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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
598
MARCO POLO
APP. L.
bird. On another occasion they repeated this statement, alleging that this bird was known in the Udoe (?) country near the coast. These priests were able to communicate directly with their informants, and certainly believed the story. Dr. Hildebrand, also, a competent German naturalist, believed in it. But Sir John Kirk himself says that " what the priests had to show was most undoubtedly the whalebone of a comparatively small whale."
I2.—A SPANISH EDITION OF MARCO POLO.
As we go to press we receive the newly published volume, El Libro de Marco Polo—Aus dem vertu ächtnis des Dr. Hermann Knust nach der Madrider Handsch rift herausge eben von Dr. R. Stuebe. Leipzig, Dr. Seele & Co., 1902, 8vo., pp. xxvi.I14. It reproduces the old Spanish text of the manuscript Z-I-2 of the Escurial Library from a copy made by Senor D. José Rodriguez for the Society of the Spanish Bibliophiles, which, being unused, was sold by him to Dr. Hermann Knust, who made a careful comparison of it with the original manuscript. This copy, found among the papers of Dr. Knust after his death, is now edited by Dr. Stuebe. The original 14th century MS., written in a good hand on two columns, includes 312 leaves of parchment, and contains several works ; among them we note : I°, a Collection entitled Flor de las Ystorias de Oriente (fol. I-104), made on the advice of Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1377), of which ilfarco Polo (fol. 50-104) is a part ; 2° and Secretuin Secretorum (fol. 254 r-fol. 312 y.) ; this MS. is not mentioned in our List, App. F., II. p. 546, unless it be our No. 6o.
The manuscript includes 68 chapters, the first of which is devoted to the City of Lob and Sha-chau, corresponding to our Bk. I., ch. 39 and 40 (our vol. i. pp. 196 segq.) ; eh. 65 (p. I I I) corresponds approximatively to our eh. 40, Bk. III. (vol. ii. p. 451) ; chs. 66, 67, and the last, 68, would answer to our chs. 2, 3, and 4 of Bk. I.
(vol i., pp. 45 seqq.). A concordance of this Spanish text, with Pauthier's, Yule's,
and the Geographic Texts, is carefully given at the beginning of each of the 68 chapters of the Book.
Of course this edition does not throw any new light on the text, and this volume is but a matter of curiosity.
13.—SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE.
One of the last questions in which Sir Henry Yule * took an interest in, was the problem of the authorship of the book of Travels which bears the name of SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, the worthy Knight, who, after being for a long time considered as the " Father of English Prose?' has become simply " the name claimed by the compiler of a singular book of Travels, written in French, and published between 1357 and 1371." t
It was understood that " JOHAN MAUNDEUILLE, chivaler, is soit ceo qe ieo ne soie dignes, neez et norriz Dengleterre de la ville Seint Alban," crossed the sea "lan millesme cccme vintisme et secund, le iour de Seint Michel," + that he travelled since across the whole of Asia during the 14th century, that he wrote the relation of his travels as a rest after his fatiguing peregrinations, and that he died on the 17th of November, 1372, at Liége, when he was buried in the Church of the Guillemins.
No work has enjoyed a greater popularity than Mandeville's ; while we describe but eighty-five manuscripts of Marco Polo's, and I gave a list of seventy-three manu-
* MANDEVILLE, Jehan de [By Edward Byron Nicholson, M.A., and Colonel Henry Yule, C.B.I Ext. from the Encyclopced. Britan. gth ed., xv. 1883, ppt. 4to., pp. 4.
t Encycloy. Brit. xv. p. 473.
British Museum, Harley, 4383, f. 1 verso.
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