James Thomson

“ RABELAIS 39 Coleridge says : "It is impossible to read Rabelais without an admiration mixed with wonder at the depth and extent of his learning, his multifarious knowledge and original observation, beyond what books could in that age have supplied him with;" and Mr. Besant remarks that he knew more than any other man of the time. ”

“ As if over-anxious to distinguish himself from the purblind vulgar, Coleridge not seldom appears re- solved to see more in a writer than the writer actually contains, reading himself into the book, in the manner marked by Gothe (First Epistle in the Poems) : "Yet each only reads himself out of the book, and if he is powerful he reads himself into the book;" but his authority as a most subtle critic is rightly so great that no one since has ventured to treat Rabelais as a mere jester and buffoon. ”

“ Such instances as Rabelais and Shakespeare make us incline to Plato's theory that all knowledge is but reminiscence, that we have all got thoroughly acquainted with our world in previous existences, and are only ignorant in so far as our memories are asleep or inert ”

“ He was now forty years of age, and the best years of his life, all his young manhood, had been immured amongst the RABELAIS 5 most superstitious, fanatical, unlettered, and inert of monks. One shudders to think of what that great intellect and genial heart must have endured in such society. Only his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and his marvellous animal spirits could have sus- tained him. We shall not be surprised to read in his books the most bitter contempt and abhorrence for monks and monkery. ”

“ He soon made the acquaintance of the leading thinkers and writers more or less in sympathy with the Reformation, or in revolt against the old orthodoxy, such as Calvin, Clement Marot, and Bonaventure des Periers. He could not long remain on good terms with Calvin, who was just as bigoted and dogmatical, in his own way, as any of the most narrow-minded doctors of the Church. Rabelais was not the man to free himself from one set of dogmas in order to involve himself in another as stringent. ”

“ Silent of old were little boxes, such as we now see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such pictures, caricatured at pleasure to excite people to laughter, as did Silenus himself, master of the god Bacchus ”

“ Louis de Berquin, accused by the Sorbonne headed by Beda, in spite of the favour of the king and the vigorous defence of Buda, was condemned as a relapsed heretic, and first strangled in consideration of his noble birth, and then burnt along with his books in the Place de Greve, in 1529. Rabelais went off to Montpellier to pursue his studies in medicine, which he had already by himself carried much further than most doctors of the age, Montpellier being then the most famous medical school in Europe. ”

“ Now, while agreeing with Coleridge that Rabelais was among the deepest, as well as boldest, thinkers of his time, and even considering him, so far as I can judge, quite the boldest and deepest of all; while further agreeing that he is to be classed with the great creative minds of the world — Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c. ”

“ He is like a sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference no- where. The ministers of religion are its worst enemies : he who is wise will be tied by as few dogmas as may be, but he will possess his soul in patience. ”

“ For one of the least of their slanders was that all my books are stuffed with heresies, though they could not show a single one in any passage. Of joyous fooleries, free from offence to God and the king, yes : they are the unique subject and theme of these books ; of heresies, no ; if not perversely, and against all usage of reason and common lan- guage, interpreted into what I would rather suffer a thousand deaths, were it possible, than have thought ; as who should interpret bread, stone ; fish, serpent ; egg, scorpion. ”

“ The French Humourists," says : " It is not impossible that England will yet learn to appreciate more largely this glorious wit and satirist. There may be found some man who has the leisure, and to whom it would be a labour of love to edit for modern readers the life and voyages of Pantagruel. The necessary omissions could be made without very great difficulty, and the parts to be left out are not inwoven with the web of the whole." For myself, although I detest castrated editions, I have no objection to see such an experi- ment tried with Rabelais ”

“ His death and the circumstances attending it made a profound impression on Rabelais, who loved and esteemed him; it is spoken of three times in " Pantagruel," and always with an unmistakable seri- ousness. In Book iv., chap, xxvi., Epistemon says : " We have had experience of this lately at the death of that valiant and learned knight, Guillaume du Bellay, during whose life France enjoyed so much happiness that all the world had her in envy, all the world sought her friendship, all the world feared her. From the day of his death it has been the scorn of all the world for a very long time." ”

“ Profound thought and creative genius may wear a riant not less than a tragic face, or, in some instances, the one and the other in alternation ; and there are even instances in which one-half the mask has been of Thalia and the other of Melpomene ; for wisdom and genius are not necessarily, though they are more frequently, grave. ”

“ This learning and general knowledge he pours forth with the most careless prodigality on every page, d propos of everything and nothing, so as to suggest that his stores are really inexhaustible. The book-learning and the command over many languages are astonishing enough, espe- cially to one who, like myself, is no scholar ; but yet more astonishing is the other knowledge of which Coleridge speaks, the knowledge books could not furnish, and in which perhaps only Shakespeare can parallel him : in our day Robert Browning comes nearest to this quasi-omniscience. ”

“ Rabelais' long medical studies may account for much of his acquaint- ance with natural history, which is such as to recall the precepts of Gargantua in that magnanimous letter to his son (ii, 8) : " Now, in matter of the know- ledge of the works of nature, I would have thee to study that exactly; that so there be no sea, river, nor fountain of which thou dost not know the fishes ; all the fowls of the air ; all the several kinds of shrubs and trees, whether in forests or orchards ; all the sorts of herbs and flowers that grow upon the ground ”

“ Democritus the laugher seems to have been a philosopher yet more subtle than Heraclitus the weeper, and our fore- most scientific men are reviving his theories after more than two millenniums; and Aristophanes, I suppose, had at least as much imaginative genius as RABELAIS 37 Euripides. Now, Rabelais is essentially a laughing philosopher, endowed with the inestimable boon of high animal spirits, ardent and quenchless, not varied by fits of deep and gloomy depression, as in so many cases; his wisdom is always steeped in drollery, his imagination revels in riotous burlesque. ”

