Volume I Part 38 (1/2)
The heads of most of the Mediaeval Travellers were crammed with these fables as genuine history.[18] And by the help of that community of legend on this subject which they found wherever Mahomedan literature had spread, Alexander Magnus was to be traced everywhere in Asia. Friar Odoric found Tana, near Bombay, to be the veritable City of King Porus; John Marignolli's vainglory led him to imitate King Alexander in setting up a marble column ”in the corner of the world over against Paradise,” i.e.
somewhere on the coast of Travancore; whilst Sir John Maundevile, with a cheaper ambition, borrowed wonders from the Travels of Alexander to adorn his own. Nay, even in after days, when the Portuguese stumbled with amazement on those vast ruins in Camboja, which have so lately become familiar to us through the works of Mouhot, Thomson, and Garnier, they ascribed them to Alexander.[19]
Prominent in all these stories is the tale of Alexander's shutting up a score of impure nations, at the head of which were Gog and Magog, within a barrier of impa.s.sable mountains, there to await the latter days; a legend with which the disturbed mind of Europe not unnaturally connected that cataclysm of unheard-of Pagans that seemed about to deluge Christendom in the first half of the 13th century. In these stories also the beautiful Roxana, who becomes the bride of Alexander, is _Darius's_ daughter, bequeathed to his arms by the dying monarch. Conspicuous among them again is the Legend of the Oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, which with audible voice foretell the place and manner of Alexander's death. With this Alexandrian legend some of the later forms of the story had mixed up one of Christian origin about the Dry Tree, _L'Arbre Sec_. And they had also adopted the Oriental story of the Land of Darkness and the mode of escape from it, which Polo relates at p. 484 of vol. ii.
[Sidenote: Injustice long done to Polo. Singular modern instance.]
74. We have seen in the most probable interpretation of the nickname _Milioni_ that Polo's popular reputation in his lifetime was of a questionable kind; and a contemporary chronicler, already quoted, has told us how on his death-bed the Traveller was begged by anxious friends to retract his extraordinary stories.[20] A little later one who copied the Book ”_per pa.s.sare tempo e malinconia_” says frankly that he puts no faith in it.[21] Sir Thomas Brown is content ”to carry a wary eye” in reading ”Paulus Venetus”; but others of our countrymen in the last century express strong doubts whether he ever was in Tartary or China.[22] Marden's edition might well have extinguished the last sparks of scepticism.[23]
Hammer meant praise in calling Polo ”_der Vater orientalischer Hodogetik_,” in spite of the uncouthness of the eulogy. But another grave German writer, ten years after Marsden's publication, put forth in a serious book that the whole story was a clumsy imposture![24]
[1] M. d'Avezac has refuted the common supposition that this admirable traveller was a native of Brabant.
The form _Rubruquis_ of the name of the traveller William de Rubruk has been habitually used in this book, perhaps without sufficient consideration, but it is the most familiar in England, from its use by Hakluyt and Purchas. The former, who first published the narrative, professedly printed from an imperfect MS. belonging to the Lord Lumley, which does not seem to be now known. But all the MSS. collated by Messrs. Francisque-Michel and Wright, in preparing their edition of the Traveller, call him simply Willelmus de Rubruc or Rubruk.
Some old authors, apparently without the slightest ground, having called him _Risbroucke_ and the like, it came to be a.s.sumed that he was a native of Ruysbroeck, a place in South Brabant.
But there is a place still called _Rubrouck_ in French Flanders. This is a commune containing about 1500 inhabitants, belonging to the Canton of Ca.s.sel and _arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_ of Hazebrouck, in the Department du Nord. And we may take for granted, till facts are alleged against it, that _this_ was the place from which the envoy of St. Lewis drew his origin. Many doc.u.ments of the Middle Ages, referring expressly to this place Rubrouck, exist in the Library of St. Omer, and a detailed notice of them has been published by M. Edm. Coussemaker, of Lille.
Several of these doc.u.ments refer to persons bearing the same name as the Traveller, e.g., in 1190, Thierry de Rubrouc; in 1202 and 1221, Gauthier du Rubrouc; in 1250, Jean du Rubrouc; and in 1258, Woutermann de Rubrouc. It is reasonable to suppose that Friar William was of the same stock. See _Bulletin de la Soc. de Geographie_, 2nd vol. for 1868, pp. 569-570, in which there are some remarks on the subject by M. d'Avezac; and I am indebted to the kind courtesy of that eminent geographer himself for the indication of this reference and the main facts, as I had lost a note of my own on the subject.
It seems a somewhat complex question whether a native even of _French_ Flanders at that time should be necessarily claimable as a Frenchman;[A] but no doubt on this point is alluded to by M. d'Avezac, so he probably had good ground for that a.s.sumption. [See also _Yule's_ article in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and _Rockhill's Rubruck_, Int., p. x.x.xv.--H. C.]
