There are other Italian MSS. of this type, some of which show signs of having been derived independently from the French;[2] but I have not been able to examine any of them with the care needful to make specific deductions regarding them.

[Sidenote:  Second; the remodelled French Text, followed by Pauthier.]

56.  II.  The next Type is that of the French MSS. on which M. Pauthier’s Text is based, and for which he claims the highest authority, as having had the mature revision and sanction of the Traveller.  There are, as far as I know, five MSS. which may be classed together under this type, three in the Great Paris Library, one at Bern, and one in the Bodleian.

The high claims made by Pauthier on behalf of this class of MSS. (on the first three of which his Text is formed) rest mainly upon the kind of certificate which two of them bear regarding the presentation of a copy by Marco Polo to Thibault de Cepoy, which we have already quoted (supra p. 69).  This certificate is held by Pauthier to imply that the original of the copies which bear it, and of those having a general correspondence with them, had the special seal of Marco’s revision and approval.  To some considerable extent their character is corroborative of such a claim, but they are far from having the perfection which Pauthier attributes to them, and which leads him into many paradoxes.

It is not possible to interpret rigidly the bearing of this so-called certificate, as if no copies had previously been taken of any form of the Book; nor can we allow it to impugn the authenticity of the Geographic Text, which demonstratively represents an older original, and has been (as we have seen) the parent of all other versions, including some very old ones, Italian and Latin, which certainly owe nothing to this revision.

The first idea apparently entertained by d’Avezac and Paulin Paris was that the Geographic Text was itself the copy given to the Sieur de Cepoy, and that the differences in the copies of the class which we describe as Type II. merely resulted from the modifications which would naturally arise in the process of transcription into purer French.  But closer examination showed the differences to be too great and too marked to admit of this explanation.  These differences consist not only in the conversion of the rude, obscure, and half Italian language of the original into good French of the period.  There is also very considerable curtailment, generally of tautology, but also extending often to circumstances of substantial interest; whilst we observe the omission of a few notably erroneous statements or expressions; and a few insertions of small importance.  None of the MSS. of this class contain more than a few of the historical chapters which we have formed into Book IV.

The only addition of any magnitude is that chapter which in our translation forms chapter xxi. of Book II.  It will be seen that it contains no new facts, but is only a tedious recapitulation of circumstances already stated, though scattered over several chapters.  There are a few minor additions.  I have not thought it worth while to collect them systematically here, but two or three examples are given in a note.[3]