I then procured the extracts and further
particulars from Mr. J. Long, Irish Transcriber and Translator in
Dublin, who took them from the Transcript of the Book of Lismore, in
the possession of the Royal Irish Academy. [Cf. Anecdota Oxoniensia.
Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, edited with a
translation ... by Whitley Stokes, Oxford, 1890. - Marco Polo forms
fo. 79 a, 1 - fo. 89 b, 2, of the MS., and is described pp. xxii.-xxiv.
of Mr. Whitley Stokes' Book, who has since published the Text in the
Zeit. f. Celtische Philol. (See Bibliography, vol. ii. p. 573.) -
H. C.]
XI. SOME ESTIMATE OF THE CHARACTER OF POLO AND HIS BOOK.
[Sidenote: Grounds of Polo's pre-eminence among mediaeval travellers.]
66. That Marco Polo has been so universally recognised as the King of
Mediaeval Travellers is due rather to the width of his experience, the
vast compass of his journeys, and the romantic nature of his personal
history, than to transcendent superiority of character or capacity.
The generation immediately preceding his own has bequeathed to us, in the
Report of the Franciscan Friar William de Rubruquis,[1] on the Mission
with which St. Lewis charged him to the Tartar Courts, the narrative of
one great journey, which, in its rich detail, its vivid pictures, its
acuteness of observation and strong good sense, seems to me to form a Book
of Travels of much higher claims than any one series of Polo's chapters;
a book, indeed, which has never had justice done to it, for it has few
superiors in the whole Library of Travel.
