It is now generally agreed that Marco Polo originally wrote the account of his travels in the French language, from which it was subsequently translated into Latin and Italian. French had now, indeed, become the general language of popular treatises, and it seems to be equally well established that in it was written the original text of Maundeville, who states expressly in the French copies preserved in manuscript, that he chose French in preference to Latin, as a language more generally understood, "especially by lords and knights, and others who understand not Latin."[13] We learn, from the colophon to some of the Latin copies, that he was at this time residing at Liege, where he is said to have ended his days, and that he soon afterwards translated his own book into Latin. An English version, said to be also from the pen of Maundeville himself, appeared soon afterwards, and the three versions must have become extremely popular within a few years after their publication, from the number of early copies that are still found among our various collections of manuscripts. The travels of Sir John Maundeville form, perhaps, the most popular work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it continued long afterwards to be read eagerly in a variety of forms. Yet all we know of him with any certainty is his own statement that he was a native of St. Albans,—the rest of his biography, as commonly given, is a mere tissue of errors. Bale tells us that he died at Liege, on the 17th of November, 1371, and that he was buried there in the abbey of the Guillamites. Abraham Orbelius, in his "Itinerarium Belgiæ," gives an epitaph from that abbey, which appears to be a comparatively recent fabrication. One of the manuscripts, written in the fifteenth century, (MS. Harl. 3989,) says that Maundeville died at Liege in 1382. Contemporary with Maundeville lived a German named variously Boldensel, Boldensle, and Boldenslave, who visited the east in 1336, and, on his return, published a description of the Holy Land, of which there is an early printed edition. It had been preceded by the description of the Holy Land by Brochard, published in 1332. From this time the narratives of travels in Palestine became much more numerous and more detailed, and I shall not attempt even a bare enumeration. The majority of them consist of little more than a repetition of the same facts and the same legends. Some, however, are far superior to the rest, by the interest of the narrative, and the novelty of the information gathered by the traveller. Two, belonging to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, stand pre-eminent in this respect, the narratives of Breydenbach and Rauwulf, which merit separate publication. I have selected to follow sir John Maundeville, the travels of BERTRANDON DE LA BROCQUIÈRE, on account of their peculiar character.