François Rabelais

“ True, sir, returned the mayor; but, alas! nothing is perfect here below; for too often when we are at table, feeding on some good blessed wind of God as on celestial manna, merry as so many friars, down drops on a sudden some small rain, which lays our wind, and so robs us of it. Thus many a meal’s lost for want of meat.
Just so, quoth Panurge, Jenin Toss-pot of Quinquenais, evacuating some wine of his own burning on his wife’s posteriors, laid the ill-fumed wind that blowed out of their centre as out of some magisterial Aeolipile. ”

“ Pantagruel stretched out one big hand across the table. It met another big hand, only that other was more knotty and wrinkled than his own. Then the two mighty hands clasped.
"But this is not all that I wanted to say, my boy. It is time thou shouldst travel. Thou needest rest. Hast thou not been King in my place?" The old Giant laughed as he said this. "Hast thou not filled my throne, thou young rogue, for this score of years and more? Thou art not so strong as thou wast; thou hast need of a holiday."
"Hast thou also thought, father, of a plan for all this whilst thou wert in Fairy-land?" ”

“ Oh, said Panurge, you sin, Friar John, my former crony! former, I say, for at this time I am no more, you are no more. It goes against my heart to tell it you; for I believe this swearing doth your spleen a great deal of good; as it is a great ease to a wood-cleaver to cry hem at every blow, and as one who plays at ninepins is wonderfully helped if, when he hath not thrown his bowl right, and is like to make a bad cast, some ingenious stander-by leans and screws his body halfway about on that side which the bowl should have took to hit the pins. ”

“ With this he cried out, By the devil's maker, master, there's roguery in the case; they put tricks upon travellers here more than anywhere else, and would make us believe that a t--d's a sugarloaf. What damned cozening, gulling, and coney-catching have we here! Do you see this madge-howlet? By Minerva, we are all beshit. Odsoons, said Aedituus, speak softly, I tell you. It is no madge-howlet, no she-thing on my honest word; but a male, and a noble bird.
May we not hear the pope-hawk sing? asked Pantagruel. I dare not promise that, returned Aedituus; for he only sings and eats at his own hours. ”

“ So don't I, quoth Panurge; poor pilgarlic is fain to make everybody's time his own; if they have time, I find time. Come, then, let us go drink, if you will. Now this is something like a tansy, said Aedituus; you begin to talk somewhat like; still speak in that fashion, and I'll secure you from being thought a heretic. Come on, I am of your mind.
As we went back to have t'other fuddling bout, we spied an old green-headed bish-hawk, who sat moping with his mate and three jolly bittern attendants, all snoring under an arbour. ”

“ But Rabelais was another thing, a man Made up of all that art and nature can Form from a fiery genius,—he was one Whose soul so universally was thrown Through all the arts of life, who understood Each stratagem by which we stray from good; So that he best might solid virtue teach, As some ‘gainst sins of their own bosoms preach: He from wise choice did the true means prefer, In the fool’s coat acting th’ philosopher. Thus hoary Aesop’s beasts did mildly tame Fierce man, and moralize him into shame ”

“ Rabelais, whose wit prodigiously was made, All men, professions, actions to invade, With so much furious vigour, as if it Had lived o'er each of them, and each had quit, Yet with such happy sleight and careless skill, As, like the serpent, doth with laughter kill, So that although his noble leaves appear Antic and Gottish, and dull souls forbear To turn them o'er, lest they should only find Nothing but savage monsters of a mind,— No shapen beauteous thoughts ”

“ You love mutton, I see; you will run at sheep. I know you by that same nose and hair of yours, though I never saw your face before. Alas! alas! how kind you are! And would you indeed damn your precious soul? Our decretals forbid this. Ah, I wish you had them at your finger’s-end. Patience, said Friar John; but, si tu non vis dare, praesta, quaesumus. Matter of breviary. As for that, I defy all the world, and I fear no man that wears a head and a hood, though he were a crystalline, I mean a decretaline doctor. ”

“ If any offered to hide himself amongst the thickest of the vines, he laid him squat as a flounder, bruised the ridge of his back, and dashed his reins like a dog. If any thought by flight to escape, he made his head to fly in pieces by the lamboidal commissure, which is a seam in the hinder part of the skull. If anyone did scramble up into a tree, thinking there to be safe, he rent up his perinee, and impaled him in at the fundament. If any of his old acquaintance happened to cry out, Ha, Friar John, my friend Friar John, quarter, quarter, I yield myself to you, to you I render myself! ”

“ Quoth Panurge to ‘em, Good my lords, I’m very well as I am; I’d as lief stand, an’t please you. Besides, this same stool is somewhat of the lowest for a man that has new breeches and a short doublet. Sit you down, said Gripe-men-all again, and look that you don’t make the court bid you twice. Now, continued he, the earth shall immediately open its jaws and swallow you up to quick damnation if you don’t answer as you should. ”

