[Footnote 7: _The Times_, June 14, 1847.]
After a lapse of four years, a meeting of the subscribers to the _Caxton Testimonial_ was advertised for the 10th of July, to "consider an offer made by the Coalbrookdale Iron Company to erect an _iron statue of Caxton_--and, in the event of the proposal being adopted, to determine the best means of carrying the same into effect." I was much astonished at this announcement. A meeting to consider an offer to perpetuate a fiction in connexion with an art which surpasses all other arts in its power of establishing truth! On reflection, I became calm; and felt that Mr. Henry Cole, the honorary secretary, was perfectly right in adopting the customary phraseology. The result of this meeting is a desideratum. It seems to have been private; for an examination of 300 columns of _The Times_, being, the history of four days, did not lead to the discovery of one word on the _iron statue of Caxton_.
If the statue-mania did not now prevail to an unexampled extent, I should feel much confidence in the sound sense of the subscribers--but I have my misgivings.
According to _my_ feelings, which I avail myself of this opportunity of recording, we may commemorate an eminent individual in better ways than by the erection of a statue; the philanthropist, by an alms-house--the scholar, by scholarships--the naval commander, by a sea-mark--etc. Admitting that a statue may sometimes be the most desirable form of monument, the _statue_ of an individual of whose features we are in entire ignorance is a misnomer. It is scarcely less than an absurdity.
As I have intimated that there is no authentic portrait of Caxton, I must now justify my conviction. Ames published a woodcut as a portrait of our venerable Caxton[8]: Dibdin discovered it to be a "portrait of Burchiello,"[9] an eccentric Florentine barber!--le poète le plus bizarre qui ait jamais écrit! Horace Walpole published a print said to represent earl Rivers "introducing Caxton to Edward IV."[10] It was copied from an illuminated MS. in the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, No. 265. Now, what says Mr. Todd? "That Caxton _printed this book_ in 1477, is well known. But what has that circumstance to do with the earl _presenting or attending the presentation of his own manuscript_? The figure here introduced by the earl is evidently, by the tonsure and habit, a _priest_; which Caxton was not."[11] I have heard of no other engraved portraits of Caxton.