The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany

ner while fighting in Turkish service against Timur at Angora, he remained in the East from 1395 to 1417, and got as far as Persia. His description of that country is very meagre; India, as he expressly states,[15] he never visited, his statements about that land being mostly plagiarized from Mandeville.[16]

These accounts, however, while they give valuable information concerning the physical geography, the wealth, size, and wonderful things of the countries they describe, have little or nothing to say about the languages or literatures. All that Conti for instance has to say on this important subject is contained in a single sentence: "Loquendi idiomata sunt apud Indos plurima, atque inter se varia."[17]

In these accounts it was not so much truthfulness that appealed to the public, as strangeness and fancifulness. Thus Marco Polo's narrative, marvelous as it was, never became as popular as the spurious memoirs of Mandeville, who in serving up his monstrosities ransacked almost every author, cla