This seems rather hard measure to mete out to the garrulous old voyager; nor does the evidence against his having Englished his own _Romance_ stories, appear fully conclusive. What we may count for certain about the matter is this:--There does exist a very considerable budget of delightfully extravagant travellers’ tales, bearing the Mandeville name, and written in an English which--with some mending of bygone words--is charming now: and which may be called the first fair and square book of the new English prose;--meaning by that--the first book of length and of popular currency which introduced a full measure--perhaps over-running measure--of those words of Romance or Latin origin, which afterward came to be incorporated in the English of the fifteenth century. The book has no English qualities--beyond its language; and might have been written by a Tartar, who could tell of Munchausen escapes and thank God in good current dialect of Britain. I give a specimen from the description of his descent into the Valley Perilous--which he found beside the Isle of Mistorak, nigh to the river Phison: This Vale is all full of devils, and hath been always. And men say there that it is one of the entries of hell. In that Vale is plenty of gold and silver; wherefore many misbelieving men, and many Christians also, oftentimes go in, to have of the treasure.… And in midplace of that Vale is an head of the visage of a devil bodily--full horrible and dreadful to see. But there is no man in the world so hardy, Christian man, ne other, but that he would be drad [afraid] for to behold it. For he beholdeth every man so sharply with dreadful eyen that ben evermore moving and sparkling as fire, and changeth and steereth so often in divers manner, with so horrible countenance, that no man dare not nighen toward him. The author says fourteen of his party went in, and when they came out--only nine: “And we wisten never, whether that our fellows were lost or elles turned again for dread. But we never saw them never after.” He says there were plenty of jewels and precious stones thereabout, but “I touched none, because that the Devils be so subtle to make a thing to seem otherwise than it is, for to deceive mankind.” He tells us also of the giants Gog and Magog, and of a wonderful bird--like the roc of Arabian Nights’ fable--that would carry off an elephant in its talons, and he closes all his stupendous narratives with thanks to God Almighty for his marvellous escapes. I have spoken of its popularity. Halliwell--who edits the London edition of 1839--says that of no book, with the exception of Scriptures, are there so many MSS. of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries existing; showing that for two centuries its fables were either not exploded, or at least lost not their relish. _Early Book-making._