ar la veue tornent en obly, et memorie de homme ne puet mye tot
retenir ne comprendre." From this passage and from the Latin text:
"Incipit itinerarius a terra Angliae ad partes Iherosolimitanas et in
ulteriores transmarinas, editus primo in lingua gallicana a milite suo
autore anno incarnacionis Domini m. ccc. lv, in civitate Leodiensi, et
paulo post in eadem civitate translatus in hanc formam latinam." (P. 33 of
the _Relation des Mongols ou Tartars par le frere Jean du Plan de Carpin_,
Paris, 1838). D'Avezac long ago was inclined to believe in an unique
French version. The British Museum, English MS. (Cott., Titus. C. xvi.),
on the other hand, has in the Prologue (cf. ed. 1725, p. 6): "And zee
schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of _Latyn_ into
_Frensche_, and translated it azen out of _Frensche_ into _Englyssche_,
that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it...."[18]

But we shall see that--without taking into account the important passage
in French quoted above, and probably misunderstood by the English
translator--the English version, a sentence of which, not to be found in
the Latin manuscripts, has just been given, is certainly posterior to the
French text, and therefore that the abstract of Titus C. xvi, has but a
slight value. There can be some doubt only for the French and the Latin
texts.

Dr. Carl Schoenborn[19] and Herr Eduard Maetzner,[20] "respectively seem
to have been the first to show that the current Latin and English texts
cannot possibly have been made by Mandeville himself. Dr. J. Vogels states
the same of unprinted Latin versions which he has discovered in the
British Museum, and he has proved it as regards the Italian version."[21]

"In Latin, as Dr. Vogels has shown, there are five independent versions.
Four of them, which apparently originated in England (one manuscript, now
at Leyden, being dated in 1390) have no special interest; the fifth, or
vulgate Latin text, was no doubt made at Liege, and has an important
bearing on the author's identity. It is found in twelve manuscripts, all
of the 15th century, and is the only Latin version as yet printed."[22]

The universal use of the French language at the time would be an argument
in favour of the original text being in this tongue, if corrupt proper
names, abbreviations in the Latin text, etc., did not make the fact still
more probable.

The story of the English version, as it is told by Messrs. Nicholson and
Warner, is hig