[16] Old Purchas appears to have greatly relished Ramusio’s comparative lucidity: “I found (says he) this Booke translated by Master Hakluyt out of the Latine (_i.e._ among Hakluyt’s MS. collections). But where the blind leade the blind both fall: as here the corrupt _Latine_ could not but yeeld a corruption of truth in _English_. Ramusio, Secretarie to the _Decemviri_ in _Venice_, found a better Copie and published the same, whence you have the worke in manner new: so renewed, that I have found the Proverbe true, that it is better to pull downe an old house and to build it anew, then to repaire it; as I also should have done, had I knowne that which in the event I found. The _Latine_ is Latten, compared to _Ramusio’s_ Gold. And hee which hath the _Latine_ hath but _Marco Polo’s_ carkasse or not so much, but a few bones, yea, sometimes stones rather then bones; things divers, averse, adverse, perverted in manner, disjoynted in manner, beyond beliefe. I have seene some Authors maymed, but never any so mangled and so mingled, so present and so absent, as this vulgar _Latine_ of _Marco Polo_; not so like himselfe, as the Three _Polo’s_ were at their returne to _Venice_, where none knew them.... Much are wee beholden to _Ramusio_, for restoring this _Pole_ and Load-starre of _Asia_, out of that mirie poole or puddle in which he lay drouned.” (III. p. 65.) [17] Of these difficulties the following are some of the more prominent:— 1. The mention of the death of Kúblái (see note 7, p. 38 of this volume), whilst throughout the book Polo speaks of Kúblái as if still reigning. 2. Mr. Hugh Murray objects that whilst in the old texts Polo appears to look on Kúblái with reverence as a faultless Prince, in the Ramusian we find passages of an opposite tendency, as in the chapter about Ahmad. 3. The same editor points to the manner in which one of the Ramusian additions represents the traveller to have visited the Palace of the Chinese Kings at Kinsay, which he conceives to be inconsistent with Marco’s position as an official of the Mongol Government. (See vol. ii. p. 208.) If we could conceive the Ramusian additions to have been originally notes written by old Maffeo Polo on his nephew’s book, this hypothesis would remove almost all difficulty.