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 In Caxton's day a very simple system of punctuation harmonized with a much looser and less carefully ordered syntax than has become familiar to us in the prose of modern English writers. The complexities of punctuation have kept pace with the subtler shadings of syntactical arrangement. The application in modern editions of authors such as Caxton of the refined methods of modern punctuation renders the reading of them more easy and pleasant to us; but has the disadvantage of disguising from us not a little the essential simplicity and fluid syntax of fifteenth-century style — at least of Caxton's. These characteristics can only be realized when we have imagined away the punctuation or all but its simplest marks. Having, therefore, used modern punctuation throughout this edition, we think it desirable to append here a passage in literal transcription from a first edition of Caxton's own, with a view to illustrating the methods and syntactical effects of the original Caxtonian punctuation:

Certes hyt is a foule vyce in a preest the synne of couetyse / But fewe haue ben to fore thys tyme / and fewe ben yet but yf they ben attaynte therwyth / whereof hyt is grete pyte / syn hyt is so that auaryce is moder of all vyces / Whihs that the troians gadryd to gyder their gold and syluer and put hyt in the temple of mynerve to kepe vnto the tyme that hyt was alle assemblid. Hit playsid them to offre & make sacrefyse to theyr god Appolyn / And whan they hadd slayn many bestes for their sacrefyce and had put them vpon the Awter / And hadd sette fyre on them for to brenne them / Hit happend that ther cam there two meruayllis / the fyrste was that the fyre wold not alyghte ne brenne / for they began to make the fyre more than ten tymes / And alway hyt quenchid and myght neuer brenne the sacrefyce. The seconde myracle or meruaylle was whan they had appoynted the entraylles of the bestes for theyr sacrefyce / A grete Eygle descended fro the ayer cryyng gretly and toke wyth his feet the said entraylles and bare hem in to the shyppes of the grekes.