I feel bound to mention this singular hypothesis as it has actually been put forward (see No. 1336 note 5); and it would certainly seem as though there were no other possible way of evading the conclusion to which these letters point, and their bearing on the life of the master,—­absurd as the alternative is.  But, if, on a question of such importance, we are justified in suggesting theories that have no foundation in probability, I could suggest another which, as compared with that of a Fiction by Leonardo, would be neither more nor less plausible; it is, moreover the only other hypothesis, perhaps, which can be devised to account for these passages, if it were possible to prove that the interpretation that the documents themselves suggest, must be rejected a priori; viz may not Leonardo have written them with the intention of mystifying those who, after his death, should try to decipher these manuscripts with a view to publishing them?  But if, in fact, no objection that will stand the test of criticism can be brought against the simple and direct interpretation of the words as they stand, we are bound to regard Leonardo’s travels in the East as an established fact.  There is, I believe nothing in what we know of his biography to negative such a fact, especially as the details of his life for some few years are wholly unknown; nor need we be at a loss for evidence which may serve to explain—­at any rate to some extent—­the strangeness of his undertaking such a journey.  We have no information as to Leonardo’s history between 1482 and 1486; it cannot be proved that he was either in Milan or in Florence.  On the other hand the tenor of this letter does not require us to assume a longer absence than a year or two.  For, even if his appointment_ (offitio) as Engineer in Syria had been a permanent one, it might have become untenable—­by the death perhaps of the Defterdar, his patron, or by his removal from office—­, and Leonardo on his return home may have kept silence on the subject of an episode which probably had ended in failure and disappointment.

From the text of No. 1379 we can hardly doubt that Leonardo intended to make an excursion secretly from Rome to Naples, although so far as has hitherto been known, his biographers never allude to it.  In another place (No. 1077) he says that he had worked as an Engineer in Friuli.  Are we to doubt this statement too, merely because no biographer has hitherto given us any information on the matter?  In the geographical notes Leonardo frequently speaks of the East, and though such passages afford no direct proof of his having been there, they show beyond a doubt that, next to the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Taurus mountains had a special interest in his eyes.  As a still further proof of the futility of the argument that there is nothing in his drawings to show that he had travelled in the East, we find on Pl.  CXX a study of oriental heads of Armenian type,—­though of course this may have been made in Italy.