icle.--H. C.

IX. MARCO POLO'S BOOK; AND THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH IT WAS FIRST WRITTEN.

[Illustration: Porcelain Incense Burner, from the Louvre]

[Sidenote: General statement of what the Book contains.]

50. The Book itself consists essentially of Two Parts. _First_, of a
Prologue, as it is termed, the only part which is actual personal
narrative, and which relates, in a very interesting but far too brief
manner, the circumstances which led the two elder Polos to the Kaan's
Court, and those of their second journey with Mark, and of their return to
Persia through the Indian Seas. _Secondly_, of a long series of chapters
of very unequal length, descriptive of notable sights and products, of
curious manners and remarkable events, relating to the different nations
and states of Asia, but, above all, to the Emperor Kublai, his court,
wars, and administration. A series of chapters near the close treats in a
verbose and monotonous manner of sundry wars that took place between the
various branches of the House of Chinghiz in the latter half of the 13th
century. This last series is either omitted or greatly curtailed in all
the copies and versions except one; a circumstance perfectly accounted for
by the absence of interest as well as value in the bulk of these chapters.
Indeed, desirous though I have been to give the Traveller's work complete,
and sharing the dislike that every man who _uses_ books must bear to
abridgments, I have felt that it would be sheer waste and dead-weight to
print these chapters in full.

[Illustration: Temple of 500 Genii at Canton _after a Drawing by_ FELIX
REGAMEY]

This second and main portion of the Work is in its oldest forms undivided,
the chapters running on consecutively to the end.[1] In some very early
Italian or Venetian version, which Friar Pipino translated into Latin, it
was divided into three Books, and this convenient division has generally
been adhered to. We have adopted M. Pauthier's suggestion in making the
final series of chapters, chiefly historical, into a Fourth.

[Sidenote: Language of the original Work.]

51. As regards the language in which Marco's Book was first committed to
writing, we have seen that Ramusio assumed, somewhat arbitrarily, that it
was _Latin_; Marsden supposed it to have been the _Venetian_ dialect;
Baldelli Boni first showed, in his elaborate edition (Florence, 1827), by
arguments that have been illustrated and corroborated by learned men
sin