Transcribed from the 1900 Macmillan and Co. edition by DavidPrice,
The version of the CottonManuscript
in modern spelling
With three narratives, inillustration of it,
from Hakluyt’s “Navigations, Voyages& Discoveries”
London
Macmillan and Co. Limited
New York: The Macmillan Company
1900
p. ivGLASGOW:PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE & CO.
The Travels of Sir John Mandevillewere edited anonymously in 1725, in the version for which a‘Cotton’ manuscript in the British Museum is our onlyextant authority. From 1499, when they were first printedby Wynkyn de Worde, the Travels had enjoyed greatpopularity in England, as in the rest of Europe; but the printededitions before 1725 had all followed an inferior translation(with an unperceived gap in the middle of it), which had alreadygained the upper hand before printing was invented. Anothermanuscript in the British Museum, belonging to the‘Egerton’ collection, preserves yet a third version,and this was printed for the first time by Mr. G. F. Warner, forthe Roxburghe Club, in 1889, together with the original Frenchtext, and an introduction, and notes, which it would be difficultto over-praise. In editing the Egerton version, Mr. Warnermade constant reference to the Cotton manuscript, which he quotedin many of his critical notes. But with this exception, noone appears to have looked at the manuscript since it was firstprinted, and subsequent writers have been content to take thecorrectness of the 1725 text for granted, priding themselves,apparently, on the care with which they reproduced all thesuperfluous eighteenth century capitals with which every line isdotted. Unluckily, the introduction of needless capitalswas the least of the original editor’s p. vicrimes, forhe omits words and phrases, and sometimes (a common trick withcareless copyists) a whole sentence or clause which happens toend with the same word as its predecessor. He was also adeliberate as well as a careless criminal, for the paragraphabout the Arabic alphabet at the end of Chapter XV. beingdifficult to reproduce, he omitted it altogether, and not onlythis, but the last sentence of Chapter XVI. as well, because itcontained a reference to it.
That it has been left to the editor (who has hitherto ratheravoided that name) of a series of popular reprints to restorewhole phrases and sentences to the text of a famous book is notvery creditable to English scholarship, and amounts, indeed, to apersonal grievance; for to produce an easily readable text of anold book without a good critical edition to work on must alwaysbe difficult, while in the case of a work with the peculiarreputation of ‘Mandeville’ the difficulty is greatlyincreased. Had a critical edition existed, it would havebeen permissible for a popular text to botch the few sentences inwhich the tail does not agree with the beginning, and to correctobvious mistranslation without special note. But‘Mandeville’ has an old reputation as the‘Father of English Prose,’ and when no trustworthytext is available, even a popular editor must be careful lest hebear false witness. The Cotton version is, therefore, herereproduced, ‘warts and all,’ save in less than adoze