“ The men of the Revolutions, leaders of liberty in Europe, with their burning faith in humanity and progress, equality and fraternity? The French can laugh and enjoy themselves more gaily and grace- fully than we, without getting stolidly besotted ”

“ Rabelais, by the advice of his friends, addressed to the Pope a supplication for apostasy, in which, after confessing his sins against the Church, and particularly his flight from the convent of Maillezais, he besought full absolution for the past, with permission to resume the Benedictine habit and re-enter the monastery, and also to practise medicine wherever he pleased, but for charity, not payment, and using neither fire nor iron. ”

“ Way to get on in the World," tells us a story of this time, which I give for what it is worth: many think it true. "The Cardinal du Bellay, to whom Rabelais was physician, being ill of a hypochondriac humour, it was decided by the learned doctors in consultation, that an aperitive de- coction must be made for monseigneur. Whereupon Rabelais goes out, leaving these gentlemen to finish their babbling to better use up money. ”

“ Dolet was imprisoned at Lyons until released by the influence of his protector, Pierre Duchatel, Bishop of Tulle. Rabelais, who had satirised the monks and Catholicism in the last " Gargantua," hurried off to Italy in 1536. In Mr. Besant's words : "He chose the safest place in Europe for a man of heretical opinions — Rome." Jean du Bellay was still there on business of the king, and in high favour with the new Pope, Paul III., who had made him a cardinal ; and Rabelais was again attached to his household, as physician, reader, secretary, and librarian. ”

“ Henry Etienne, the famous printer and scholar, echoing Calvin, said : " Though Rabelais seems to be one of us, he often flings stones into our garden." Father de St. Romuald reports : "Some said he turned Lutheran, others that he turned Atheist." And Mr. Besant, in his article on 6 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Rabelais in the " French Humourists," well remarks : " The controversies of the time, the endless disputes of the schools, the differences of churches — what were they to men who could feed on Plato, and roam over the flowery fields of ancient philosophy ? ”

“ Many doubtful stories are told of Rabelais' sayings and doings at Rome, and, indeed, no man has had more drolleries fathered on him. One of the many is, probably, grounded on fact. Cle- ment VII. having promised to grant him any petition, he begged to be excommunicated, thus explaining the motive of his strange request : " Holy Father, I am French, and of a small town named Chinon, con- sidered very subject to the faggot ; they have already burnt there many worthy people, relatives of mine. ”

“ By the intervention of some Roman cardinals, who loved his wit and learning more than they hated his heresies, he got all he asked for, and thus pro- tected by the bulls of the Pope, could defy even the Sorbonne. However, he did not at once return to France, where the persecution was still hot, but remained at Rome till March 1537, when he was recalled to both Paris and Montpellier — to Paris to l6 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES occupy a benefice which Cardinal du Bellay had assigned him in the Abbey de St. ”

“ Meanwhile, more was expected of him than drolleries and satires : the philosophers hoped for a serious work, sceptical or atheistic ; the reformers for a solemn declaration in their favour. However, the Calvinists joined the Romanists in denouncing his books with true theological rancour. He soon afterwards went to Rome a third time with the Cardinal du Bellay, who, having lost his credit by the death of Francis I. and accession of Henry II., resigned his offices, which fell to the Cardinal of Lorraine. ”

“ Rabelais by Claude Massuan. (Lyons, 1542.) " Jean du Bellay, the cardinal, was not only a real statesman and powerful orator, but an elegant poet in Latin, and a large-minded man, interested in all matters of literature, science, and philosophy, and so liberal in his ideas that. Churchman and cardinal as he was, he corresponded with Melancthon on the most cordial terms. The beneficent genius of PantaRABELAIS 19 gruelism was right bountiful to Rabelais when it secured him such life-long friends as these. ”

“ Beati qui moriuntur in RABELAIS 31 Domino" ( " Blessed are they who die in the Lord, or in a domino." ) He is said to have dictated the magnificent and munificent will : " I have nothing, I owe much ; the rest I give to the poor." Whatever doubt there may be as to the genuineness of the pre- ceding, I think there can be little or none as to that of the two following ; they are so eminently charac- teristic. A page was introduced, sent by his friend Cardinal du Bellay, or Cardinal de Chastillon, to inquire as to his state. ”

“ He passes in review the leading pro- fessions embodied in typical personages — the theo- logian, the physician, the legist, the philosopher, RABELAIS 23 delivering themselves on the great question whether Panurge ought to marry or not. With all the fun these are not mere caricatures, but admirable intel- lectual studies by the greatest and best-informed intellect of the age. ”

“ Early in 1532 he quitted Montpellier without taking his doctor's degree, although he was thoroughly qualified, and afterward practised, and went to Lyons, where he assisted Etienne Dolet in bringing out various classical works. Here he published the second volume of the medical letters of Manardi, as well as a revised and corrected edition of the Latin version of various treatises of Hippocrates and Galen, and two forged Latin documents, by which he was deceived. ”

“ If they remain in the Church wherein they were born, it is because in no other would they find relief from the fetters of doc- trine, and because the main things which underlie Articles are common to all Churches, in which the dogmas are the accidents of time and circumstance." After six free and happy years, divided between his native town of Chinon, where he had his home and the excellent vineyard of La Devini^re, and the RABELAIS 7 Chateau de Leguge of his patron and friend d'Estissac, where he had his httle chamber for study, Rabelais found it advisable to make a move. ”

“ These serious testimonies of a writer who was anything but superstitious, and who burlesqued the astrologers with infinite scorn, are certainly trustworthy. He perhaps wrote the epitaph — RABELAIS 21 " Ci git Langey, dont la plume et I'epee Ont surmonte Ciceron et Pompee." ”