It is possible that this Marco, who from the latter notice seems to have been engaged in mercantile affairs, may have been the Marcolino above mentioned, but it is perhaps on the whole more probable that this nobilis vir is the Marco spoken of in the note at p. 74.

[38] La Collezione del Doge Marin Faliero e i Tesori di Marco Polo,
    pp. 98-103.  I have seen this article.—­H.  C.

IX.  MARCO POLO’S BOOK; AND THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH IT WAS FIRST WRITTEN.

[Illustration:  Porcelain Incense Burner, from the Louvre]

[Sidenote:  General statement of what the Book contains.]

50.  The Book itself consists essentially of Two Parts. First, of a Prologue, as it is termed, the only part which is actual personal narrative, and which relates, in a very interesting but far too brief manner, the circumstances which led the two elder Polos to the Kaan’s Court, and those of their second journey with Mark, and of their return to Persia through the Indian Seas. Secondly, of a long series of chapters of very unequal length, descriptive of notable sights and products, of curious manners and remarkable events, relating to the different nations and states of Asia, but, above all, to the Emperor Kublai, his court, wars, and administration.  A series of chapters near the close treats in a verbose and monotonous manner of sundry wars that took place between the various branches of the House of Chinghiz in the latter half of the 13th century.  This last series is either omitted or greatly curtailed in all the copies and versions except one; a circumstance perfectly accounted for by the absence of interest as well as value in the bulk of these chapters.  Indeed, desirous though I have been to give the Traveller’s work complete, and sharing the dislike that every man who uses books must bear to abridgments, I have felt that it would be sheer waste and dead-weight to print these chapters in full.

[Illustration:  Temple of 500 Genii at Canton after a Drawing by FELIX REGAMEY]

This second and main portion of the Work is in its oldest forms undivided, the chapters running on consecutively to the end.[1] In some very early Italian or Venetian version, which Friar Pipino translated into Latin, it was divided into three Books, and this convenient division has generally been adhered to.  We have adopted M. Pauthier’s suggestion in making the final series of chapters, chiefly historical, into a Fourth.

[Sidenote:  Language of the original Work.]

51.  As regards the language in which Marco’s Book was first committed to writing, we have seen that Ramusio assumed, somewhat arbitrarily, that it was Latin; Marsden supposed it to have been the Venetian dialect; Baldelli Boni first showed, in his elaborate edition (Florence, 1827), by arguments that have been illustrated and corroborated by learned men since, that it was French.