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0023 The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1
マルコ=ポーロ卿の記録 : vol.1
The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 / 23 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000269
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PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

f

f

Geographer, whose works I hold in so much esteem,

the disrespectful definition which the adage quoted

in my former Preface * gives of the vir qui docet quod

non sapit ; but I feel bound to say that on this occasion

M. Vivien de St. Martin has permitted himself to

pronounce on a matter with which he had not made

himself acquainted ; for the perusal of the very first

lines of the Preface (I will say nothing of the Book)

would have shown him that such a notion was utterly

unfounded.

In concluding these " forewords " 1 am probably

taking leave of Marco Polo,- the companion of many

pleasant and some laborious hours, whilst I have been

contemplating with him (" vôlli a levante ") that Orient

in which I also had spent years not a few.

And as the writer lingered over this conclusion, his

thoughts wandered back in reverie to those many

venerable libraries in which he had formerly made search

for mediaval copies of the Traveller's story ; and it

seemed to him as if he sate in a recess of one of these

with a manuscript before him which had never till then

been examined with any care, and which he found with

delight to contain passages that appear in no version of

the Book hitherto known. It was written in clear Gothic

text, and in the Old French tongue of the early 14th

century. Was it possible that he had lighted on the long-.

8

a

* See page xxix.

t Writing in Italy, perhaps I ought to write, according to too prevalent modern Italian custom, Polo Marco. I have already seen, and in the work of a writer of reputation, the Alexandrian geographer styled Tolomeo Claudio ! and if this preposterous fashion should continue to spread, we shall in time have Tasso Torquato, Jonson Ben, Africa explored by Park Munro, Asia conquered by Lane Tamer, Copperfield David by Dickens Charles, Homer Englished by Pope Alexander, and the Roman history done into French from the original of Live Tite !