Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/240

 XII

Caxton's Preface to the Doctrinal of Sapyence.

This book seems to have been written to warn men against the snares of heresy. Two distinct editions are known; each was printed from a different suite of blocks and by a different printer. The copy about to be described has thirty-eight leaves, twenty-six of which are devoted to the life of Antichrist, and eleven to a separate treatise known as the Fifteen Signs, which was bound up with the Antichrist, and of which it seems to be the proper sequel. The book is printed on one side of the leaf, in brown ink, and the illustrations face each other. The text begins with the words "Here beginneth of Antichrist, taken and drawn out of many books, how and of whom he