No work has enjoyed a greater popularity than Mandeville’s; while we describe but eighty-five manuscripts of Marco Polo’s, and I gave a list of seventy-three manuscripts of Friar Odoric’s relation,[5] it is by hundreds that Mandeville’s manuscripts can be reckoned.  As to the printed editions, they are, so to speak, numberless; Mr. Carl Schoenborn[6] gave in 1840, an incomplete bibliography; Tobler in his Bibliographia geographica Palestinae (1867),[7] and Roehricht[8] after him compiled a better bibliography, to which may be added my own lists in the Bibliotheca Sinica[9] and in the T’oung-Pao.[10]

Campbell, Ann. de la Typog. neerlandaise, 1874, p. 338, mentions a Dutch edition:  Reysen int heilighe lant, s.l.n.d., folio, of which but two copies are known, and which must be dated as far back as 1470 [see p. 600], I believed hitherto (I am not yet sure that Campbell is right as to his date) that the first printed edition was German, s.l.n.d., very likely printed at Basel, about 1475, discovered by Tross, the Paris Bookseller.[11] The next editions are the French of the 4th April, 1480,[12] and 8th February of the same year,[13] Easter being the 2nd of April, then the Latin,[14] Dutch,[15] and Italian[16] editions, and after the English editions of Pynson and Wynkin de Worde.

In what tongue was Mandeville’s Book written?

The fact that the first edition of it was printed either in German or in Dutch, only shows that the scientific progress was greater and printing more active in such towns as Basel, Nuremberg and Augsburg than in others.  At first, one might believe that there were three original texts, probably in French, English, and vulgar Latin; the Dean of Tongres, Radulphus of Rivo, a native of Breda, writes indeed in his Gesta Pontificum Leodiensium, 1616, p. 17:  “Hoc anno Ioannes Mandeuilius natione Anglus vir ingenio, & arte medendi eminens, qui toto fere terrarum orbe peragrato, tribus linguis peregrinationem suam doctissime conscripsit, in alium orbe nullis finibus clausum, loegeque hoc quietiorem, & beatiorem migrauit 17.  Nouembris.  Sepultus in Ecclesia Wilhelmitarum non procul a moenibus Ciuitatis Leodiensis.”  The Dean of Tongres died in 1483;[17] Mr. Warner, on the authority of the Bulletin de l’Inst.  Archeol.  Liegeois, xvi. 1882, p. 358, gives 1403 as the date of the death of Radulphus.  However, Mandeville himself says (Warner, Harley, 4383) at the end of his introduction, p. 3:—­“Et sachez qe ieusse cest escript mis en latyn pur pluis briefment deuiser; mes, pur ceo qe plusours entendent mieltz romantz qe latin, ieo lay mys en romance, pur ceo qe chescun lentende et luy chiualers et les seignurs et lez autres nobles homes qi ne sciuent point de latin ou poy, et qount estee outre meer, sachent et entendent, si ieo dye voir ou noun, et si ieo erre en deuisant par noun souenance ou autrement, qils le puissent adresser et amender, qar choses de long