Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/423

Rh POLO 407 Millioni. Yet it would seem that he had committed nothing to writing. The narratives not only of Marco Polo but of several other famous mediaeval travellers (e.g., Ibn Batuta, Friar Odoric, Nicolo Conti) seem to have been extorted from them by a kind of pressure, and committed to paper by other hands. This indicates indeed how little the literary ambition which besets so many modern travellers weighed with the class in those days. It is also perhaps an example of that intense dislike to the use of pen and ink which still prevails among ordinary respectable folk on the shores of the Mediterranean. But, in the prison of Genoa, Marco Polo fell in with a certain person of writing &quot;propensities, Rusticiano or Rustichello of Pisa, who also was a captive of the Genoese. His name is known otherwise to literary antiquaries as that of a respectable kind of literary hack, who abridged and recast several of the French romances of the Arthurian cycle which were then in fashion. He it was, apparently, who persuaded Marco Polo to defer no longer the com mittal to paper of his wonderful experiences. In any case it was he who wrote down these experiences at Marco s dictation ; and he is the man therefore to whom we owe the existence of this record, and possibly the preservation even of the traveller s name and memory. We learn but little of Marco Polo s personal or family history after this captivity ; but we know that at his death he left a wife, Donata by name (perhaps of the family of Loredano, but this is uncertain), and three daughters, Fantina and Bellela married, the former to Marco Braga- dino, and Moreta then a spinster, but married at a later date to Ranuzzo Dolfino. One last glimpse of the traveller is gathered from his will, which is treasured in the library of St Mark s. On the 9th January 1324 the traveller, now in his seventieth year, and sinking day by day under bodily infirmity, sent for a neighbouring priest and notary to make his testament. We do not know the exact time of his death, but it fell almost certainly within the year 1324, for we know from a scanty series of documents, commencing in June 1325, that he had at the latter date been some time dead. He was buried in accordance with his will, in the church of St Lorenzo, where the family bury ing-place was marked by a sarcophagus, erected by his filial care for his father Nicolo, which existed till near the end of the 16th century. On the renewal of the church in 1592 this seems to have been cast aside and lost. The copious archives of Venice have yielded up a few traces of our traveller. Besides his own will just alluded to, there are in the library the wills of his uncle Marco and of his younger brother Maffeo ; a few legal documents connected with the house property in St John Chrysostom, and other papers of similar character ; and two or three entries in the record of the Maggior Consiglio. We have mentioned the sobriquet of Marco Millioni which he got from his young townsmen. Ramusio tells us that he had himself noted the use of this name in the public books of the commonwealth, and this statement has been verified of late years in one of those entries in the books of the Great Council (dated 10th April 1305), which records as one of the securities in a certain case the &quot; Nobilis vir Marchus Paulo MILION.&quot; It is alleged that long after the traveller s death there was always in the Venetian masques one individual who assumed the character of Marco Millioni, and told Munchausen-like stories to divert the vulgar. Such, if this be true, was the honour of our great man in his own country. One curious parchment among those preserved is the record of the judgment of the court of requests (Curia Petitionum) upon a suit brought by the &quot; Nobilis Vir Marcus Polo &quot; against Paulo Girardo, who had been an agent of his, to recover the value of a certain quantity of musk for which Girardo had not accounted. Another curious document brought to light within the last few years is a catalogue of certain curiosities and valuables which were collected in the house of the unhappy Marino Faliero, and this catalogue comprises several objects that Marco Polo had given to one of the Faliero family. Among these are two which would have been of matchless interest had they survived, viz. &quot; Unum anulum con inscriptione que dicit Cuibile Can Marco Polo, et unum torques cum multis animalibus Tartarorum sculptis que res donum dedit predictus Marcus quidam (cuidam) Fale- trorum.&quot; The most tangible record of Polo s memory in Venice is a portion of the Ca Polo the mansion (there is every reason to believe) where the three travellers, after their absence of a quarter century, were denied entrance. The court in which it stands was known in Ramusio s time as the Corte del Millioni, and now is called Corte Sabbionera. That which remains of the ancient edifice is a passage with a decorated archway of Italo-Byzantine character per taining to the 13th century. With this exception, what was probably the actual site of the mansion is now occupied by the Malibran theatre. No genuine portrait of Marco Polo exists. There is a medallion portrait on the wall of the Sala dello Scudo in is a work of imagination no older than 1761. The oldest professed portrait is one in the gallery of Monsignor Badia at Rome, which is inscribed Marcus Polus Venetm Totius Orbis et Indie Perer/rator Primus. It is a good picture, but evidently of the 16th century at earliest, and the figure is of the character of that time. The Europeans at Canton have attached the name of Marco Polo to a figure in a Buddhist temple there containing a gallery of &quot;Arhans&quot; or Buddhist saints, and popularly known as the &quot;temple of the five hundred gods.&quot; There is a copy of this at Venice, which the Venetian municipality obtained on the occasion of the Geographical Congress there in 1881. But the whole notion was a groundless fancy. The book indited by Rnsticiano the Pisan, which has preserved Marco Polo s fame, consists essentially of two parts. The first, or pro logue, as it is termed, is the only part unfortunately which consists of actual personal narrative. It relates in a most interesting, though too brief, fashion the circumstances which led the two elder Polos to the khan s court, with those of their second journey accompanied by Marco, and of the return to the West by the Indian seas and Persia. The second and staple part of the book consists of a long series of chapters of very unequal length and unsystematic structure, descriptive of the different states and provinces of Asia, with occasional notices of their sights and products, of curious manners and remarkable events, and especially regarding the emperor Kublai, his court, wars, and administration. A series of chapters near the close treats in a wordy and monotonous manner of sundry wars that took place between various branches of the house of Jenghiz in the latter half of the 13th century. This last series is either omitted or greatly curtailed in all the MS. copies and versions except one. It was long a doubtful question in what language the work was originally written. That this had been some dialect of Italian was a natural presumption, and a contemporary statement could be alleged in its favour. But there is now no doubt that the original was French. This was first indicated by Count Baldelli-Boni, who published an elaborate edition of two of the Italian texts at Florence in 1827, and who found in the oldest of these indisputable signs that it was a translation from the French. The argument has since been followed up by others ; and a manuscript in rude and peculiar French, belonging to the National Library of Paris, which was printed by the Societe de Geographic in 1824, has been_ demon strated (as we need not hesitate to say) to be either the original or a very close transcript of the original dictation. A variety of its characteristics are strikingly indicative of the unrevised product of dictation, and are such as would necessarily have disappeared either in a translation or in a revised copy. Many illustrations could be adduced of the fact that the use of French was not a circumstance of a surprising or unusual nature ; for the language had at that time, in some points of view, even a wider diffusion than at pre-
 * the ducal palace, which has become a kind of type ; but it