In Regard To The
Second Section, Unless We Could Suppose, That, By Estoitland And Drogio,
Some Strangely Distorted Account Of Different Districts In Ireland Were
Meant To Be Enigmatically Conveyed, The Whole Of That Section Must Be
Pronounced A Palpable And Blundering Forgery.
But it appears obviously
intended by the relater, to impress upon his readers, that some portion of
the western
Hemisphere, afterwards named America, had been visited by
Antonio Zeno; and the high probability is, that Marcolini, a patriotic
Venetian, had invented the whole story, on purpose to rob the rival
republic of Genoa of the honour of haying given birth to the real
discoverer of the New World. If there be any truth whatever in the voyages
of the Zenos, it is only to be found in the first section of this chapter;
and even there the possible truth is so strangely enveloped in
unintelligible names of persons and places, as to be entirely useless. The
second section is utterly unworthy of the slightest serious
consideration; and must either have been a posterior fabrication, engrafted
upon an authentic, but ignorantly told narrative; or the seeming
possibility of the first section was invented to give currency to the
wild forgery of the second. Latin books, a library, gold, ships, and
foreign trade, corn, beer, numerous towns and castles, all in the most
northern parts of America in the fourteenth century, where only nomadic
savages had ever existed, are all irrefragable evidence, that the whole, or
at least that portion of the voyages of the Zenos, is an idle romance. To
increase the absurdity, as if to try the gullability of the readers,
Dedalus, a king of Scotland! is assumed to have been the first discoverer
of the Western World; and his son Icarus is introduced to give his name
to a civilized island, already named Estoitland in the narrative.
After this decided opinion of the falsehood and absurdity of the whole of
this present chapter, it may be necessary to state, that, in a work so
general and comprehensive as that we have undertaken, it did not seem
advisable or proper to suppress an article which had been admitted into
other general collections of voyages and travels. The remainder of this
introduction is from the work of Mr J. R, Forster, extracted partly from
Ramusio, and partly consisting of an ingenious attempt to explain and
bolster up the more than dubious production of Marcolini: But these
observations are here considerably abridged; as an extended, grave, and
critical commentary on a narrative we believe fabulous, might appear
incongruous, though it did not seem proper to omit them altogether. - E.
The family of Zeno, in Venice, was very ancient, and not only of the
highest rank of nobility, but celebrated for the performance of great
actions, and the highest offices of the state had been filled from time
immemorial by persons of the family. About the year 1200, Marin Zeno
assisted in the conquest of Constantinople, and he was Podesta, or governor
of that city, about 1205.
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