Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/208

186 retour de la première croisade." This vague, uncertain, contradictory judgment, founded upon no reason even apparently solid, could satisfy nobody; the less could it be considered as decisive since Dacier, who knew the Syntipas only from a bad Paris manuscript of the sixteenth century, was ignorant of the prologue in verse, afterwards published by Matthaei from a more ancient manuscript at Moscow, wanting as well in the manuscript which Dacier read as in the others, in which prologue it is said by whom that translation was made from the Syriac into Greek, and by whose orders. But even after the document was published, neither Matthaei himself, nor Boissonade, nor Koraà, nor Keller, nor Sengelman, nor others amongst so many who had to deal with the Syntipas in their writings, could say anything more positive than Dacier had said. Boissonade, upon whom as the first publisher of the book it was incumbent to seek its age, gets out of his trouble by referring the reader to Dacier as regards this, which is equivalent to saying he knew nothing about it. More explicitly Loiseleur (Essai, p. 83, et seg.) says that the age of the Syntipas is unknown; he, however, considers it as more ancient than that the Hebrew version, which, in his belief, cannot be posterior to the end of the twelfth century. Up to the present time, therefore, what we know more positively concerning the age of the Syntipas is this: that it is certainly anterior to the thirteenth century—an age to which, in Matthaei's judgment, the Moscow codex, which is the most ancient known, may ascend. Respecting Andreopulos, who in the prologue in verse declares himself the author of the translation, Boissonade observes:—"Nominis ipsa desinentia recentiorem esse arguit." As far as I can at present recollect, names