir
Robert Peel--a concession which injured the _Standard_. Yet in the
following year, when Sir Robert Peel brought in his Bill for the
abolition of the corn laws, he did not even pay Dr. Giffard the
compliment of apprising him of his intention. Such is official gratitude
when a tool is done with.

Near Shoe Lane lived one of Caxton's disciples. Wynkyn de Worde, who is
supposed to have been one of Caxton's assistants or workmen, was a
native of Lorraine. He carried on a prosperous career, says Dibdin, from
1502 to 1534, at the sign of the "Sun," in the parish of St. Bride's,
Fleet Street. In upwards of four hundred works published by this
industrious man he displayed unprecedented skill, elegance, and care,
and his Gothic type was considered a pattern for his successors. The
books that came from his press were chiefly grammars, romances, legends
of the saints, and fugitive poems; he never ventured on an English New
Testament, nor was any drama published bearing his name. His great
patroness, Margaret, the mother of Henry VII., seems to have had little
taste to guide De Worde in his selection, for he never reprinted the
works of Chaucer or of Gower; nor did his humble patron, Robert Thorney,
the mercer, lead him in a better direction. De Worde filled his
black-letter books with rude engravings, which he used so
indiscriminately that the same cut often served for books of a totally
opposite character. By some writers De Worde is considered to be the
first introducer of Roman letters into this country; but the honour of
that mode of printing is now generally claimed by Pynson, a
contemporary. Among other works published by De Worde were "The Ship of
Fools," that great satire that was so long popular in England;
Mandeville's lying "Travels;" "La Morte d'Arthur" (from which Tennyson
has derived so much inspiration); "The Golden Legend;" and those curious
treatises on "Hunting, Hawking, and Fishing," par