That cross-grained Orientalist, I. J. Schmidt, on several occasions speaks contemptuously of this veracious and delightful traveller, whose evidence goes in the teeth of some of his crotchets. But I am glad to find that Professor Peschel takes a view similar to that expressed in the text: ”The narrative of Ruysbroek [Rubruquis], almost immaculate in its freedom from fabulous insertions, may be indicated on account of its truth to nature as the greatest geographical masterpiece of the Middle Ages.” (_Gesch. der Erdkunde_, 1865, p.
151.)
[A] The County of Flanders was at this time in large part a fief of the French Crown. (See _Natalis de Wailly_, notes to Joinville, p. 576.) But that would not much affect the question either one way or the other.
[2] High as Marco's name deserves to be set, his place is not beside the writer of such burning words as these addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella: ”From the most tender age I went to sea, and to this day I have continued to do so. Whosoever devotes himself to this craft must desire to know the secrets of Nature here below. For 40 years now have I thus been engaged, and wherever man has sailed hitherto on the face of the sea, thither have I sailed also. I have been in constant relation with men of learning, whether ecclesiastic or secular, Latins and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and men of many a sect besides. To accomplish this my longing (to know the Secrets of the World) I found the Lord favourable to my purposes; it is He who hath given me the needful disposition and understanding. He bestowed upon me abundantly the knowledge of seamans.h.i.+p: and of Astronomy He gave me enough to work withal, and so with Geometry and Arithmetic.... In the days of my youth I studied works of all kinds, history, chronicles, philosophy, and other arts, and to apprehend these the Lord opened my understanding. Under His manifest guidance I navigated hence to the Indies; for it was the Lord who gave me the will to accomplish that task, and it was in the ardour of that will that I came before your Highnesses. All those who heard of my project scouted and derided it; all the acquirements I have mentioned stood me in no stead; and if in your Highnesses, and in you alone, Faith and Constancy endured, to Whom are due the Lights that have enlightened you as well as me, but to the Holy Spirit?” (Quoted in _Humboldt's Examen Critique_, I. 17, 18.)
[3] Libri, however, speaks too strongly when he says: ”The finest of all the results due to the influence of Marco Polo is that of having stirred Columbus to the discovery of the New World. Columbus, jealous of Polo's laurels, spent his life in preparing means to get to that Zipangu of which the Venetian traveller had told such great things; his desire was to reach China by sailing westward, and in his way he fell in with America.” (_H. des Sciences Mathem._ etc. II. 150.)
The fact seems to be that Columbus knew of Polo's revelations only at second hand, from the letters of the Florentine Paolo Toscanelli and the like; and I cannot find that he _ever_ refers to Polo by name.
[How deep was the interest taken by Colombus in Marco Polo's travels is shown by the numerous marginal notes of the Admiral in the printed copy of the latin version of Pipino kept at the Bib. Colombina at Seville. See _Appendix H_. p. 558.--H. C.] Though to the day of his death he was full of imaginations about Zipangu and the land of the Great Kaan as being in immediate proximity to his discoveries, these were but accidents of his great theory. It was the intense conviction he had acquired of the absolute smallness of the Earth, of the vast extension of Asia eastward, and of the consequent narrowness of the Western Ocean, on which his life's project was based. This conviction he seems to have derived chiefly from the works of Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly. But the latter borrowed his collected arguments from Roger Bacon, who has stated them, erroneous as they are, very forcibly in his _Opus Majus_ (p. 137), as Humboldt has noticed in his _Examen_ (vol. i. p. 64). The Spanish historian Mariana makes a strange jumble of the alleged guides of Columbus, saying that some ascribed his convictions to ”the information given by _one Marco Polo, a Florentine Physician!_” (”como otros dizen, por aviso que le dio _un cierto Marco Polo, Medico Florentin_;” _Hist. de Espana_, lib. xxvi. cap 3).
Toscanelli is called by Columbus _Maestro Paulo_, which seems to have led to this mistake; see Sign. _G. Uzielli_, in _Boll. della Soc.
Geog. Ital._ IX. p. 119, [Also by the same: _Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli iniziatore della scoperta d' America_, Florence, 1892; _Toscanelli_, No. 1; _Toscanelli_, Vol. V. of the _Raccolta Colombiana_, 1894.--H. C.]
[4] ”C'est diminuer l'expression d'un eloge que de l'exagerer.”
(_Humboldt, Examen_, III. 13.)
[5] See vol. ii. p. 318, and vol. i. p. 404.
[6] Vol. i. p. 423.
[7] Vol. ii. p. 85, and _Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut_. II. 1012.
[8] Chinese Observers record the length of Comets' tails by _cubits_!
[9] The map, perhaps, gives too favourable an idea of Marco's geographical conceptions. For in such a construction much has to be supplied for which there are no data, and that is apt to take mould from modern knowledge. Just as in the book ill.u.s.trations of ninety years ago we find that Princesses of Abyssinia, damsels of Otaheite, and Beauties of Mary Stuart's Court have all somehow a savour of the high waists, low foreheads, and tight garments of 1810.