POLO 



POLYANTHUS 



295 



of their trading. In 1298 Marco fought his own 

 galley in the great battle of Curzola, in which the 

 Venetians under Dandolo were defeated by the 

 Genoese under Doria, and was taken prisoner and 

 immured for a year in a dungeon at Genoa. Here 

 he dictated to another captive, one Kusticiano of 

 PUa, an account of his journey through the East. 

 After his liberation he returned to Venice, where 

 he died in 1324, and was buried in the church of 

 S. Lorenzo. The traveller bore among his con- 

 temporaries the surname or nickname of Marco 

 Millioni, most probably from his having frequently 

 used that word in his attempts to describe the 

 wealth and splendour of the khan. The wonders 

 he narrated seem to have excited incredulity 

 even long after Sir Thomas Browne commends the 

 circumspection of the reader who 'shall carry 

 .a wary eye on Paulus Venetus, Jovius, Olaus 

 Magnus, Nierembergius, and many others.' 



Marco Polo's book consists of two parts : ( 1 ) a 

 Prologue, the only part containing personal narra- 

 tive ; (2) a long series of chapters descriptive of 

 notable sights, manners of different states of Asia, 

 especially that of Kublai Khan ; and ends with a 

 dull chronicle of the internecine wars of the House 

 of Genghis during the second half of the 13th cen- 

 tury. Ser Marco Polo succeeds in almost entirely 

 effacing himself, yet despite his modesty is un- 

 consciously revealed to the eyes of his reader as a 

 man truthful, brave, shrewd, keen-eyed, grave, of 

 few word*, fond of sport, with all the due respect 

 of the prosperous man for wealth. He shows 

 throughout a singular lack of humour Sir Henry 

 Yule cites as almost the solitary instance that in 

 ftpeaking of the khan's paper-money he observes 

 that Kublai might l>e said to have the true Philo- 

 sopher's Stone, for he made his money at pleasure 

 out of the bark of trees. Nothing disturbs the 

 even tenor of his narrative not even when he has 

 to tell of so strange a custom as the couvade 

 among the Gold-teeth on the frontier of Burma. 

 He is no less sparing of scientific observations, and 

 his geographical data are not infrequently the 

 reverse of clear and adequate. He tells us that he 

 acquired several of the languages current in the 

 Mongol empire, and as many as four written char- 

 acters, but of these Sir Henry Yule thinks Chinese 

 was not one. His work is poorer in information 

 relating to the Chinese proper than anywhere 

 lse. Thus, he does not mention the Great Wall, 

 nor yet customs so striking and distinctive as the 

 ii-i! of tea, the compresseu feet of the ladies, the 

 fishing cormorant, artificial egg-hatching, nor the 

 printing of books. An absurd assertion has been 

 made that block-printing was carried to Europe 

 by our traveller, by him shown to one Pannlo 

 Castaldi, from whom it was learned by John Faust 

 of Mainz ; and indeed the printers of Lombardy, 

 misled by patriotic feelings, have stultified them- 

 selves by erecting a statue at Feltre to Castaldi, 

 ' the illustrious inventor of movable printing types.' 

 Polo had learned more from men than books, yet it 

 is evident that he had read romances, especially 

 those dealing with the fabulous adventures of 

 Alexander. To these he refers in his notices of 

 the Iron Gate and of Gog and Magog, and of the 

 Dry Tree (Arbre Sol or Arbre Sec) on the Khorassan 

 frontier. Such stories as these, that of the Land 

 of Darkness, of tailed men, of the great Roc, of 

 trees yielding wine, and the like, go far to account 

 for the grave and matter-of-fact Messer Marco 

 Polo's nickname of Millioni. 



Kamnsio ( 1485-1557) assumed that the book was 

 first written in Latin. Marsden supposed in the 

 Venetian dialect, Ijaldelli-Boni showed in his 

 edition (Flor. 1827) that it was French. There 

 exists an old French text, published by the Paris 

 Socieie de Geographic in 1824, which M. Paulin- 



Paris describes as the French of a foreigner. This 

 Colonel Yule believes the nearest possible approach 

 to Marco's own oral narrative. About eighty MSS. 

 are in existence, showing considerable variations. 

 These fall naturally into four groups : ( 1 ) the old 

 French version already mentioned; (2) a revised 

 French version, the basis of M. Pauthier's edition 

 (1865); (3) a considerably abridged Latin version 

 by Francesco Pipino (about 1490) not identical 

 with, although similar to, the Latin version pub- 

 lished by Grynjeus at Basel in the Novus Orbis 

 (1532), itself the parent of the 16th-century French 

 editions; (4) a form of the text now alone repre- 

 sented by the Italian recension of Ramusio, pub- 

 lished ( 1559) in vol. ii. of the Navigation! e Viaggi. 

 This last text has been subjected to considerable 

 literary modifications, but undoubtedly contains 

 many new circumstances which are substantially 

 supplementary recollections of Marco Polo himself. 



The notes of Marsden's excellent English edition (1818) 

 were abridged by T. Wright for Bonn's * Antiquarian 

 Library' (1854). Another good English edition is that 

 of Hugh Murray (1844); but all its predecessors were 

 set aside by the admirable edition of Colonel Sir Henry 

 Yule (1871 ; 2d ed. 1875), containing a faithful English 

 translation from an eclectic text, an exhaustive introduc- 

 tion, notes, and other illustrations from the editor's wide 

 learning and intimate knowledge of tlie East. French or 

 Italian editions worthy of mention are those of tliu *oc. 

 de Geog. of Paris (1824), Baldelli-Boni (1S27), Lazari 

 ( 1847 ), Bartoli ( 1863 ), and Pauthier ( 1865 ). Sir Francis 

 Palgrave's Merchant and Friar (1837) is of course a 

 mere work of imagination, in which Roger Bacon and 

 Marco Polo are brought together. 



Polonaise, or POLACCA, a Polish national 

 dance of slow movement in J time. 



I'ololsk, a town of Russia, on the Diina 

 (Dwina), by rail 62 miles NW. of Vitebsk and 

 228 SK. of Riga, is the seat of a bishop of the 

 Greek United Church. Pep. 21,350. 



Poltava. See PULTOWA. 



Polyandry, the social usage of certain races 

 in stages of civilisation in which the woman nor- 

 mally forms a union with several or many hus- 

 bands a condition proved by the researches of 

 M'Lennan and others to be much more important 

 in the development of the social organism than was 

 formerly understood. See FAMILY, MARRIAGE. 



Polyanthus ( Gr. , ' many-flowered ' ), a kind of 

 Primrose (q.v.), much prized and cultivated by 



Polyanthus. 



florists. It is generally believed to be a variety of 

 the Common Primrose (Primula milgaris), produced 

 by cultivation, in which an umbel of numerous 



