The writer then refers to the tradition about Guttemberg (so it is
stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi's art, etc.,
mentioning a circumstance which he supposes to indicate that Guttemberg
had relations with Venice; and appears to assent to the probability of the
story of the art having been founded on specimens brought home by Marco
Polo.
This story was in recent years diligently propagated in Northern Italy,
and resulted in the erection at Feltre of a public statue of Panfilo
Castaldi, bearing this inscription (besides others of like tenor): -
"To Panfilo Castaldi the illustrious Inventor of Movable Printing
Types, Italy renders this Tribute of Honour, too long deferred."
In the first edition of this book I devoted a special note to the exposure
of the worthlessness of the evidence for this story.[23] This note was,
with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by Comm.
Berchet, but this challenge to the supporters of the patriotic romance, so
far as I have heard, brought none of them into the lists in its defence.
But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of Lombardy, would
it not be mere equity that the mariners of Spain should set up a statue at
Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo Sanchez of that port, who, according to Spanish
historians, after discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus
at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his journals, and
rob him of his fame?
Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of his
native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and
discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi has
deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let him stand; if not, let
him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original story that
attracted Mr. Curzon was more jeu d'esprit than anything else; but that
the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to
retract.
[Sidenote: Frequent opportunities for such introduction in the age
following Polo's.]
88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicised about the
resemblance of the two systems are, however, very striking, and seem
clearly to indicate the derivation of the art from China. But I should
suppose that in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition of
the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco
Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern
Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for
many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries
of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the
chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between
Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul,
insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route
form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci
Pegolotti (circa 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might
therefore have brought home the block-books.
