There are also one or two corrections of erroneous statements in the G. T. which seem not to be accidental and to indicate some attempt at revision.  Thus a notable error in the account of Aden, which seems to conceive of the Red Sea as a river, disappears in Pauthier’s MSS.  A and B.[4] And we find in these MSS. one or two interesting names preserved which are not found in the older Text.[5]

But on the other hand this class of MSS. contains many erroneous readings of names, either adopting the worse of two forms occurring in the G. T. or originating blunders of its own.[6]

M. Pauthier lays great stress on the character of these MSS. as the sole authentic form of the work, from their claim to have been specially revised by Marco Polo.  It is evident, however, from what has been said, that this revision can have been only a very careless and superficial one, and must have been done in great measure by deputy, being almost entirely confined to curtailment and to the improvement of the expression, and that it is by no means such as to allow an editor to dispense with a careful study of the Older Text.

[Sidenote:  The Bern MS. and two others form a sub-class of this Type.]

57.  There is another curious circumstance about the MSS. of this type, viz., that they clearly divide into two distinct recensions, of which both have so many peculiarities and errors in common that they must necessarily have been both derived from one modification of the original text, whilst at the same time there are such differences between the two as cannot be set down to the accidents of transcription.  Pauthier’s MSS.  A and B (Nos. 16 and 15 of the List in App.  F) form one of these subdivisions:  his C (No. 17 of List), Bern (No. 56), and Oxford (No. 6), the other.  Between A and B the differences are only such as seem constantly to have arisen from the whims of transcribers or their dialectic peculiarities.  But between A and B on the one side, and C on the other, the differences are much greater.  The readings of proper names in C are often superior, sometimes worse; but in the latter half of the work especially it contains a number of substantial passages[7] which are to be found in the G. T., but are altogether absent from the MSS.  A and B; whilst in one case at least (the history of the Siege of Saianfu, vol. ii. p. 159) it diverges considerably from the G. T. as well as from A and B.[8]

I gather from the facts that the MS. C represents an older form of the work than A and B. I should judge that the latter had been derived from that older form, but intentionally modified from it.  And as it is the MS. C, with its copy at Bern, that alone presents the certificate of derivation from the Book given to the Sieur de Cepoy, there can be no doubt that it is the true representative of that recension.

[Sidenote:  Third; Friar Pipino’s Latin.]