In treating of Marco Polo,
he alludes to the first edition of this work, most evidently with no
intention of disparagement, but speaks of it as merely a revision of
Marsden's Book. The last thing I should allow myself to do would be to
apply to a Geographer, whose works I hold in so much esteem, the
disrespectful definition which the adage quoted in my former Preface[5]
gives of the vir qui docet quod non sapit; but I feel bound to say that
on this occasion M. Vivien de St. Martin has permitted himself to
pronounce on a matter with which he had not made himself acquainted; for
the perusal of the very first lines of the Preface (I will say nothing of
the Book) would have shown him that such a notion was utterly unfounded.
In concluding these "forewords" I am probably taking leave of Marco
Polo,[6] the companion of many pleasant and some laborious hours, whilst I
have been contemplating with him ("volti a levante") that Orient in
which I also had spent years not a few.
* * * * *
And as the writer lingered over this conclusion, his thoughts wandered
back in reverie to those many venerable libraries in which he had formerly
made search for mediaeval copies of the Traveller's story; and it seemed
to him as if he sate in a recess of one of these with a manuscript before
him which had never till then been examined with any care, and which he
found with delight to contain passages that appear in no version of the
Book hitherto known. It was written in clear Gothic text, and in the Old
French tongue of the early 14th century. Was it possible that he had
lighted on the long-lost original of Ramusio's Version? No; it proved to
be different. Instead of the tedious story of the northern wars, which
occupies much of our Fourth Book, there were passages occurring in the
later history of Ser Marco, some years after his release from the Genoese
captivity. They appeared to contain strange anachronisms certainly; but we
have often had occasion to remark on puzzles in the chronology of Marco's
story![7] And in some respects they tended to justify our intimated
suspicion that he was a man of deeper feelings and wider sympathies than
the book of Rusticiano had allowed to appear.[8] Perhaps this time the
Traveller had found an amanuensis whose faculties had not been stiffened
by fifteen years of Malapaga?[9] One of the most important passages ran
thus: -
"Bien est voirs que, apres ce que Messires Marc Pol avoit pris fame et
si estoit demoure plusours ans de sa vie a Venysse, il avint que
mourut Messires Mafes qui oncles Monseignour Marc estoit:
