at least in its expression, was modified by passing under the pen of
a professed littérateur of somewhat humble claims, such as Rusticiano
was. The case is not a singular one, and in our own day the ill-judged
use of such assistance has been fatal to the reputation of an
adventurous Traveller.
We have, however, already expressed our own view that in the
Geographic Text we have the nearest possible approach to a photographic
impression of Marco’s oral narrative. If there be an exception to
this we should seek it in the descriptions of battles, in which we
find the narrator to fall constantly into a certain vein of bombastic
commonplaces, which look like the stock phrases of a professed
romancer, and which indeed have a strong resemblance to the actual
phraseology of certain metrical romances.[15] Whether this feature
be due to Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not been able to trace
anything of the same character in a cursory inspection of some of his
romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to conceive of
our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his Genoese
dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent bombast,
with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen of the faithful
amanuensis!
[Sidenote: Marco’s reading embraced the Alexandrian Romances. Examples.]