Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/58

xxx treated with great kindness and sympathy by the principal inhabitants, he nevertheless spent four years in prison. Here his famous work was composed, which will further be noticed in detail.

On account of the unstable life which Marco Polo led during his long sojourn in the east, it is not likely that he should have kept a detailed journal. He appears farther to have brought with him only the short notices, which he collected for Kublai Khan on his route, and with the help of these dictated his narrative to his friend and fellow-sufferer, Rustichello, a native of Pisa, in his prison at Genoa.

With respect to the language in which the work was originally composed, Mr. Marsden, in his important and learned work presently to be quoted more at length, adduces evidence to show that it was not written in Latin, as Ramusio erroneously understood, but in a dialect of Italian; and in this conclusion he is warranted by the decided opinion of the celebrated Apostolo Zeno, who expresses himself as follows:—“Io sone persuaso che il Polo la scrivesse primieramente, non come vuole il Ramusio, in lingua latina, ma nella volgar sua natia, e che poco dopo da altri fosse translatata in Latino.”

With all the apparent improbabilities and inconsistencies of Marco Polo’s narrative, there is still enough in it to convince the most sceptical of its general accuracy; while, as Mr. Marsden justly observes, the numerous descriptions and incidents afford