by Liebrecht, p. 1.)
[4] This circumstance does not, however, show in the Vulgate.
[5] "Veggiamo in prima in general la terra Come risiede e come il mar la serra.
Un T dentro ad un O mostra il disegno
Come in tre parti fu diviso il Mondo,
E la superiore è il maggior regno
Che quasi piglia la metà del tondo.
ASIA chiamata: il gambo ritto è segno
Che parte il terzo nome dal secondo
AFFRICA dico da EUROPA: il mare
Mediterran tra esse in mezzo appare."
—La Sfera, di F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati, Lib. iii. st. 11.
[6] De Civ. Dei, xvi. 17, quoted by Peschel, 92.
[7] Opus Majus, Venice ed. pp. 142, seqq.
[8] Peschel, p. 195. This had escaped me.
[9] By the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A., and the Rev. H. W. Phillott, M.A. In Asia, they point out, the only name showing any recognition of modern knowledge is Samarcand.
[10] His work, Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, intended to stimulate a new Crusade, has three capital maps, besides that of the World, one of which, translated, but otherwise in facsimile, is given at p. 18 of this volume. But besides these maps, he gives, in a tabular form of parallel columns, the reigning sovereigns in Europe and Asia connected with his historical retrospect, just on the plan presented in Sir Harris Nicolas's Chronology of History.
[11] I do not see that al-Birúni deserves the credit in this respect assigned to him by Professor Peschel, so far as one can judge from the data given by Sprenger (Peschel, p. 128; Post und Reise-Routen, 81–82.)
[12] For example, Delli, which Polo does not name; Diogil (Deogír); on the Coromandel coast Setemelti, which I take to be a clerical error for Sette-Templi, the Seven Pagodas; round the Gulf of Cambay we have Cambetum (Kambayat), Cocintaya (Kokan-Tana, see vol. ii. p. 396), Goga, Baroche, Neruala (Anharwala), and to the north Moltan. Below Multan are Hocibelch and Bargelidoa, two puzzles. The former is, I think, Uch-baligh, showing that part of the information was from Perso-Mongol sources.
[13] I see it stated by competent authority that Romman is often applied to any prose composition in a Romance language.
In or about 1426, Prince Pedro of Portugal, the elder brother of the illustrious Prince Henry, being on a visit to Venice, was presented by the Signory with a copy of Marco Polo's book, together with a map already alluded to. (Major's P. Henry, pp. 61, 62.)
[14] This is partly due also to Fra Mauro's reversion to the fancy of the circular disk limiting the inhabited portion of the earth.
[15] An early graphic instance of this is Ruysch's famous map (1508). The following extract of a work printed as late as 1533 is an example of the like confusion in verbal description: "The Territories which are beyond the limits of Ptolemy's Tables have not yet been described on certain authority. Behind the Sinae and the Seres, and beyond 180° of East Longitude, many countries were discovered by one [quendam] Marco Polo a Venetian and others, and the sea-coasts of those countries have now recently again been explored by Columbus the Genoese and Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Western Ocean. … To this part (of Asia) belong the territory called that of the Bachalaos [or Codfish, Newfoundland], Florida, the Desert of Lop, Tangut, Cathay, the realm of Mexico (wherein is the vast city of Temistitan, built in the middle of a great lake, but which the older travellers styled QUINSAY), besides Paria, Uraba, and the countries of the Canibals." (Joannis Schoneri Carolostadtii Opusculum Geogr., quoted by Humboldt, Examen, V. 171, 172.)
[16] In Robert Parke's Dedication of his Translation of Mendoza's, London, 1st of January, 1589, he identifies China and Japan with the regions of which Paulus Venetus and Sir John Mandeuill "wrote long agoe."—MS. Note by Yule.
[17] "Totius Europae et Asiae Tabula Geographica, Auctore Thoma D. Aucupario. Edita Argentorati, MDXXII." Copied in Witsen.
[18] This strange association of Balor (i.e., Bolor, that name of so many odd vicissitudes, see pp. 178–179 infra) with the shut-up Israelites must be traced to a passage which Athanasius Kircher quotes from R. Abraham Pizol (qu. Peritsol?): "Regnum, inquit, Belor magnum et excelsum nimis, juxta omnes illos qui scripserunt Historicos. Sunt in eo Judaei plurimi inclusi, et illud in latere Orientali et Boreali," etc. (China Illustrata, p. 49.)
[19] Vol. ii. p. 1.
[20] A short Account of Libraries of Italy, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society, vol. i, 1854, pp. 6. seqq.
[21] P. del Natali was Bishop of Equilio, a city of the Venetian Lagoons, in the latter part of the 14th century. (See Ughelli, Italia Sacra, X. 87.) There is no ground whatever for connecting him with these inventions. The story of the glass types appears to rest entirely and solely on one obscure passage of Sansovino, who says that under the Doge Marco Corner (1365–1367): "certe Natale Veneto lasciò un libro della materie delle forme da giustar intorno alle lettere, ed il modo di formarle di vetro." There is absolutely nothing more. Some kind of stencilling seems indicated.
[22] History of Printing in China and Europe, in Philobiblon, vol. vi. p. 23.
[23] See Appendix L. in First Edition.
[24] Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, vide supra, p. 3
[25] This subject has been fully treated in Cathay and the Way Thither.
XIV. EXPLANATIONS REGARDING THE BASIS ADOPTED FOR THE PRESENT TRANSLATION.
89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis adopted for our English version of the Traveller's record.
[Sidenote: Text followed by Marsden and by Pauthier.]
Ramusio's recension was that which Marsden selected for translation. But at the date of his most meritorious publication nothing was known of the real literary history of Polo's Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar value and originality of the French manuscript texts, nor had Marsden seen any of them. A translation from one of those texts is a translation at first hand; a translation from Ramusio's Italian is, as far as I can judge, the translation of a translated compilation from two or more translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its matter, inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and style of the original narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well in adopting for the text of his edition the MSS. which I have classed as of the second Type, the more as there had hitherto been no publication from those texts. But editing a text in the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different in their demands.
[Sidenote: Eclectic formation of the English Text of this Translation.]
90.
