The Opinions of Several Eminent Critics.

In spite, however, of all these charges, there have been some great men in all ages who have done justice to our author’s merit. Among these we may reckon the famous Vossius in his account of the Latin historian, the great geographer Sebastian Munster, the learned naturalist Conrad Gesner, the accurate historian Leunclavius, the celebrated Joseph Scaliger, and many others. The learned German critic William Schickard, in his history of the Kings of Persia, gives our author this character: “Marco Polo, the Venetian, says he, is a very good writer, and those things which he reports, and were heretofore thought incredible, are now verified daily by later discoveries.” But of all who have undertaken the cause of our author, none has done it with greater capacity, with more good will, or better success, than Father Martini, to whom we owe the best description of China, and who was consequently a better judge than any other of the merit or demerit of this work. He assures us, that there is not the least reason to doubt the truth of our author’s relations on account of the obscurity of the names of places; for, says he, he wrote them after the Tartar pronunciation, whereas later writers study to imitate as well as they are able the pronunciation of the Chinese.

I will add to these but one testimony more, which is that of an author very able to have detected him, if he had caught him in untruths, and who was far enough from being tender of men’s reputations if he thought them to blame. The author I mean is Athanasius Kircher, who in his account of China, confesses, that none of the old authors have more fully or more accurately described the remotest countries of the east than Marco Polo has done; yet he readily admits, that there are many things in him so very dark, that they may be in a manner styled inexplicable; but then, with great good sense and candour, he attributes this to the author’s want of skill in geography and astronomy; and if we consider how young he was when his father carried him into Tartary, and how little opportunity he had of acquiring that sort of knowledge that was most necessary for preventing those mistakes, we may easily concur in opinion with so many eminent and learned writers, that in consideration of the many curious and useful passages in his writings, these blemishes, especially as they were in a manner unavoidable, may very well be forgiven. After having thus cleared the way, we will no longer detain the reader from the perusal of these travels, which their author has thus digested. He first gives a succinct account of his father’s and uncle’s peregrinations, and then of his own; after which, he enters into a more particular description of the countries and places through which they passed, and relates also such remarkable things as he was informed of in the course of his voyages.