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 passare 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 assumed 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 Cassel and _arrondissement_ 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 documents 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. Ed