SOURCE: "Yule's Edition of Marco Polo," in The Edinburgh Review, Vol. CXXXV, No. CCLXXV, January, 1872, pp. 1-36.

In the following excerpt, Rawlinson praises Yule's translation of Polo's book, noting that he blends several earlier texts in his edition in order to best present "what the author said, or would have desired to say."

The publication of Colonel Yule's Marco Polo is an epoch in geographical literature. Never before, perhaps, did a book of travels appear under such exceptionally favourable auspices; an editor of a fine taste and ripe experience, and possessed with a passion for curious medieval research, having found a publisher willing to gratify that passion without stint on the score of expenditure; and the result being the production of a work which, in so far as it combines beauty of typography and wealth of illustration with a rich variety of recondite learning, may be regarded as...