From this time, although short descriptions of the Holy Land became more numerous than ever, travellers who published their personal narratives were seldom contented with the old limits of the subject, but they either visited themselves, or described from the information of others, some at least of the surrounding countries. This was carried at times almost to the extreme of affectation. A remarkable example is furnished to us in the book of SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE. This singular writer, more credulous than the most bigotted monk, appears to have visited the east with the double object of performing the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, and of seeking military service in foreign lands. Professedly a guide to pilgrims to Jerusalem, to which a large portion of the book is devoted, it contains, nevertheless, the description of nearly the whole of Asia, and of some parts of Africa and Europe, and extends to countries which its author visited and to many others which he certainly did not visit. From the rather equivocal light in which he exhibits himself, and the peculiar form of his work, it is impossible to trace the course of his travels, but he assures us that he set out from England in 1322, and that he returned home and compiled his book in 1356. It appears clear, from evidence furnished by the book itself, that Maundeville was in Egypt for some time previous to the year 1342[12], and a closer examination would probably fix the date of his presence in some other countries. But there can be no doubt that his book is partly a compilation, for we find him not only borrowing from ancient writers, like Solinus and Pliny, but it is quite evident that he made large use of the previous narratives of Marco Polo and of the Franciscan Oderic, who had travelled over a great part of Asia in the earlier years of the fourteenth century, and had published his account during Maundeville's absence in the east. It would not be difficult to analyze a great portion of Maundeville's book, and show from whence it was compiled.
It is now generally agreed that Marco Polo originally wrote the account of his travels in the French language, from which it was subsequently translated into Latin and Italian. French had now, indeed, become the general language of popular treatises, and it seems to be equally well established that in it was written the original text of Maundeville, who states expressly in the French copies preserved in manuscript, that he chose French in preference to Latin, as a language more generally understood, "especially by lords and knights, and others who understand not Latin."[13] We learn, from the colophon to some of the Latin copies, that he was at this time residing at Liege, where he is said to have ended his days, and that he soon afterwards translated his own book into Latin. An English version, said to be also from the pen of Maundeville himself, appeared soon afterwards, and the three versions must have become extremely popular within a few years after their publication, from the number of early copies that are still found among our various collections of manuscripts. The travels of Sir John Maundeville form, perhaps, the most popular work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it continued long afterwards to be read eagerly in a variety of forms. Yet all we know of him with any certainty is his own statement that he was a native of St. Albans,—the rest of his biography, as commonly given, is a mere tissue of errors. Bale tells us that he died at Liege, on the 17th of November, 1371, and that he was buried there in the abbey of the Guillamites. Abraham Orbelius, in his "Itinerarium Belgiæ," gives an epitaph from that abbey, which appears to be a comparatively recent fabrication. One of the manuscripts, written in the fifteenth century, (MS. Harl. 3989,) says that Maundeville died at Liege in 1382.