me kind of
stencilling seems indicated.

[22] _History of Printing in China and Europe_, in _Philobiblon_, vol. vi.
p. 23.

[23] See _Appendix L_. in First Edition.

[24] Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it,
vide supra, p. 3

[25] This subject has been fully treated in _Cathay and the Way Thither_.

XIV. EXPLANATIONS REGARDING THE BASIS ADOPTED FOR THE PRESENT TRANSLATION.

89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis adopted for our
English version of the Traveller's record.

[Sidenote: Text followed by Marsden and by Pauthier.]

Ramusio's recension was that which Marsden selected for translation. But
at the date of his most meritorious publication nothing was known of the
real literary history of Polo's Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar
value and originality of the French manuscript texts, nor had Marsden seen
any of them. A translation from one of those texts is a translation at
first hand; a translation from Ramusio's Italian is, as far as I can
judge, the translation of a translated compilation from two or more
translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its matter,
inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and style of the original
narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well in adopting for the text of his
edition the MSS. which I have classed as of the second Type, the more as
there had hitherto been no publication from those texts. But editing a
text in the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially
different in their demands.

[Sidenote: Eclectic formation of the English Text of this Translation.]

90. It will be clear from what has been said in the preceding pages that I
should not regard as a fair or full representation of Polo's Work, a
version on which the Geographic Text did not exercise a material
influence. But to adopt that Text, with all its awkwardnesses and
tautologies, as the absolute subject of translation, would have been a
mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance, to translate
from Pauthier's Text. The process of abridgment in this text, however it
came about, has been on the whole judiciously executed, getting rid of the
intolerable prolixities of manner which belong to many parts of the
Original Dictation, but _as a general rule_ preserving the matter. Having
translated this,--not always from the Text adopted by Pauthier himself,
but with the exercise of my own judgment on