58.  III.  The next Type of Text is that found in Friar Pipino’s Latin version.  It is the type of which MSS. are by far the most numerous.  In it condensation and curtailment are carried a good deal further than in Type II.  The work is also divided into three Books.  But this division does not seem to have originated with Pipino, as we find it in the ruder and perhaps older Latin version of which we have already spoken under Type I. And we have demonstrated that this ruder Latin is a translation from an Italian copy.  It is probable therefore that an Italian version similarly divided was the common source of what we call the Geographic Latin and of Pipino’s more condensed version.[9]

Pipino’s version appears to have been executed in the later years of Polo’s life.[10] But I can see no ground for the idea entertained by Baldelli-Boni and Professor Bianconi that it was executed with Polo’s cognizance and retouched by him.

[Sidenote:  The Latin of Grynaeus a translation at fifth hand.]

59.  The absence of effective publication in the Middle Ages led to a curious complication of translation and retranslation.  Thus the Latin version published by Grynaeus in the Novus Orbis (Basle, 1532) is different from Pipino’s, and yet clearly traceable to it as a base.  In fact it is a retranslation into Latin from some version (Marsden thinks the printed Portuguese one) of Pipino.  It introduces many minor modifications, omitting specific statements of numbers and values, generalizing the names and descriptions of specific animals, exhibiting frequent sciolism and self-sufficiency in modifying statements which the Editor disbelieved.[11] It is therefore utterly worthless as a Text, and it is curious that Andreas Mueller, who in the 17th century devoted himself to the careful editing of Polo, should have made so unfortunate a choice as to reproduce this fifth-hand Translation.  I may add that the French editions published in the middle of the 16th century are translations from Grynaeus.  Hence they complete this curious and vicious circle of translation:  French—­Italian—­Pipino’s Latin—­Portuguese?—­Grynaeus’s Latin—­French![12]

[Sidenote:  Fourth; Ramusio’s Italian.]

60.  IV.  We now come to a Type of Text which deviates largely from any of those hitherto spoken of, and the history and true character of which are involved in a cloud of difficulty.  We mean that Italian version prepared for the press by G. B. Ramusio, with most interesting, though, as we have seen, not always accurate preliminary dissertations, and published at Venice two years after his death, in the second volume of the Navigationi e Viaggi.[13]

The peculiarities of this version are very remarkable.  Ramusio seems to imply that he used as one basis at least the Latin of Pipino; and many circumstances, such as the division into Books, the absence of the terminal historical chapters and of those about the Magi, and the form of many proper names, confirm this.  But also many additional circumstances and anecdotes are introduced, many of the names assume a new shape, and the whole style is more copious and literary in character than in any other form of the work.