Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/424

Rh 408 POLO sent, ami examples of its literary employment by writers who i were not Frenchmen are very numerous. It is superfluous to allege instances here, when we observe that Rusticiano himself, the scribe of the narrative, was a compiler of French romances. Some eighty MSS. of the book are known, and their texts exhibit considerable differences. These fall under four principal types. Of these type i. is found completely only in that old French codex which has betn mentioned. Type ii. is shown by several valuable MSS. in purer French, the best of which formed the basis of the edition prepared by the late M. Pauthier in 1865. It exhibits a text pruned and revised from the rude original, but without any exactness, though perhaps under some general direction by Marco Polo himself, for an inscription prefixed to one of the MSS. records the presentation of a copy by the traveller himself to the Seigneur Thibault de Cepoy, a distinguished Frenchman known to history, at Venice in the year 1306. Type iii. is that of a Latin version prepared in Marco Polo s lifetime, though without any sign of his cognizance, by Francesco Pipino, a Dominican of Bologna, and translated from an Italian copy. In this, condensation and curtail ment are carried a good deal further than in type ii. Some of the forms under which this type appears curiously illustrate the effects of absence of effective publication, not only before the invention of the press, but in its early days. Thus the Latin version published by Grynsus at Basel in the Xovus Orbis (1532) is different in its language from Pipino s, and yet is clearly traceable to that as its foundation. In fact it is a retranslation into Latin from some version of Pipino (Marsden thinks the Portuguese printed one of 1502). It introduces also changes of its own, and is quite worthless as a text ; and it is curious that Andreas Miiller, who in the 17th century took much trouble with editing Polo according to his lights, should have unfortunately chosen as his text this fifth-hand version. It may be added that the French editions published in the middle of the 16th century were translations from Grynaeus s Latin. Hence they complete this curious and vicious circle of translation French, Italian, Pipino s Latin, Portuguese, Grynseus s Latin, French. The fourth type of text deviates largely from those already men tioned ; its history and true character are involved in obscurity. It is only represented by the Italian version prepared for the press by G. B. Ramusio, with most interesting preliminary dissertations, and published at Venice two years after his death, in the second volume of the Navigationi e Vlaggi. Its peculiarities are great. Ramusio seems to imply that he made some use of Pipino s Latin, and various passages confirm this. But many new circumstances, and anecdotes occurring in no other copy, are introduced ; many names assume a new shape ; the whole style is more copious and literary in character than that of any other version. Whilst a few of the changes and interpolations seem to carry us further from the truth, others contain facts of Asiatic nature or history, as well as of Polo s alleged experiences, which it is extremely difficult to ascribe to any hand but the traveller s own. We recognize to a certain extent tampering with the text, as in cases where the proper names used by Polo have been identified, and more modern forms substituted. In some other cases the editorial spirit has been more meddlesome and has gone astray. Thus the age of young Marco has been altered to correspond with a date which is itself erroneous. Ormus is described as an island, contrary to the old texts, and to the facts of its position in Polo s time. ^ In speaking of the oil-springs of Caucasus the phrase &quot; camel- loads&quot; has been substituted for &quot;ship-loads,&quot; in ignorance that the site was Baku on the Caspian. But on the other hand there are a number of new circumstances certainly genuine, which can hardly be ascribed to any one but Polo himself. We will quote one only. This is the account which Ramusio s version gives of the oppressions exercised by Kublai s Mohammedan minister Ahmed, telling how the Cathayans rose against him and murdered him, with the addition that Messer Marco was on the spot when all this happened. Not only is the whole story in substantial accordance with the Chinese annals, even to the name of the chief conspirator ( Vanchu in Ramusio, ]Vang- chcu in the Chinese records), but the annals also tell of the courageous frankness of &quot;Polo, assessor of the privy council,&quot; in opening Kublai s eyes to the iniquities of his agent. To sum up, we can hardly doubt that we have, imbedded in the text of this most interesting edition of Ramusio s, the supplemen tary recollections of the traveller, noted down at a later period of his life, but perplexed by translation and retranslation and editorial mistakes. The most important desideratum still remaining in reference to Polo s book is the recovery of the original from which Ramusio derived the passages peculiar to his edition. That Marco Polo has been so universally recognized as the prince of medieval travellers is due rather to the width of his experience, the vast compass of his journeys, and the romantic nature of his personal history than to transcendent superiority of character or capacity. Enthusiastic biographers, beginning with Ramusio, have placed him on the same platform with Columbus. But he has left no trace of