Cambus'can, a prince of Cambaluc (Pekin), whose name is a corruption of Genghis Khan, while the description applies apparently to his grandson, Kublai Khan. This was Milton's form of the Cam'bynskan of Chaucer's fragment of a metrical romance, The Squire's Tale. The lines in Il Penseroso (109-15) will be remembered:
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride.
Spenser continues and finishes the tale in his Pærie Queene (IV., ii. and iii.); and John Lane, a friend of Milton's father, also wrote a continuation. Some of the romantic elements in it are widespread in oriental story, occurring in the Arabian Nights, the Panchatantra, and elsewhere. See Clouston's Popular Tales and Fictions (1887).