Among the many books which Caxton printed we must not forget Sir
Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, which we spoke of out of its
place in following the story of Arthur in Chapter VIII. Perhaps
you would like to turn back and read it over again now.
As we have said, Caxton was not merely a printer. He was an
author too. But although he translated books both from French
and Dutch, it is perhaps to his delightful prefaces more than to
anything else that he owes his title of author. Yet it must be
owned that sometimes they are not all quite his own, but parts
are taken wholesale from other men's works or are translated from
the French. We are apt to look upon a preface as something dull
which may be left unread. But when you come to read Caxton's
books, you may perhaps like his prefaces as much as anything else
about them. In one he tells of his difficulties about the
language, because different people spoke it so differently. He
tells how once he began to translate a book, but "when I saw the
fair and strange terms therein, I doubted that it should not
please some gentlemen which late blamed me, saying that in my
translation I had over curious terms, which could not be
understood by common people, and desired me to use old and homely
terms in my translations.
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