.... were made of Murano glass, and were used to stamp or print the outline of the large initial letters of public documents, which were afterwards filled up by hand . . . . Panfilo Castaldi improved on these glass types by having others made of wood or metal ; and having seen several Chinese Books, which the famous traveller Marco Polo had brought from China, and of which the entire text was printed with wooden blocks, he caused moveable wooden types to be made, each type containing a single letter, and with these he printed several broadsides and single leaves at Venice, in the year 1426. Some of these single sheets are said to be preserved among the archives at Feltre . . . . "The tradition continues that John Faust of Mayence. . . . became acquainted with Castaldi, and passed some time with him in his Scriptorium at Feltre ;" and in short developed from the knowledge so acquired the great invention of printing. Mr. Curzon goes on to say that Panfilo Castaldi was born in 1398, and died in 1490, and that he gives the story as he found it in an article written by Dr. Jacopo Facen, of Feltre, in a (Venetian ?) newspaper called Il Gondoliere, No. 103, of December 27th, 1843. In a later paper Mr. Curzon thus recurs to the subject:* "Though none of the early block-books have dates affixed to them, many of them are with reason supposed to be more ancient than any books printed with moveable types. Their resemblance to Chinese blockbooks is so exact that they would almost seem to be copied from the books commonly used in China. The impressions are taken off on one side of the paper only, and in binding both the Chinese and ancient German or Dutch block-books, the blank sides of the pages are placed opposite each other, and sometimes pasted together. The impressions are not taken off with printer's ink, but with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description, more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used in printing Chinese books. Altogether the German and Oriental block-books are so precisely alike, in almost every respect, that we must suppose that the process of printing them must have been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that country by some early travellers, whose names have not been handed down to our times." The writer then refers to the tradition about Guttemberg (so it is stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi's art, &c., 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 *Early History of Printing, in Philobiblon, vol. vi. p. 23. 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. This note was, with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by Signor 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. nities for 88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicized, about the resemblance of the two systems are, however, very Frequent striking, and seem clearly to indicate the derivation opportu of the art from China. But I should suppose that in such into 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 for duction in the age following Polo's. See Appendix L. in First Edition. gotten 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). Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description. 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. Texts fol 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 lowed by 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 * Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, vide supra, p. 3. This subject has been fully treated in Cathay and the Way Thither. the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different in their demands. Eclectic the English Text of this ence. 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 formation of Geographic Text did not exercise a material influBut to adopt that Text, with all its awkwardnesses and tautologies, as the absolute subject of translation, would have been a mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance, to translate from Pauthier's Text. The process of abridgment in this text, however it came about, has been on the whole judiciously executed, getting rid of the intolerable prolixities of manner which belong to many parts of the Original Dictation, but as a general rule preserving the matter. Having translated this,—not always from the Text adopted by Pauthier himself, but with the exercise of my own judgment on the various readings which that Editor lays before us,-I then compared the translation with the Geographic Text, and transferred from the latter not enly all items of real substance that had been omitted, but also all expressions of special interest and character, and occasionally a greater fulness of phraseology where condensation in Pauthier's text seemed to have been carried too far. And finally I introduced between brackets everything peculiar to Ramusio's version that seemed to me to have a just claim to be reckoned authentic, and that could be so introduced without harshness or mutilation. Many passages from the same source which were of interest in themselves, but failed to meet one or other of these conditions, have been given in the notes.* *This "eclectic formation of the English text," as I have called it for brevity in the marginal rubric, has been disapproved by Mr. de Khanikoff, a critic worthy of high respect. But I must repeat that the duties of a translator, and of the Editor of an original text, at least where the various recensions bear so peculiar a relation to each other as in this case, are essentially different; and that, on reconsidering the matter after an interval of four or five years, the plan which I have adopted, whatever be the faults of execution, still commends itself to me as the only appropriate one. Let Mr. de Khanikoff consider what course he would adopt if he were about to publish Marco Polo in Russian. I feel certain that with whatever theory he might set out, before his task should be concluded he would have arrived practically at the same system that I have adopted. 91. As regards the reading of proper names and foreign words, in which there is so much variation in the different MSS. and editions, I have done my best to select Mode of what seemed to be the true reading from the G. T. rendering and Pauthier's three MSS., only in some rare instances transgressing this limit. proper names. Where the MSS. in the repetition of a name afforded a choice of forms, I have selected that which came nearest the real name when known. Thus the G. T. affords Baldasciain, Badascian, Badasciam, Badausiam, Balasian. I adopt BADASCIAN, or in English spelling BADASHAN, because it is closest to the real name Badakhshan. Another place appears as COBINAN, Cabanat, Cobian. I adopt the first because it is the truest expression of the real name Koh-benán. In chapters 23, 24 of Book I., we have in the G. T. Asisim, Asciscin, Asescin, and in Pauthier's MSS. Hasisins, Harsisins, &c. I adopt ASCISCIN, or in English spelling ASHISHIN, for the same reason as before. So with Creman, Crerman, Crermain, QUERMAN, Anglicè KERMAN; Cormos, HORMOS, and many In two or three cases I have adopted a reading which I cannot show literatim in any authority, but because such a form appears to be the just resultant from the variety of readings which are presented; as in surveying one takes the mean of a number of observations when no one can claim an absolute preference. Polo's proper names, even in the French Texts, are in the main formed on an Italian fashion of spelling.† I see no object in preserving such spelling in an English book, so after selecting the best reading of the name I express it in English *In Polo's diction C frequently represents H. e. g., Cormos = Hormuz; Camadi probably = Hamadi; Caagiu probably = Hochau; Cacianfu = Hochangfu, and so on. This is perhaps attributable to Rusticiano's Tuscan ear. A true Pisan will absolutely contort his features in the intensity of his efforts to aspirate sufficiently the letter C. Filippo Villani, speaking of the famous Aguto (Sir J. Hawkwood), says his name in English was Kauchouvole (Murat. Scriptt. xiv. 746). In the Venetian dialect ch and j are often sounded as in English, not as in Italian. Some traces of such pronunciation I think there are, as in Coja, Carajan, and in the Chinese name Vanchu (occurring only in Ramusio, supra, p. 97). But the scribe of the original work being a Tuscan, the spelling is in the main Tuscan. The sound of the Qu is however French, as in Quescican, Quinsai, except perhaps in the case of Quenianfu, for a reason given in vol. ii. p. 23. VOL. I. |