of great size, seen in Champa, these are described as "snails" {lymecons, A., limassons, G.) whose shells were as big as cottages.
In another place (p. 209), where Odoric has given a most curious and veracious account of the Chinese custom of employing tame cormorants to catch fish, the cormorants are converted by Mandeville into "little beasts called loyres (layre, A.), which are taught to go into the water" (the word loyre being apparently used here for "otter," lutra, for which the Provençal is luria or loiria). Where Odoric, describing the court of the Great Khan, mentions the genuine Tartar custom which forbade any man in entering to set down his foot on the threshold of the door (an etiquette which P. della Valle found still in force at Ispahan in the 17th century), Mandeville quite fails to understand the point (see p. 220).
At a very early date the coincidence of Mandeville's stories with those of Odoric was recognized, insomuch that a MS. of Odoric, which is or was in the chapter library at Mainz, begins with the words: Incipit Itincrarius fidelis fratris Odorici socii Militis Mendavil per Indiam; licet hic [read ille] prius et alter posterius peregrinationem suam dcscripsit. At a later day Sir T. Herbert calls Odoric "travelling companion of our Sir John"; and Purchas, with most perverse injustice, whilst calling Mandeville, next to Polo, "if next, . . . the greatest Asian traveller that ever the world had," insinuates that Odoric's story was stolen from Mandeville's. Mandeville himself is crafty enough, at least in one passage, to anticipate criticism by suggesting the probability of his having travelled with Odoric (see p. 282, and below).
Much again of Mandeville's matter, particularly in Asiatic geography and history, is taken bodily from the book of Hayton, an Armenian of princely family, who became a monk of the Præmonstrant order, and in 1307 dictated this work on the East in the French tongue at Poictiers, out of his own extraordinary acquaintance with Asia and its history in his own time.
It is curious that no passage in Mandeville can be plausibly traced to Marco Polo, with one exception. This is (p. 163) where he states that at Ormus the people, during the great heat, lie in water, a circumstance mentioned by Polo, though not by Odoric. We should suppose it most likely that this fact had been interpolated in the copy of Odoric used by Mandeville; for, if he had borrowed it direct from Polo, he would have borrowed more.
A good deal about the manners and customs of the Tartars is demonstrably derived from the famous work of the Franciscan John of Piano Carpini (see Carpini, vol. v. p. 132), though possibly the immediate source for Mandeville may have been some popular compilation. For though the passages in question are all to be found in Carpini, more or less exactly, the expression is condensed and the order changed. For examples compare Mandeville, p. 250, on the tasks done by Tartar women, with Piano Carpini, p. 643;[1] Mandeville, p. 250, on Tartar habits of eating, with Piano Carpini pp. 639-40; Mandeville, p. 231, on the titles borne on the seals of the Great Khan, with Piano Carpini, p. 715, &c.
The account of Prester John, and all the wonders of his court and realm, is taken from the famous Epistle of that imaginary potentate, which was so widely diffused in the 13th century, and created that renown which made it incumbent on every traveller in Asia to assume his existence, and to find some new tale to tell of him. Many fabulous stories again of monsters, such as cyclopes, sciapodes, hippopodes, monoscelides, anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders, of the phoenix and the weeping crocodile, such as Pliny has collected, are introduced here and there, derived no doubt from the popular versions of Solinus. And interspersed, especially in the chapters about the Levant, are the stories and legends that were retailed to every pilgrim, such as the legend of Seth and the grains of paradise from which grew the wood of the cross, that of the shooting of old Cain by Lamech, that of the castle of the sparrow-hawk (which appears in the tale of Melusina), those of the origin of the balsam plants at Matariya, of the dragon of Cos, of the river Sabbation, &c.
