I Find It Difficult
To Obtain Statistical Data As To The Comparative Number Of Copies Of
Different Works Existing In Manuscript.
With Dante's great Poem, of which
there are reckoned close upon 500 MSS.,[1] comparison would be
inappropriate.
But of the Travels of Friar Odoric, a poor work indeed
beside Marco Polo's, I reckoned thirty-nine MSS., and could now add at
least three more to the list. [I described seventy-three in my edition of
Odoric. - H. C.] Also I find that of the nearly contemporary work of
Brunetto Latini, the Tresor, a sort of condensed Encyclopaedia of
knowledge, but a work which one would scarcely have expected to approach
the popularity of Polo's Book, the Editor enumerates some fifty MSS. And
from the great frequency with which one encounters in Catalogues both MSS.
and early printed editions of Sir John Maundevile, I should suppose that
the lying wonders of our English Knight had a far greater popularity and
more extensive diffusion than the veracious and more sober marvels of
Polo.[2] To Southern Italy Polo's popularity certainly does not seem at
any time to have extended. I cannot learn that any MS. of his Book exists
in any Library of the late Kingdom of Naples or in Sicily.[3]
Dante, who lived for twenty-three years after Marco's work was written,
and who touches so many things in the seen and unseen Worlds, never
alludes to Polo, nor I think to anything that can be connected with his
Book.
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