Ely of fairest place, of fairest site Rochester,
Even agen Fraunce stonde ye countre ò Chichester,
Norwiche agen Denemark, Chestre agen Irelond,
Duram agen Norwei, as ich understonde.
Yet he tells us some things worth knowing—about every-day matters—about the fish and the fruits and the pastures, and the things he saw with his own eyes. And we learn from these old chroniclers how much better a story a man can make, and how much more worth it is—in telling of the things he has really seen, than of the things he has not seen. Most of these old writing people must needs begin at the beginning—drawling over the ancient fables about the Creation and Siege of Troy, keeping by the conventional untruths, and so—very barren and good for nothing, until they get upon their own days, when they grow rich and meaty and juicy, in spite of themselves, and by reason of their voluble minuteness, and their mention of homely, every-day unimportant things. They cannot tell lies, without fear of detection, on their own ground: and so they get that darlingest quality of all history—the simple truth.
But if a man wanders otherwheres and makes report, he may tell lies, and the lies may amuse and get him fame. Thus it happened with another well-known but somewhat apocryphal writer of this Transition English epoch; I mean Sir John Mandeville, whose book of travels into distant countries had a very great run.
Sir John Mandeville.
We know little of Mandeville except what he tells us;—that he was born at St. Albans—twenty miles from London, a place famous for its great abbey and its Roman remains—in the year 1300:—that he studied to be a mediciner—then set off (1322) on his travels into Egypt, Tartary, China, and Persia—countries visited by that more famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo,[28] a half century earlier;—also, at other dates by certain wandering Italian Friars[29] of less fame. From some of these earlier travellers it is now made certain that Sir John pilfered very largely;—so largely, in fact, and so rashly, that there is reason to doubt, not only his stories about having been in the service of a Sultan of Egypt or of the Khan of Kathay—as he avers—but also to doubt if he visited at all the far-away countries which he pretends to describe.
Nay, so deflowered is he of his honors in these latter days, that recent critics[30] are inclined to question his right to the title of Sir John, and to deny wholly his authorship of that English version of the tales of travel, which have been so long and pleasantly associated with his name.