MANDEVILLE, SIR JOHN, a physician, celebrated on account of his travels, was born at St. Alban's, about the beginning of the 14th century. He had a liberal education, and applied himself to the study of physic; but being at length seized with an invincible desire of seeing distant parts of the globe, he left England in 1332, and did not return till 34 years after. His friends, who had long supposed him dead, did not know him when he appeared. He had travelled through almost all the east, and made himself master of a great variety of languages. He particularly visited Scythia, Armenia the Greater and Less, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Media, Mesopotamia, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Dalmatia, &c. His rambling disposition did not suffer him to rest; for he left his own country a second time, and died at Liege in the Netherlands in 1372. He wrote An Itinerary, or An Account of his Travels, in English, French, and Latin.