Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/288

Rh 270 RAMUSIO Ramusio had witnessed from his boyhood the unrolling of that great series of discoveries by Portugal and Spain in East and West, and the love of geography thus kindled in liim made that branch of knowledge through life his chief study and delight. He is said, with the assistance of friends touched by the same flame, to have opened a school for geography in his house at Venice. And it appears from a letter addressed to him by his friend Andrea Navagero, that as early as 1523 the preparation of material for his great work had already begun. The task had been suggested and encouraged, as Ramusio him- self states in a dedicatory epistle to the famous Girolamo Fracastoro, by that scholar, his lifelong friend ; an address to the same personage indeed introduced each of the three volumes, and in the first the writer speaks of his desire to bequeath to posterity, along with his labours, "a testimony to the long and holy friendship that had existed between the two." They were contemporaries in the strictest sense (Ramusio 1485-1557, Fracastorius 1483-1553). His corre- spondence, which was often devoted to the collection of new material for his work, was immense, and embraced many distinguished men. Among those whose names have still an odour of celebrity were Fracastoro, just men- tioned, Cardinal Bembo, Damiano de Goez, and Sebastian Cabot; among lesser lights, Vettor Fausto, Daniel Barbaro, Paolo Manuzio, Andrea Navagero, the cardinals Gasparo Contarini and Gregorio Cortese, and the printer Tommaso Giunti, editor after Ramusio's death of the Navigationi. Before speaking more particularly of this work we may conclude the history of the family. PAOLO (GIROLAMO GASPARE) 1 (1532-1600) was the only child of Gian Battista, and was born on 4th July 1532. Like his father, he maintained a large correspondence with many persons of learning and note. In 1541 Francesco Contarini, procurator of St Mark's, brought from Brussels a MS. of Yillehardouin's History of the Conquest of Con- stantinople, which he presented to the Council of Ten. In 1556 they publicly ordered its translation into Latin, and gave the commission to Paolo Rannusio. His father also seems to have taken much interest in the work, for a MS. vernacular translation by him exists in the Marciana. Paolo's book was not completed till 1573, many years after the father's death, and was in fact a paraphrase enlarged from other sources, thus, according to Cigogna's questionable judgment, " converting the dry story of Ville- hardouin into an elegant (fiorita) historical work." It was not published till 1609, nine years after Paolo's death ; nor was it ever really reprinted, though it became the subject of a singular and unintelligible forgery. For Jacopo Gaffarelli, who was sent to Venice to buy books for Richelieu, having apparently procured the " remainder " copies, removed the title and preliminary pages and sub- stituted a fresh title with the date 1634, and a dedication to his master the cardinal. 2 GIROLAMO GIUSEPPE (1555-1611), the son of Paolo, was born at Venice in 1555. He entered the public service in 1577, and was employed in connexion with various foreign missions. In 1601 he published at Lyons the French text of Villehardouin ; and, besides an Italian translation of this old historian (who seems thus to have furnished occupation for three generations of Ramusios), he left behind him a Storia o Cronaca di Casa Ramusia, a folio dispersed tribes to the Efoly Land and to rebuild the temple. In this view he had visited Prester John and the J.ews in his kingdom, and then various European countries. David was dark in complexion, " like an Abyssinian," lean, dry, and Arab-like, well dressed and well attended, full of pretensions to supernatural cabalistic knowledge, and with enthusiastic ideas about his mission, whilst the Jews regarded him as a veritable Messiah. 1 This person and his son affected the spelling Rannusio. 2 In the British Museum. MS. still in St Mark's Library. He died at Padua in 1611, and his posterity did nothing to continue the reputa- tion of the family, official or literary. We revert to the Navigations c Viaggi. Two volumes only were published during the life of Gian Battista, vol. i. in 1550, vol. iii. in 1556 ; vol. ii. did not appear till 1559, two years after his death, delayed, as his friend and printer T. Giuiiti explains, not only by that event but by a fire iu the printing-office (November 1557), which destroyed a part of the material which had been prepared. It had been Ramusio's intention to publish a fourth volume, containing, as he mentions himself, documents relating to the Andes, and, as appears from one of the prefaces of Giunti, others relating to explorations towards the Antarctic. 