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0013 Marco Polo : vol.1
Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 13 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000271
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day. Here the great debt is to the late Cavaliere Dr Giovanni ORLANDINI of the Archivio di Stato at Venice, who has done on his side as good work as BENEDETTO has done for the text, and in two small pamphlets has thrown the work of his predecessors completely into the shade. It is a great pleasure too to acknowledge, though he cannot now read the words, his personal courtesy and kindness to me in my work at Venice, and to thank him and the staff of the Archivio for their untiring help. To our great delight the old man allowed himself to be photographed in January 1935, sitting in his accustomed place in the Archivio, and seemed to be pleased with the thought that his portrait might appear in this book which owes so much to his learning (see vol. IV pl. 21). I am allowed to translate and combine some sentences from letters which his son Luigi wrote to Sir Percival DAVID on 18 April 1937 and 5 March 1938. "In reply to your request I tell you that he was born in Venice the 27th of October 1859 and died on the 27th of January 1937 in his house in the Parish of the SS. Apostoli, in his little room, where he passed all his time in study in the midst of his manuscripts, with his notes which he had accumulated in fifty-two years of unwearied work, grieving to the last moment that he had been unable in his lifetime to realize his dream of being able to publish the fruits of his labour, that he might endow his children with a little with which to make their future secure. And another thought gave him extreme pain; to think that after him, if those notes of his should be lost, students in that ocean of documents which rest in his Archivio at the Frari would no longer be able to find that guide which would make all research easy. I tell you also that the simple funeral took place in the parish Church of the SS. Apostoli in the presence of representatives of all the chief learned societies of Venice; on the bier no flower except a few from his children. Before he was placed on the funeral barge the Director of the Archivio, Coin. Da Mosto, kindly said a few words giving a sketch of the whole of his studious life. Then he was carried to the Camposanto, to the place reserved for the Arciconfraternità di S. Cristoforo. When a stone is set up I think his name alone will be enough. I do not believe that I am misled by pride in thinking that no student will ever forget him."

The short paragraphs on the spelling of proper names both in the translation and in the original text of F seemed to be required for the moment, but will be enlarged by the more learned and authoritative pen of Professor PELLIOT when the third volume appears. It will easily be believed how very great a pleasure it has been to me to be associated with PELLIOT in this work, and it would be mere impertinence of me to expatiate here on the value of his Notes on the Proper Names and Oriental Words which will fill 400 or 500 pages of the third volume

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