MANDEVILLE, Sir John de, the first English prose writer, was born at St Alban's about the beginning of the fourteenth century. Sprung from a good family, he received a liberal education, and seems to have practised for some time as a physician. He set out on his travels in 1322, and repaired to the Holy Land. After serving successively under the Sultan of Egypt and the Khan of Cathay, and journeying through Tartary, Persia, Armenia, India, and other countries, he returned to England about 1355. Not long after this he began to write a narrative of his adventures, which he dedicated to Edward III. He is said to have died at Liège in 1372. Mandeville's work presents a singular mixture of fact and fable. Minutely and candidly he relates his own observations regarding the countries he visited and the men whom he met. With the same truthfulness, whenever an opportunity occurs, he copies descriptions of monsters from Pliny, accounts of miracles from legends, and fables from old romancers. His book, written originally in Latin, was translated by himself into French, and ultimately into English. The original manuscript of this last translation is in the Cotton Library. The best edition is that published under the title of The Voyage and Travails of Ser John Mandeville, knight, Svo, London, 1725, and reprinted in 1839, "with an introduction, additional notes, and a glossary by J. O. Halliwell, Esq., F.S.A., F.R.A.S."