The Voyages of Marco Polo. Марко Поло

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СКАЧАТЬ estimates of value are curious. They are in sols parisis, which we shall not estimate very wrongly at a shilling each:—

      "No. 295. Item. Marcus Paulus; en ung cahier escript de lettre formée en françois, à deux coulombes. Commt. ou ii'e fo. 'deux frères prescheurs,' et ou derrenier 'que sa arrières.' X. s. p.

      "No. 334. Item. Marcus Paulus. Couvert de drap d'or, bien escript & enluminé, de lettre de forme en françois, à deux coulombes. Commt. ou ii'e fol.; 'il fut Roys,' & ou derrenier 'propremen,' à deux fermouers de laton. XV. s. p.

      "No. 336. Item. Marcus Paulus; non enluminé, escript en françois, de lettre de forme. Commt. ou ii'e fo. 'vocata moult grant,' & ou derrenier 'ilec dist il.' Couvert de cuir blanc, à deux fermouers de laton. XII. s. p."

      (Inventaire de la Bibliothèque du Roi Charles VI., etc. Paris, Société des Bibliophiles, 1867.)

      [4] See Del Reggimento e de' Costumi delle donne di Messer Francesco da Barberino, Roma, 1815, pp. 166 and 271. The latter passage runs thus, on Slavery:—

      "E fu indutta prima da Noé,

       E fu cagion lo vin, perchè si egge:

       Ch' egli è un paese, dove

       Son molti servi in parte di Cathay:

       Che per questa cagione

       Hanno a nimico il vino,

       E non ne beon, nè voglion vedere."

      The author was born the year before Dante (1264), and though he lived to 1348 it is probable that the poems in question were written in his earlier years. Cathay was no doubt known by dim repute long before the final return of the Polos, both through the original journey of Nicolo and Maffeo, and by information gathered by the Missionary Friars. Indeed, in 1278 Pope Nicolas III., in consequence of information said to have come from Abaka Khan of Persia, that Kúblái was a baptised Christian, sent a party of Franciscans with a long letter to the Kaan Quobley, as he is termed. They never seem to have reached their destination. And in 1289 Nicolas IV. entrusted a similar mission to Friar John of Monte Corvino, which eventually led to very tangible results. Neither of the Papal letters, however, mentions Cathay. (See Mosheim, App. pp. 76 and 94.)

      [5] See Muratori, IX. 583, seqq.; Bianconi, Mem. I. p. 37.

      [6] This Friar makes a strange hotch-potch of what he had read, e.g.: "The Tartars, when they came out of the mountains, made them a king, viz., the son of Prester John, who is thus vulgarly termed Vetulus de la Montagna!" (Mon. Hist. Patr. Script. III. 1557.)

      [7] G. Villani died in the great plague of 1348. But his book was begun soon after Marco's was written, for he states that it was the sight of the memorials of greatness which he witnessed at Rome, during the Jubilee of 1300, that put it into his head to write the history of the rising glories of Florence, and that he began the work after his return home. (Bk. VIII. ch. 36.)

      [8] Book V. ch. 29.

      [9] Petri Aponensis Medici ac Philosophi Celeberrimi, Conciliator, Venice, 1521, fol. 97. Peter was born in 1250 at Abano, near Padua, and was Professor of Medicine at the University in the latter city. He twice fell into the claws of the Unholy Office, and only escaped them by death in 1316.

      [10] [It is curious that this figure is almost exactly that which among oriental carpets is called a "cloud." I have heard the term so applied by Vincent Robinson. It often appears in old Persian carpets, and also in Chinese designs. Mr. Purdon Clarke tells me it is called nebula in heraldry; it is also called in Chinese by a term signifying cloud; in Persian, by a term which he called silen-i-khitai, but of this I can make nothing.—MS. Note by Yule.]

      [11] The great Magellanic cloud? In the account of Vincent Yanez Pinzon's Voyage to the S.W. in 1499 as given in Ramusio (III. 15) after Pietro Martire d'Anghieria, it is said:—"Taking the astrolabe in hand, and ascertaining the Antarctic Pole, they did not see any star like our Pole Star; but they related that they saw another manner of stars very different from ours, and which they could not clearly discern because of a certain dimness which diffused itself about those stars, and obstructed the view of them." Also the Kachh mariners told Lieutenant Leech that midway to Zanzibar there was a town (?) called Marethee, where the North Pole Star sinks below the horizon, and they steer by a fixed cloud in the heavens. (Bombay Govt. Selections, No. XV. N.S. p. 215.)

      The great Magellan cloud is mentioned by an old Arab writer as a white blotch at the foot of Canopus, visible in the Tehama along the Red Sea, but not in Nejd or 'Irák. Humboldt, in quoting this, calculates that in A.D. 1000 the Great Magellan would have been visible at Aden some degrees above the horizon. (Examen, V. 235.)

      [12] This passage contains points that are omitted in Polo's book, besides the drawing implied to be from Marco's own hand! The island is of course Sumatra. The animal is perhaps the peculiar Sumatran wild-goat, figured by Marsden, the hair of which on the back is "coarse and strong, almost like bristles." (Sumatra, p. 115.)

      [13] A splendid example of Abbot John's Collection is the Livre des Merveilles of the Great French Library (No. 18 in our App. F.). This contains Polo, Odoric, William of Boldensel, the Book of the Estate of the Great Kaan by the Archbishop of Soltania, Maundevile, Hayton, and Ricold of Montecroce, of which all but Polo and Maundevile are French versions by this excellent Long John. A list of the Polo miniatures is given in App. F. of this Edition, p. 527.

      It is a question for which there is sufficient ground, whether the Persian Historians Rashiduddin and Wassáf, one or other or both, did not derive certain information that appears in their histories, from Marco Polo personally, he having spent many months in Persia, and at the Court of Tabriz, when either or both may have been there. Such passages as that about the Cotton-trees of Guzerat (vol. ii. p. 393, and note), those about the horse trade with Maabar (id. p. 340, and note), about the brother-kings of that country (id. p. 331), about the naked savages of Necuveram (id. p. 306), about the wild people of Sumatra calling themselves subjects of the Great Kaan (id. pp. 285, 292, 293, 299), have so strong a resemblance to parallel passages in one or both of the above historians, as given in the first and third volumes of Elliot, that the probability, at least, of the Persian writers having derived their information from Polo might be fairly maintained.

      [14] Li Romans de Bauduin de Sebourc III'e Roy de Jhérusalem; Poème du XIV'e Siècle; Valenciennes, 1841. 2 vols. 8vo. I was indebted to two references of M. Pauthier's for knowledge of the existence of this work. He cites the legends of the Mountain, and of the Stone of the Saracens from an abstract, but does not seem to have consulted the work itself, nor to have been aware of the extent of its borrowings from Marco Polo. M. Génin, from whose account Pauthier quotes, ascribes the poem to an early date after the death of Philip the Fair (1314). See Pauthier, pp. 57, 58, and 140.

      [15] See Polo, vol. i. p. 204, and vol. ii. p. 191.

      [16] See Polo, vol. i. p. 246.

      [17] See Polo, vol. ii. p. 339.

      [18] See Polo, vol. i. p. 140. Hashishi has got altered into Haus Assis.

      [19] See vol. i. p. 358, note.

      [20] See vol. i. p. 189, note 2.

      [21] Vol. i. pp. 183–186.

      [22] Vol. i. pp. 68 seqq. The virtuous cobler is not left out, СКАЧАТЬ