It reproduces the old Spanish text of the
manuscript Z-I-2 of the Escurial Library from a copy made by Senor D. Jose
Rodriguez for the Society of the Spanish Bibliophiles, which, being
unused, was sold by him to Dr. Hermann Knust, who made a careful
comparison of it with the original manuscript. This copy, found among the
papers of Dr. Knust after his death, is now edited by Dr. Stuebe. The
original 14th century MS., written in a good hand on two columns, includes
312 leaves of parchment, and contains several works; among them we note:
1 deg., a Collection entitled Flor de las Ystorias de Oriente (fol.
1-104), made on the advice of Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Grand Master of
the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1377), of which Marco Polo (fol.
50-104) is a part; 2 deg. and Secretum Secretorum (fol. 254 r-fol.
312 v.); this MS. is not mentioned in our List, App. F., II. p. 546,
unless it be our No. 60.
The manuscript includes 68 chapters, the first of which is devoted to the
City of Lob and Sha-chau, corresponding to our Bk. I., ch. 39 and 40 (our
vol. i. pp. 196 seqq.) ch. 65 (p. 111) corresponds approximatively to
our ch. 40, Bk. III. (vol. ii. p. 451); chs. 66, 67, and the last, 68,
would answer to our chs. 2, 3, and 4 of Bk. I. (vol i., pp. 45 seqq.). A
concordance of this Spanish text, with Pauthier's, Yule's, and the
Geographic Texts, is carefully given at the beginning of each of the 68
chapters of the Book.
Of course this edition does not throw any new light on the text, and this
volume is but a matter of curiosity.
13. - SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE.
One of the last questions in which Sir Henry Yule[2] took an interest in,
was the problem of the authorship of the book of Travels which bears the
name of SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, the worthy Knight, who, after being for a
long time considered as the "Father of English Prose" has become simply
"the name claimed by the compiler of a singular book of Travels, written
in French, and published between 1357 and 1371."[3]
It was understood that "JOHAN MAUNDEUILLE, chiualer, ia soit ceo qe ieo ne
soie dignes, neez et norriz Dengleterre de la ville Seint Alban," crossed
the sea "lan millesme ccc'me vintisme et secund, le jour de Seint
Michel,"[4] that he travelled since across the whole of Asia during the
14th century, that he wrote the relation of his travels as a rest after his
fatiguing peregrinations, and that he died on the 17th of November, 1372,
at Liege, when he was buried in the Church of the Guillemins.
No work has enjoyed a greater popularity than Mandeville's; while we
describe but eighty-five manuscripts of Marco Polo's, and I gave a list of
seventy-three manuscripts of Friar Odoric's relation,[5] it is by
hundreds that Mandeville's manuscripts can be reckoned.