Even in that part of the book which may be admitted with probability to represent some genuine experience, there are distinct traces that another work has been made use of, more or less, as an aid in the compilation, we might almost say as a framework to fill up. This is the itinerary of the German knight William of Boldensele, written in 1336 at the desire of Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord.[2] A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt of the fact that the latter has followed its thread, using its suggestions, and on many subjects its expressions, though digressing and expanding on every side, and too often eliminating the singular good sense of the German traveller. After such a comparison we may indicate as examples Boldensele's account of Cyprus (Mandeville, p. 28, and p. 10), of Tyre and the coast of Palestine (Mandeville, 29, 30, 33, 34), of the journey from Gaza to Egypt (34), passages about Babylon of Egypt (40), about Mecca (42), the general account of Egypt (45), the pyramids (52), some of the particular wonders of Cairo, such as the slave-market, the chicken-hatching stoves, and the apples of paradise, i.e., plantains (49), the Red Sea (57), the convent on Sinai (58, 60), the account of the church of the Holy Sepulchre (74-76), &c. The following may be quoted as a specimen, showing how Mandeville has at once followed Boldensele and deviated from his good sense:—
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Boldensele (ed. Basnage, p. 342). "Sunt plura antiquorum monumenta, figuræ pyramidalis, inter quæ suut duo miræ magnitudinis et altitudinis, de maximis lapidibus et politis, in quibus inveni scripturas diversorum idiomatum. . . . Dicunt simplices hæc maxima monumenta fuisse granaria Pharnonis, ct sic ea appellant, quod verum nullo modo est; quia nec ad imponendam nec ad servandam annonam . . . locus in ipsis pyramidibus aptus deprehenditur . . . verum quod monumenta sunt," &c. |
Mandeville (p. 52). "Now also I shall speak of another thing . . . that is to say of the Garners of Joseph that he caused to be made. . . . And they be made of stone, full well made of mason's craft; of which two be marvellously great and high, and the other is not so great. . . . And above the Garners, without, be many scriptures of divers languages. And some say that they are sepulchres of great Lords . . . but that is not true; for all the common rumour and speech is . . . that they be the Garners of Joseph." |
It will be seen from these indications, and more particularly from the specific analysis given below, that there is only a small residuum of the book to which genuine character, as containing the experiences of the author, can possibly be attributed. Yet, as has been intimated, the borrowed stories are frequently claimed as such experiences. We have already alluded to Mandeville's claim (p. 4) to have visited distant parts of Asia; to have drunk of the Fountain of Youth, a favourite mediæval fable which he interpolates in Odoric's account of Malabar (169); to his assertion that he had visited Lamary (Sumatra), and indeed that he had gone beyond it to 33° 16′ of S. lat. (181-82); and that he had been at a certain other island in the Indian Archipelago (190). He alleges also that he had witnessed the curious exhibition of the garden of transmigrated souls (described by Odoric) at Cansay, i.e., Hangchow-fu (211). He and his fellows with their valets had remained fifteen months in service with the emperor of Cathay in his wars against the king of Manzi,—Manzi, or Southern China, having ceased to have any existence as a separate kingdom some seventy years before the time referred to. Similar false statements are found at pp. 219, 235, 248, 271. But the most notable of these passages occurs in his adoption from Odoric of the story of the Valley Perilous (282). This is, in its original form, apparently founded on real experiences of Odoric viewed through a haze of excitement and superstition. Mandeville, whilst swelling the wonders of the tale with a variety of extravagant touches, appears to safeguard himself from the reader's possible discovery that the tale was stolen by the interpolation: "And some of our fellows accorded to enter, and some not. So there were with us two worthy men, Friars Minor, that were of Lombardy, who said that if any man would enter they would go in with us. And when they had said so, upon the gracious trust of God and of them, we caused mass to be sung, and made every man to be shriven and houselled; and then we entered, fourteen persons; but at our going out we were but nine," &c.
In referring to this passage it is only fair to recognize that the description (though the suggestion of the greatest part exists in Odoric) displays a good deal of imaginative power; and there is much in the account of Christian's passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in Bunyan's famous allegory, which indicates a possibility that John Bunyan may have read and remembered this episode either in Mandeville or in Hakluyt's Odoric.
Such a passage, however, as that which we recently quoted, and which appears to exist in all the MSS. and versions that have been examined, leaves no room for the rehabilitation of Mandeville's character as regards conscious mendacity. But it does not necessarily follow that the whole work is borrowed or fictitious. There are other examples in mediæval works of travel in which fiction has been linked to true experiences. Even the great Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta, accurate and veracious in the main, seems, in one part at least of his narrative, to invent experiences; and in such works as those of John of Hese and Arnold von Harff, we have examples of pilgrims to the Holy Land whose narratives begin apparently in sober truth, and gradually pass into flourishes of fiction and extravagance. So in Mandeville also we find various particulars which we are unable to trace to other writers, and which may therefore be, provisionally at least, assigned to the writer's own experience, or to knowledge acquired by colloquial intercourse in the East.
It is difficult to decide on the character of his statements as to recent Egyptian history. In his account of that country (pp. 37, 38) though the series of the Comanian (i.e., of the Bahri Mameluke) sultans is borrowed from Hayton down to the accession of Melechnasser, i.e., El-Malik el-Náṣir Mohammed ibn Kaláún, who came first to the throne in 1299, Mandeville appears to speak from his own knowledge when he adds that this "Melechnasser reigned long and governed wisely." In fact, though twice displaced in the early part of his life, Malik Náṣir reigned till 1341, a duration un-
