SPECIMENS, &c. EDWARD III. MANDEVILLE. THE first prose writer in the English language, which occurs in our literary annals, is the ancient and renowned traveller, sir John Mandeville. He was born at St. Albans about the beginning of 1300. He received a liberal education, and applied himself to the study of medicine, which he probably practised for some time. But being urged by an unconquerable curiosity to see foreign countries, he departed from England in 1332, and continued abroad for four and thirty years; during which time his person and appearance had so changed, that, on his return, his friends, who had supposed him dead, did not know him. In the course of his travels, he acquired the knowledge of almost all languages, and visited all the chief countries of the known earth; among which may be enumerated Greece, Dalmatia, Armenia the greater and less, Egypt, Arabia, Chaldæa, Syria, Media, Mesopotamia, Persia, Scythia, Cathay or China, &c. The habit of roving, however, was still too powerful to suffer him to remain quietly at home, He quitted his own country a second time, and finally died at Liege in the Low Countries, in 1372. He wrote an " Itinerary," or an account of his travels, in English, French, and Latin. We learn from Vossius, that it existed also in Italian, Belgic, and German. The inscription, too, on his monument at Liege, is preserved by the same author, and is as follows: Hic jacet vir nobilis, dominus Johannes de Mandeville, alias dictus ad Barbam, dominus de Campoli, natus in Anglia, medicina professor, devotissimus orator, et bonorum suorum largissimus pauperibus erogator, qui, toto quasi orbe lustrato, Leodii vitæ suæ diem clausit, A. D. 1372, Nov. 17, His travels abound in miracles and wonderful stories; and accordingly, the title of one of the Latin manuscripts is Itinerarium Johannis Maundeville, de Mirabilibus Mundi. Ambitious of saying whatever had been, as well as whatever could be said of the places he visited, he has taken monsters from Pliny, miracles from legends, and marvellous stories from romances. In this, indeed, he only furnishes an instance of the taste of the agc in which he lived; and imitates the example of the early historians of all nations, and among his own countrymen, his predecessors Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and even the venerable Bede, in blending fabulous narratives with the relations of real history. It should be observed, however, that his book is supposed to have been interpolated by the monks; a supposition that will appear highly probable from the following extracts. Still, when he relates stories of an improbable nature, he commonly prefaces them with"They say," or "men say-but I have not seen it;" though he is to blame in not citing. his authorities, when he adopts the accounts of others. He acknowleges only, in general terms, (p. 381-2, edit. 1725) that his book |