Note By Yule.

[17] "Totius Europae et Asiae Tabula Geographica, Auctore Thoma D. Aucupario.

Edita Argentorati, MDXXII." Copied in Witsen.

[18] This strange association of Balor (i.e., Bolor, that name of so many odd vicissitudes, see pp. 178-179 infra) with the shut-up Israelites must be traced to a passage which Athanasius Kircher quotes from R. Abraham Pizol (qu. Peritsol?): "Regnum, inquit, Belor magnum et excelsum nimis, juxta omnes illos qui scripserunt Historicos. Sunt in eo Judaei plurimi inclusi, et illud in latere Orientali et Boreali," etc. (China Illustrata, p. 49.)

[19] Vol. ii. p. 1.

[20] A short Account of Libraries of Italy, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society, vol. i, 1854, pp. 6. seqq.

[21] P. del Natali was Bishop of Equilio, a city of the Venetian Lagoons, in the latter part of the 14th century. (See Ughelli, Italia Sacra, X. 87.) There is no ground whatever for connecting him with these inventions. The story of the glass types appears to rest entirely and solely on one obscure passage of Sansovino, who says that under the Doge Marco Corner (1365-1367): "certe Natale Veneto lascio un libro della materie delle forme da giustar intorno alle lettere, ed il modo di formarle di vetro." There is absolutely nothing more. Some kind of stencilling seems indicated.

[22] History of Printing in China and Europe, in Philobiblon, vol. vi. p. 23.

[23] See Appendix L. in First Edition.

[24] Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, vide supra, p. 3

[25] This subject has been fully treated in Cathay and the Way Thither.

XIV. EXPLANATIONS REGARDING THE BASIS ADOPTED FOR THE PRESENT TRANSLATION.

89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis adopted for our English version of the Traveller's record.

[Sidenote: Text followed by Marsden and by Pauthier.]

Ramusio's recension was that which Marsden selected for translation. But at the date of his most meritorious publication nothing was known of the real literary history of Polo's Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar value and originality of the French manuscript texts, nor had Marsden seen any of them. A translation from one of those texts is a translation at first hand; a translation from Ramusio's Italian is, as far as I can judge, the translation of a translated compilation from two or more translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its matter, inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and style of the original narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well in adopting for the text of his edition the MSS. which I have classed as of the second Type, the more as there had hitherto been no publication from those texts. But editing a text in the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different in their demands.

[Sidenote: Eclectic formation of the English Text of this Translation.]

90. It will be clear from what has been said in the preceding pages that I should not regard as a fair or full representation of Polo's Work, a version on which the Geographic Text did not exercise a material influence.

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