The English translation of the Travels of Mandeville enjoyed still greater popularity. This translation is an anonymous one.[671] It has been found out to-day that the original text of the "Travels" was compiled in French by Jean de Bourgogne, physician, usually called John-with-the-Beard, "Joannes-ad-Barbam," who wrote various treatises, one in particular on the plague, in 1365, who died at Liege in 1372, and was buried in the church of the Guillemins, where his tomb was still to be seen at the time of the French Revolution.[672] John seems to have invented the character of Mandeville as Swift invented Gulliver, and Defoe Robinson Crusoe. Now that his imposture is discovered, the least we can do is to acknowledge his skill: for five centuries Europe has believed in Mandeville, and the merit is all the greater, seeing that John-with-the-Beard did not content himself with merely making his hero travel to a desert island; that would have been far too simple. No, he unites beforehand a Crusoe and a Gulliver in one; it is Crusoe at Brobdingnag; the knight comes to a land of giants; he does not see the giants, it is true, but he sees their sheep (the primitive sheep of Central Asia); elsewhere the inhabitants feed on serpents and hiss as serpents do; some men have dogs' faces; others raise above their head an enormous foot, which serves them for a parasol. Gulliver was not to behold anything more strange. Still the whole was accepted with enthusiasm by the readers of the Middle Ages; with kindness and goodwill by the critics of our time. The most obvious lies were excused and even justified, and the success of the book was such that there remain about three hundred manuscript copies of it, whereas of the authentic travels of Marco Polo there exist only seventy-five. "Mandeville" had more than twenty-five editions in the fifteenth century and Marco Polo only five.[673]