As we go to press we receive the newly published volume, El Libro de Marco Polo—Aus dem vermächtnis des Dr. Hermann Knust nach der Madrider Handschrift herausgegeben von Dr. R. Stuebe. Leipzig, Dr. Seele & Co., 1902, 8vo., pp. xxvi.–114. It reproduces the old Spanish text of the manuscript Z-I-2 of the Escurial Library from a copy made by Señor 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: 1°, a Collection entitled Flor de las Ystorias de Oriente (fol. 1–104), made on the advice of Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1377), of which Marco Polo (fol. 50–104) is a part; 2° and Secretum Secretorum (fol. 254 r-fol. 312 v.); this MS. is not mentioned in our List, App. F., II. p. 546, unless it be our No. 60.
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 seqq.); ch. 65 (p. 111) corresponds approximatively to our ch. 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[2] 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.”[3]
It was understood that “Johan Maundeuille, chiualer, ia 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,”[4] 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 Liège, 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 manuscripts of Friar Odoric’s relation,[5] it is by hundreds that Mandeville’s manuscripts can be reckoned. As to the printed editions, they are, so to speak, numberless; Mr. Carl Schönborn[6] gave in 1840, an incomplete bibliography; Tobler in his Bibliographia geographica Palestinae (1867),[7] and Röhricht[8] after him compiled a better bibliography, to which may be added my own lists in the Bibliotheca Sinica[9] and in the T’oung-Pao.[10]
Campbell, Ann. de la Typog. néerlandaise, 1874, p. 338, mentions a Dutch edition: Reysen int heilighe lant, s.l.n.d., folio, of which but two copies are known, and which must be dated as far back as 1470 [see p. 600]. I believed hitherto (I am not yet sure that Campbell is right as to his date) that the first printed edition was German, s.l.n.d., very likely printed at Basel, about 1475, discovered by Tross, the Paris Bookseller.[11] The next editions are the French of the 4th April, 1480,[12] and 8th February of the same year,[13] Easter being the 2nd of April, then the Latin,[14] Dutch,[15] and Italian[16] editions, and after the English editions of Pynson and Wynkin de Worde.
In what tongue was Mandeville’s Book written?
The fact that the first edition of it was printed either in German or in Dutch, only shows that the scientific progress was greater and printing more active in such towns as Basel, Nuremberg and Augsburg than in others. At first, one might believe that there were three original texts, probably in French, English, and vulgar Latin; the Dean of Tongres, Radulphus of Rivo, a native of Breda, writes indeed in his Gesta Pontificum Leodiensium, 1616, p. 17: “Hoc anno Ioannes Mandeuilius natione Anglus vir ingenio, & arte medendi eminens, qui toto fere terrarum orbe peragrato, tribus linguis peregrinationem suam doctissime conscripsit, in alium orbê nullis finibus clausum, lōgeque hoc quietiorem, & beatiorem migrauit 17. Nouembris. Sepultus in Ecclesia Wilhelmitarum non procul à moenibus Ciuitatis Leodiensis.” The Dean of Tongres died in 1483;[17] Mr. Warner, on the authority of the Bulletin de l’Inst. Archéol. Liégeois, xvi. 1882, p. 358, gives 1403 as the date of the death of Radulphus. However, Mandeville himself says (Warner, Harley, 4383) at the end of his introduction, p. 3:—“Et sachez qe ieusse cest escript mis en latyn pur pluis briefment deuiser; mes, pur ceo qe plusours entendent mieltz romantz qe latin, ieo lay mys en romance, pur ceo qe chescun lentende et luy chiualers et les seignurs et lez autres nobles homes qi ne sciuent point de latin ou poy, et qount estee outre meer, sachent et entendent, si ieo dye voir ou noun, et si ieo erre en deuisant par noun souenance ou autrement, qils le puissent adresser et amender, qar choses de long temps passez par la veue tornent en obly, et memorie de homme ne puet mye tot retenir ne comprendre.” From this passage and from the Latin text: “Incipit itinerarius a terra Angliæ ad partes Iherosolimitanas et in ulteriores transmarinas, editus primo in lingua gallicana a milite suo autore anno incarnacionis Domini m. ccc. lv, in civitate Leodiensi, et paulo post in eadem civitate translatus in hanc formam latinam.” (P. 33 of the Relation des Mongols ou Tartars par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1838). D’Avezac long ago was inclined to believe in an unique French version. The British Museum, English MS. (Cott., Titus. C. xvi.), on the other hand, has in the Prologue (cf. ed. 1725, p. 6): “And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it....”[18]