Mandeville's Travels.--Sir John Mandeville, who is popularly considered the author of a very entertaining work of travels, states that he was born in St. Albans in 1300, that he left England in 1322, and traveled in the East for thirty-four years. His _Travels_ relates what he saw and heard in his wanderings through Ethiopia, Persia, Tartary, India, and Cathay. What he tells on his own authority, he vouches for as true, but what he relates as hearsay, he leaves to the reader's judgment for belief. [Illustration: WHAT MADEVILLE SAW. _Old print from Edition of 1725._] No such single traveler as Mandeville ever existed. The work attributed to him has been proved to be a compilation from the writings of other travelers. A French critic says wittily: "He first lost his character as a truthful writer; then out of the three versions of his book, French, English, and Latin, two were withdrawn from him, leaving him only the first. Existence has now been taken from him, and he is left with nothing at all." No matter, however, who the author was, the book exists. More manuscripts of it survive than of any other work except the _Scriptures_. It is the most entertaining volume of English prose that we have before 1360. The sentences are simple and direct, and they describe things vividly:-- "In Ethiope ben many dyverse folk: and Ethiope is clept[13] Cusis. In that contree ben folk, that han but o foot: and thei gon so fast, that it is marvaylle: and the foot is so large, that it schadewethe alle the body azen[14] the Sonne whanne thei wole[15] lye and reste hem."[16] Mandeville also tells of a bird that used to amuse itself by flying away with an elephant in its talons. In the land of Prester John was a valley where Mandeville says he saw devils jumping about as thick as grasshoppers. Stories like these make the work as interesting as _Gulliver's Travels_. The so-called Mandeville's _Travels_ was one of the few works that the unlearned of that age could understand and enjoy. Consequently its popularity was so great as to bring large number of French words into familiar use. The native "againbought" is, however, used instead of the foreign "redeemed." [Illustration: JOHN WYCLIFFE. _From an old print_.]