The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-15 00:00:00

Inttrniag

LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1847.

WILLIAM CAXTON—a name of most glorious and
humanising import—a memory as eternal as the
mother-tongue which his genius has rendered the
most universal language on the globe—a household
word among the children of both hemispheres, whose
common mother is his native England—WlLLlAM
CAxToN, the first printer in these islands, is to be
commemorated by the erection of a monument ; and
that monument is at once to be a memento of the
great labours of WILLIAM CAXTON, and is in an
especial manner to attest the gratitude of the million
to the art which that memorable philanthropist
was the first to introduce to the knowledge of our
ancestors. On the original announcement of such an
intention we expressed briefly, but as emphatically
as we could, our exultation at the proposed move-
ment. On Saturday an actual step was taken for the
commencement of this most national testimonial, a
numerous meeting having been convened during the
afternoon of that day in the Great Room of the
Society of Arts, John-street, Adelphi, with
many distinguished men upon the platform,
and the noble and accomplished First Corn-
missioner of her 11A.ansre's Woods and Forests as
chairman. Nothing could have tended more to con-
firm the million in a determination to testify in some
brilliant way their appreciation of the wonderful
good entailed upon posterity by WILLIAM CAXTON
than the impassioned and eloquent utterances of Lord
Moarim, and of the American Minister Mr. BAN-
CROFT. In the expressions enunciated by both those
graceful and earnest orators there was the glow
of benevolence, the colouring of rhetoric, and
the fervour of a sympathising and poetical tempera-
ment. We are gratified that upon an occasion in-
augurative of a demonstration so noble and beautiful
as the one which is now being made of the world's
gratitude to CAXTON, there were present men like
Lord MORPETH and Mr. BANCROFT, men who, from
their official position as well as from their mental en-
dowments, were peculiarly calculated to impart a
graceful and yet a vigorous character to such a
movement as the one proposed. In acknowledging
our obligation, however, at the very outset to the
Rev. 11. MILMAN for having been instrumental in
rousing the torpid memories of his countrymen to
that eventful morning when a wayfarer knocked at
the gate of Westminster Abbey and begged a shelter
for the new-born discovery, we must protest against
the monopoly of credit in the notion of a
monument to Ca.xxosi instituted on behalf of
Mr. MILMAN by the supporters of that
Reverend Gentleman. Let it not be forgotten
that the man who originally started the idea of such
a testimonial of honour to the name and fame of
WILLIAM CAXTON was CHARLES KNIGHT. If the'
Rev. H. MILMAN were to maintain a precedence on
the part of his proposition, we should at once impeach
him of plagiarism ; but it cannot for an instant be
imagined that the Rev. Gentleman has, in defiance
of dates and printed sentences, any intention
of monopolizing the credit of the suggestion, or of
filching from not the least distinguished of the spi-
ritual sons of CAXTON—CHARLES KNIGHT—the ho.
nour of propout.ding the propriety of some public
token of our admiration to the most venerable, and
perhaps, the most indefatigable of our native printers,
Born in the fertile wealds of Kent, bred among
the " broad and rude English of his day," WIL-
LIAM CAITON imbibed, as Lord MORPETH beautifully
observed, " much of the racy and hearty spirit of the
soil." A rude, nervous, industrious, enlightened,
generous-hearted Englishman was this 'WILLIAM
CAXTON, to whose exertions, to whose individual exer-
tions are traceable all the countless and inestimable
1 blessings which have streamed in a copious,
1 and fructifying, and inexhaustible current
I
from the printing-press. As was appro-
priately observed on Saturday, the glorious song
of CHAITCER was given to the wide world
I first by that press of CAITON, which he constructed
and worked under the sheltering roof of Westminster
Abbey—to that press is owing the verse of CHAUCER
and of LIDGATE—to the example afforded by that
Press are attributable the extension and diffusion,
amongst the populous nations of the earth, of the
works of our immortal ancestors, of our poets,
of our philosophers, of our moralists, of our
biographers, of our ethical scholars, and of oratorical
and didactic writers. Through the medium of WIL-
LIAM CAXTON, as it were, our most illustrious and
wonderful countrymen, our Shaksperes, our Miltons,
our Bacons, our Lockes, our Boyles, our Spen-
cers, our Newtcns, our Raleighs, have shone
forth with a perpetual and undiminishable
glory, scattering the ignorance of centuries by
their wisdom, breathing through the discords
of vulgar life the melodies of their matchless numbers,
or speaking sensibly to the hearts of generations in
the diction of demigods and with the truthfulness of
oracles. Never was national benefactor so entitled to
the reverence of his posterity as WILLIAM CAXTON
is to ours. Not for us, therefore, shall it be to evi-
dence our admiration for his greatness by the erection
of some abortive squirt or attenuated lamp-
post. A monument let there be to WILLIAM
C AXTON—and one especially at the western
front of Westminster Abbey, " that spot where the
sun as he descends in the evening casts his last look
on the most venerable building in our island ;" but let
us not, in the name of common decency, erect to his
memory a paltry syringe like the fountains near the
unfinished Nelson Column, or a bungling gas-
light like that which smoked the windows and peri-
odically cracked the panes of glass at the extremity of
Charing-cross. A colossal statue, modelled by
THORWALDSEN, now attests in Mayence the love of
the fatherland for the fame of GUTTENBURG. Let the
ruddy light of the sunset, as it envelopes the ancient
fane of Westminster with the glories of each de•
parting day, shine, too, on some colossal statue or
symbolic structure erected before the portals of the
evening to the memory of WILLIAM CAXTON. Let
the shadow of the votive granite fall upon the walls
and mingle with the glooms of the old Abbey, in
whose cloisters toiled, in the days bygone, the first
and greatest of our English printers. Not for him a
fountain or a gas-pipe, but a memento worthy in
some measure of his immortality.