Ill 



A LOVER OF GARDENS 



THERE are many who say this and that of Sir John 

 Mandeville, his Travels ; that he was not ; that he was a 

 Frenchman ; that no one knows who he was. For years 

 he was to me an English Knight who lived at St. Albans, 

 and from there set out to travel over all the world seek- 

 ing adventure, and relating the peculiarities of his 

 journey in fascinating, if slightly imaginative, language. 

 I rejoiced when he saw a board from the Noah's Ark, 

 when he talked with the Cham of Tartary ; and told of the 

 wonders of Ind. But comes along this and that expert 

 who upset the figure of the gallant Knight, and heave 

 him from horse to ground as a dummy figure, and burn 

 him for firewood as a fallen idol. And why ? It ap- 

 pears that Sir John is no more a real being than Homer, 

 or ^Esop, or any other of those personal names for great 

 bundles of collected literature ; and is a literature all by 

 himself, and a series of impudent thieves who stole 

 travellers' tales and jotted them together in a personal 

 narrative. For all that I believe in a figure of the blind 

 Homer, and the impudent slave JSsop who played 

 tricks on his master, and I firmly believe in a stalwart 

 figure of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, " albeit," he says, 

 " I be not worthy, that was born in England, in the town 

 of St. Albans, and passed the sea in the year of our Lord 

 Jesu Christ, 1322, in the day of St. Michael." 



There is one thing, a touch of character, put in, may- 



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