In Sanson's Map (1659) the data of Polo and the medieval Travellers are more cautiously handled, but a new element of confusion is introduced in the form of numerous features derived from Edrisi. It is scarcely. worth while to follow the matter further. With the increase of knowledge of Northern Asia from the Russian side, and that of China from the Maps of Martini, followed by the surveys of the Jesuits, and with the reai science brought to bear on Asiatic Geography by such men as De l'Isle and D'Anville, mere traditional nomenclature gradually disappeared. And the task which the study of Polo has provided for the geographers of later days has been chiefly that of determining the true localities that his book describes under obsolete or corrupted names. 87. Before concluding it may be desirable to say a few words on the subject of important knowledge other than Alleged in geographical, which various persons have supposed that Marco Polo must have introduced from Eastern Asia to Europe. troduction of Block printed Books into Europe by Marco Polo. Respecting the mariner's compass and gunpowder I shall say nothing, as no one now, I believe, imagines Marco to have had anything to do with their introduction. But from a highly respectable source in recent years we have seen the introduction of Block-printing into Europe connected with the name of our Traveller. The circumstances are stated as follows:* "In the beginning of the 15th century a man named Panfilo Castaldi, of Feltre. . . . was employed by the Government of the Republic to engross deeds and public edicts of various kinds . . . . the initial letters at the commencement of the writing being usually ornamented with red ink, or illuminated in gold and colours. 66 According to Sansovino, certain stamps or types had been invented some time previously by Pietro di Natale, Bishop of Aquileia.† These *A Short Account of Libraries in Italy, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society, Vol. I. † P. dei 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): "certo Natale Veneto lasciò 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. 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 Philebiblon, 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. Frequent nities for 88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicized, about the resemblance of the two systems are, however, very 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. 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 lowed 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 * Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, vide supra, p. 3. + This subject has been fully treated in Cathay ana 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 only 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. |