3 Ramusio's collection was by no means the first of the kind, though it was, and we may say on the whole continues to be, the best. Even before the invention of the press such collections were known, of which that made by a certain Long John of Ypres, abbot of St Bertin, in the latter half of the 14th century was most meritorious, and afforded in its transcription a splendid field for embellishment by the miniaturists, which was not disregarded. The best of the printed collections before Ramusio's was the Novus Orbis, edited at Basel by Simon Grynaeus in 1532, and reissued in 1537 and 1555. This, however, can boast of no disquisitions nor of much editorial judgment. Ramusio's collection is in these respects far superior, as well as in the variety and fulness of its matter. He spared no pains in ransacking Italy and the Spanish peninsula for contributions, and in translating them when needful into the racy Italian of his day. Several of the pieces are very rare in any other shape than that exhibited in Ramusio's collection ; several besides of importance e.gr.,thein valuable travels of Barbosa and Pigafetta's account of Magellan's voyage were not publicly known in any complete form till the present century. Of two important articles at least the originals have never been otherwise printed or dis- covered ; one of these is the Summary of all the Kingdoms, Cities, and Nations from the Red Sea to China, a work translated from the Portuguese, and dating apparently from about 1535 ; the other, the remarkable Ramusian redaction of MARCO POLO (g.v.). The Prefatione, Espositionc, and Dichiarazione, which precede this ver- sion of Marco Polo's book, are the best and amplest examples of Ramusio's own style as an editor. They are full of good sense and of interesting remarks derived from his large reading and experi- ence, and few pictures in words were ever touched more delightfully than that in which he sketches the return of the Polo family to their native city, as he had received it in the tradition of the Venetian elders. There were several editions of the Navigationi e Viaggi, and as additions continued to be made to the several volumes a good deal of bibliographical interest attaches to these various modifications. 4 The two volumes (i. and iii. ) published in Ramusio's lifetime do not bear his name on the title-page, nor does it appear in the addresses to his friend Fracastorius with which these volumes begin (as does also the second and posthumous volume). The editions of vol. i. are as follows 1550, 1554, 1563, 1588, 1606, 1613. 5 The edition of 1554 contains the following articles which are not in that of 1550, (1) copious index ; (2) "Narr. di un Compagno di Barbosa" ; (3) " Information! del Giapan " ; (4) " Alii Lettori di Giov. de Barros"; (5) "Capitoli estratti da di Barros." The edition of 1563 adds to these a preliminary leaf concerning Ramusio, "Tom- maso Giunti alii Lettori." After 1563 there is no change in the contents of this volume, only in the title-page. It should be added that in the edition of 1554 there are three double-page woodcut maps (Africa, India, and India extra Gangem), which do not exist in the edition of 1550, and which are replaced by copper- plate maps in subsequent editions. These maps are often missing. The editions of vol. ii. are as follows 1559, 1574, 1583, 1606. There are important additions in the 1574 copy, and still further addi- tions in that of 1583. The additions made in 1574 were (1) " Herberstein, Delia Moscovia e della Russia " ; (2) " Viaggio in Persia di Caterino Zeno " ; (3) " Scoprimento dell' Isola Frislanda, &c., per due fratelli Zeni" ; (4) "Viaggi in Tartaria per alcuni frati Minori" ; (5) "Viaggio del Beato Odorico" (two versions). Further additions made in 1583 were (1) "Navigatione di Seb. Cabota"; (2) at the end 90 ff. with fresh pagination, containing ten articles on " Sarmatia, Polonia, Lithuania, Prussia, Livonia, Moscovia, and the Tartars by Aless. Guagnino and Matteo di Micheovo." The two latest "editions" of vol. ii. are identical, i.e., from the same type, with a change of title-page only, and a reprint of the last leaf of the preface and of the last leaf of the book. But the last cir- cumstance does not apply to all copies. In one now before the 3 See in vol. iii. the end of Ramusio's Discorso on the conquest of Peru, and Giunti's " Alii Lettori " in the 3d edition of the first volume. 4 Brunet's statements on the subject are borrowed, and not quite accurate. The detail in Cigogna seems to be accurate, but it is vague as to the deficiencies of the earlier editions. B All of these are in the British Museum.