Marco Polo
translation: Henry Yule, Henri Cordier

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO
Volume I.
complete book, e-book

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X. VARIOUS TYPES OF TEXT OF MARCO POLO'S BOOK.

[Sidenote: Four Principal Types of Text. First, that of the Geographic, or oldest French.]

55. In treating of the various Texts of Polo's Book we must necessarily go into some irksome detail.

Those Texts that have come down to us may be classified under Four principal Types.

I. The First Type is that of the Geographic Text of which we have already said so much. This is found nowhere complete except in the unique MS. of the Paris Library, to which it is stated to have come from the old Library of the French Kings at Blois. But the Italian Crusca, and the old Latin version (No. 3195 of the Paris Library) published with the Geographic Text, are evidently derived entirely from it, though both are considerably abridged. It is also demonstrable that neither of these copies has been translated from the other, for each has passages which the other omits, but that both have been taken, the one as a copy more or less loose, the other as a translation, from an intermediate Italian copy.[1] A special difference lies in the fact that the Latin version is divided into three Books, whilst the Crusca has no such division. I shall show in a tabular form the filiation of the texts which these facts seem to demonstrate (see Appendix G).

There are other Italian MSS. of this type, some of which show signs of having been derived independently from the French;[2] but I have not been able to examine any of them with the care needful to make specific deductions regarding them.

[Sidenote: Second; the remodelled French Text, followed by Pauthier.]

56. II. The next Type is that of the French MSS. on which M. Pauthier's Text is based, and for which he claims the highest authority, as having had the mature revision and sanction of the Traveller. There are, as far as I know, five MSS. which may be classed together under this type, three in the Great Paris Library, one at Bern, and one in the Bodleian.

The high claims made by Pauthier on behalf of this class of MSS. (on the first three of which his Text is formed) rest mainly upon the kind of certificate which two of them bear regarding the presentation of a copy by Marco Polo to Thibault de Cepoy, which we have already quoted (supra p. 69). This certificate is held by Pauthier to imply that the original of the copies which bear it, and of those having a general correspondence with them, had the special seal of Marco's revision and approval. To some considerable extent their character is corroborative of such a claim, but they are far from having the perfection which Pauthier attributes to them, and which leads him into many paradoxes.

It is not possible to interpret rigidly the bearing of this so-called certificate, as if no copies had previously been taken of any form of the Book; nor can we allow it to impugn the authenticity of the Geographic Text, (...)

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