the genius and lofty enthusiasm, the ardent and justified previsions, which mark the great admiral as one of the lights of the human race. It is a juster praise that the spur which his book eventually gave to geographical studies, and the beueons which it hung out at the eastern extremities of the earth, helped to guide the aims, though hardly to kindle the fire of the greater son of the rival republic. His work was at least a link in the providential chain which at last dragged the New World to light. But Polo also was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom, which he had seen with his own eyes ; the first to speak of the new and brilliant court which had been established at Peking ; the first to reveal China in all its wealth and vast ness, and to tell us of the nations on its borders, with all their eccentricities of manners and worship ; the first to tell more of Tibet than its name, to speak of Burmah, of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra, and of other islands of the Great Archipelago, that museum of beauty and marvels, of Nicobar and Andaman Islands with their naked savages, of Ceylon and its sacred peak, of India, not as a dream-land of fables, but as a country seen and partially explored ; the first in mediaeval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, and of the semi-Christian island of Socotra, and to speak, however dimly, of Zanzibar, and of the vast and distant Madagascar ; whilst he carries us also to the remotely opposite region of Liberia and the Arctic shores, to speak of dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding Tunguses. That all this rich catalogue of discoveries (as they may fitly be called) should belong to the revelation of one man and one book is ample ground enough to justify a very high place in the roll of fame. Indeed it is remarkable in how large a proportion of the Old World modern travellers and explorers have been but developing what Marco Polo indicated in outline, it might be said, without serious hyperbole, only travelling in his footsteps, most certainly illustrating his geographical notices. At the moment when these lines are written a British mission is starting to survey for political reasons a tract upon the Oxus ; Marco Polo traversed this tract. For twenty years Russian and English explorers have been trying to solve the problem, of the Pamir watershed ; Marco Polo explored it. Till within the last quarter century the cities of eastern Turkestan, such as Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, were known only from the compilation of Oriental fragments ; Marco had visited them all. AVithin a shorter period dense darkness hung over the tracts between western China and Upper Burmah ; these also had been traversed by Marco Polo. France is now scattering the brands of war in Tong-king, in Fuhkien, and in Madagascar ; all these were within Marco Polo s knowledge and find mention in his book. And how vast an area has he described from personal knowledge which remains outside of the fields that we have indicated ! Readers of the book would welcome a little more of egotistical detail. Imperson ality is carried to excess ; and we are often driven to discern only by indirect and doubtful induction whether he is speaking of places from personal knowledge or from hearsay. In truth, though there are delightful exceptions, and though nearly every part of the book suggests interesting questions, a desperate meagreness and baldness does affect considerable parts of the narrative. In fact his work reminds us sometimes of his own description of Khorasan &quot; On chevauche par beans plains et belles costieres, Ik ou ila moult beaus herbages et bonne pasture et frais assez. . . et aucune fois y treuve 1 en un desert de soixante milles ou de mains, esquel desers ne treuve 1 en point d eaue ; mais la convient porter o lui ! &quot; The diffusion of the book was hardly so rapid as has been some times alleged. It is true that we know from Gillcs Mallet s catalogue of the books collected in the Louvre by Charles V., dating c. 1370-75, that no less than five copies of Marco Polo s work were then in the collection ; but on the other hand the number spread over Europe of MSS. and early printed editions of Mandeville, with his lying wonders, indicates a much greater popularity. Dante, who lived twenty-three years after the book was dictated, and who touches so many things in the seen and unseen worlds, never alludes to Polo, nor, we believe, to anything that can be connected with him ; nor can any trace of Polo be discovered in the book of his contemporary Marino Sanudo the elder, though this worthy is well acquainted with the work, later by some years, of Hayton the Armenian, and though many of the subjects on which he writes in his own book (De Secretia Fiddium Crucis 1 ) challenge a reference to Polo s experiences. Perhaps indeed the most notable circumstance bearing in the same direction is the fact that the author of Mande ville, whoever he really was, and who plundered right and left, never plunders Polo, a thing only to be accounted for by his being ignorant of Polo s existence. The only literary work ve know &amp;lt;-f belonging to the 14th century which shows a thorough acquaint ance with Polo s book is the poetical romance of Baudouin de Selourg, which borrows themes from it largely. Marco Polo contributed so vast an amount of new facts to the knowledge of the earth s surface, that one might have expected his 1 Printed by Bongars in the collection called Ges/a Dei per francos, 1C11.