however, was uninfluenced by these social and moral problems, being rather
a very complete expression of the naive medieval delight in romantic
marvels. This is the highly entertaining 'Voyage and Travels of Sir John
Mandeville.' This clever book was actually written at Liege, in what is now
Belgium, sometime before the year 1370, and in the French language; from
which, attaining enormous popularity, it was several times translated into
Latin and English, and later into various other languages. Five centuries
had to pass before scholars succeeded in demonstrating that the asserted
author, 'Sir John Mandeville,' never existed, that the real author is
undiscoverable, and that this pretended account of his journeyings over all
the known and imagined world is a compilation from a large number of
previous works. Yet the book (the English version along with the others)
really deserved its long-continued reputation. Its tales of the Ethiopian
Prester John, of diamonds that by proper care can be made to grow, of trees
whose fruit is an odd sort of lambs, and a hundred other equally remarkable
phenomena, are narrated with skilful verisimilitude and still strongly hold
the reader's interest, even if they no longer command belief. With all his
credulity, too, the author has some odd ends of genuine science, among
others the conviction that the earth is not flat but round. In style the
English versions reflect the almost universal medieval uncertainty of
sentence structure; nevertheless they are straightforward and clear; and
the book is notable as the first example in English after the Norman
Conquest of prose used not for religious edification but for amusement
(though with the purpose also of giving instruction). 'Mandeville,'
however, is a very minor figure when compared with his great
contemporaries, especially with the chief of them, Geoffrey Chaucer.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1338-1400. Chaucer (the name is French and seems to have
meant originally 'shoemaker') came into the world probably in 1338, the
first important author who was born and lived in London, which with him