Find the narrator to fall
constantly into a certain vein of bombastic commonplaces, which look like
the stock phrases of a professed romancer, and which indeed have a strong
resemblance to the actual phraseology of certain metrical romances.[15]
Whether this feature be due to Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not
been able to trace anything of the same character in a cursory inspection
of some of his romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to
conceive of our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his
Genoese dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent
bombast, with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen of the
faithful amanuensis!
[Sidenote: Marco's reading embraced the Alexandrian Romances. Examples.]
73. On the other hand, though Marco, who had left home at fifteen years of
age, naturally shows very few signs of reading, there are indications that
he had read romances, especially those dealing with the fabulous
adventures of Alexander.
To these he refers explicitly or tacitly in his notices of the Irongate
and of Gog and Magog, in his allusions to the marriage of Alexander with
Darius's daughter, and to the battle between those two heroes, and in his
repeated mention of the Arbre Sol or Arbre Sec on the Khorasan
frontier.
