These passages, and many more that might be quoted, seem to me to demonstrate (1) that the Latin and the Crusca have had a common original, and (2) that this original was an Italian version from the French.
[2] Thus the Pucci MS. at Florence, in the passage regarding the Golden King (vol. ii. p. 17) which begins in G. T. “Lequel fist faire jadis un rois qe fu apellés le Roi Dor,” renders “Lo quale fa fare Jaddis uno re,” a mistake which is not in the Crusca nor in the Latin, and seems to imply derivation from the French directly, or by some other channel (Baldelli Boni).
[3] In the Prologue ([vol. i. p. 34]) this class of MSS. alone names the King of England.
In the account of the Battle with Nayan ([i. p. 337]) this class alone speaks of the two-stringed instruments which the Tartars played whilst awaiting the signal for battle. But the circumstance appears elsewhere in the G. T. (p. 250).
In the chapter on Malabar (vol. ii. p. 390), it is said that the ships which go with cargoes towards Alexandria are not one-tenth of those that go to the further East. This is not in the older French.
In the chapter on Coilun (ii. p. 375), we have a notice of the Columbine ginger so celebrated in the Middle Ages, which is also absent from the older text.
[4] See vol. ii. p. 439. It is, however, remarkable that a like mistake is made about the Persian Gulf (see [i. 63, 64]). Perhaps Polo thought in Persian, in which the word darya means either sea or a large river. The same habit and the ambiguity of the Persian sher led him probably to his confusion of lions and tigers (see [i. 397]).
[5] Such are Pasciai-Dir and Ariora Kesciemur ([i. p. 98].)
[6] Thus the MSS. of this type have elected the erroneous readings Bolgara, Cogatra, Chiato, Cabanant, etc., instead of the correcter Bolgana, Cocacin, Quiacatu, Cobinan, where the G. T. presents both (supra, [p. 86]). They read Esanar for the correct Etzina; Chascun for Casvin; Achalet for Acbalec; Sardansu for Sindafu, Kayteu, Kayton, Sarcon for Zaiton or Caiton; Soucat for Locac; Falec for Ferlec, and so on, the worse instead of the better. They make the Mer Occeane into Mer Occident; the wild asses (asnes) of the Kerman Desert into wild geese (oes); the escoillez of Bengal (ii. p. 115) into escoliers; the giraffes of Africa into girofles, or cloves, etc., etc.
[7] There are about five-and-thirty such passages altogether.