Edward Williams Byron Nicholson and Henry Yule

“ Even the great Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta, accurate and veracious in the main, seems—in one part at least of his narrative—to invent experiences; and in such works as those of Jan van Hees and Arnold von Harff we have examples of pilgrims to the Holy Land whose narratives begin apparently in sober truth, and gradually pass into flourishes of fiction and extravagance. So in Mandeville also we find particulars not yet traced to other writers, and which may therefore be provisionally assigned either to the writer’s own experience or to knowledge acquired by colloquial intercourse in the East. ”

“ By far the greater part of these more distant travels, extending in fact from Trebizond to Hormuz, India, the Malay Archipelago, and China, and back again to western Asia, has been appropriated from the narrative of Friar Odoric (written in 1330) . These passages, as served up by Mandeville, are almost always, indeed, swollen with interpolated particulars, usually of an extravagant kind, whilst in no few cases the writer has failed to understand the passages which he adopts from Odoric and professes to give as his own experiences. ”

“ Whether after the appearance of the Travels either de Bourgogne or “Mangevilayn” visited England is very doubtful. St Albans Abbey had a sapphire ring, and Canterbury a crystal orb, said to have been given by Mandeville; but these might have been sent from Liége, and it will appear later that the Liége physician possessed and wrote about precious stones. St Albans also had a legend that a ruined marble tomb of Mandeville (represented cross-legged and in armour, with sword and shield) once stood in the abbey ”

“ From the treatise on herbs a passage is quoted asserting it to have been composed in 1357 in honour of the author’s natural lord, Edward, king of England. This date is corroborated by the title of king of Scotland given to Edward, who had received from Baliol the surrender of the crown and kingly dignity on the 20th of January 1356, but on the 3rd of October 1357 released King David and made peace with Scotland: unfortunately we are not told whether the treatise contains the author’s name, and, if so, what name. ”

“ The meaning may be simply “of Magneville,” de Magneville; but the family of a 14th century bishop of Nevers were called both “Mandevilain” and “de Mandevilain”—where Mandevilain seems a derivative place-name, meaning the Magneville or Mandeville district. In any case it is clear that the name “de Mandeville” might be suggested to de Bourgogne by that of his fellow-culprit Mangevilayn, and it is even possible that the two fled to England together, were in Egypt together, met again at Liége, and shared in the compilation of the Travels. ”

“ The Egerton text, edited by Dr G. F. Warner, has been printed by the Roxburghe Club, while the Cotton text, first printed in 1725 and 1727, is in modern reprints the current English version.
That none of the forms of the English version can be from the same hand which wrote the original is made patent by their glaring errors of translation, but the Cotton text asserts in the preface that it was made by Mandeville himself, and this assertion was till lately taken on trust by almost all modern historians of English literature. The words of the original “je eusse cest livret mis en latin . . . ”

“ But these, and the particulars of his narrative for which no literary sources have yet been found, are too few to constitute a proof of personal experience.
Mandeville, again, in some passages shows a correct idea of the form of the earth, and of position in latitude ascertained by observation of the pole star; he knows that there are antipodes, and that if ships were sent on voyages of discovery they might sail round the world. And he tells a curious story, which he had heard in his youth, how a worthy man did travel ever eastward until he came to his own country again (p. 183) . ”

“ In referring to this passage it is only fair to recognize that the description (though the suggestion of the greatest part exists in Odoric) displays a good deal of imaginative power; and there is much in the account of Christian’s passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in Bunyan’s famous allegory, which indicates a possibility that John Bunyan may have read and remembered this episode either in Mandeville or in Hakluyt’s Odoric. ”

“ This is, in its original form, apparently founded on real experiences of Odoric viewed through a haze of excitement and superstition. Mandeville, whilst swelling the wonders of the tale with a variety of extravagant touches, appears to safeguard himself from the reader’s possible discovery that it was stolen by the interpolation: “And some of our fellows accorded to enter, and some not. So there were with us two worthy men, Friars Minor, that were of Lombardy, who said that if any man would enter they would go in with us. ”

“ See further Dr G. F. Warner’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography for a comprehensive account, and for bibliographical references; Ulysse Chevalier’s Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen age for references generally; and the Zeitschr. f. celt. Philologie II., i. 126, for an edition and translation, by Dr Whitley Stokes, of Fingin O’Mahony’s Irish version of the Travels. (E. W. B. N.; H. Y.) ”