“ Adieu, adieu!
“Marie Antoinette.”
Scarcely does the world contain a more pathetic document.
BOOK-PLATE OF MARIE-ELISABETH-JOSEPH WEIGEL.
CHAPTER XV.
BOOK-PLATES OF SOME FAMOUS MEN. HE name of François Rabelais, priest, doctor, wit, satirist, and philanthropist, eclipses all other early French writers. In “Les Portraits de Rabelais” (1880) , M. Georges d’Albenas asserted that a certain Professor C. Cavalier possessed an Aldine Plato in which was a piquant ex-libris of the illustrious Rabelais, of undoubted authenticity. ”

“ One day, said Friar John, at Seuille, I had applied to my posteriors, by way of hind-towel, a leaf of an old Clementinae which our rent-gatherer, John Guimard, had thrown out into the green of our cloister. Now the devil broil me like a black pudding, if I wasn't so abominably plagued with chaps, chawns, and piles at the fundament, that the orifice of my poor nockandroe was in a most woeful pickle for I don't know how long. ”

“ My lord, and you my masters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world’s four oxen had not been so eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away so scurvily. For although all that my adversary hath spoken be of a very soft and downy truth, in so much as concerns the letter and history of the factum, yet nevertheless the crafty slights, cunning subtleties, sly cozenages, and little troubling entanglements are hid under the rosepot, the common cloak and cover of all fraudulent deceits. ”

“ Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are Stygian ambrosia. I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been English souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses, near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by the lords of Termes and Essay.
Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk ”

“ The most powerful personality in literature of the first half of the sixteenth century was not a poet, though he wrote verses, but a great creator in imaginative prose, great partly by virtue of his native genius, partly because the sap of the new age of enthusiasm for science and learning was thronging in his veins—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS. Born about 1490 or 1495, at Chinon, in Touraine, of parents in a modest station, he received his education in the village of Seuillé and at the convent of La Baumette. ”

“ Aristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was our sovereign lady’s godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name of Entelechy. Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail beshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who dares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and is a very impudent person. You are heartily welcome, gentlemen. With this they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort to us, I’ll assure you.
Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been somewhat afraid this bout? ”

“ I have so much fasted that I’m almost grown hump-shouldered. Come, then, let’s go into the church, said Homenas; and pray forgive us if for the present we do not sing you a fine high mass. The hour of midday is past, and after it our sacred decretals forbid us to sing mass, I mean your high and lawful mass. But I’ll say a low and dry one for you. I had rather have one moistened with some good Anjou wine, cried Panurge; fall to, fall to your low mass, and despatch. Ods-bodikins, quoth Friar John, it frets me to the guts that I must have an empty stomach at this time of day ”

“ A turd on’t, said the skipper to his preaching passenger, what a fiddle-faddle have we here? There is too long a lecture by half: sell him if thou wilt; if thou won’t, don’t let the man lose more time. I hate a gibble-gabble and a rimble-ramble talk. I am for a man of brevity. I will, for your sake, replied the holder-forth; but then he shall give me three livres, French money, for each pick and choose. It is a woundy price, cried Panurge; in our country I could have five, nay six, for the money ”

“ You are not the first man whom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not breaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once. A murrain seize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the worthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times better than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain, used to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, thou Hibernian fool, that a talent of gold was worth? Sweet sir, you fall into a passion, I see, returned Panurge ”

“ Eat less, and leap more, I say; it is meat, drink, and cloth to us. Ah! friend Grandpaw, it would do thy heart good to see us at a fair, when we hold our provincial chapter! Oh! how we leap it, while our mistresses are selling their goslings and other poultry! With this they parted. Dixi; I have done.
Panurge then held his peace. Pantagruel would have had him to have gone on to the end of the chapter; but Aedituus said, A word to the wise is enough; I can pick out the meaning of that fable, and know who is that ass, and who the horse; but you are a bashful youth, I perceive. ”

“ Among the prose writers, therefore, of the 16th century we shall give the first place to the novelists and romantic writers.
Among these there can be no doubt of the precedence, in every sense of the word, of François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553) , the one French writer (or with Molière one of the two) whom critics the least inclined to appreciate the Rabelais. characteristics of French literature have agreed to place among the few greatest of the world. ”

“ Near the old cuff stood a buxom abbess-kite that sung like any linnet; and we were so mightily tickled with her singing that I vow and swear we could have wished all our members but one turned into ears, to have had more of the melody. Quoth Panurge, This pretty cherubim of cherubims is here breaking her head with chanting to this huge, fat, ugly face, who lies grunting all the while like a hog as he is. ”

“ Friar John began to paw, neigh, and whinny at the snout's end, as one ready to leap, or at least to play the ass, and get up and ride tantivy to the devil like a beggar on horseback.
Methinks, said Pantagruel, a man might have been more out of danger near the white of which Gymnast spoke than was formerly Diogenes near another. How is that? asked Homenas; what was it? Was he one of our decretalists? Rarely fallen in again, egad, said Epistemon, returning from stool; I see he will hook his decretals in, though by the head and shoulders. ”

“ Tush, whispered the horse, speak lower; for, by Bucephalus, if the grooms but hear thee they will maul and belam thee thrice and threefold, so that thou wilt have but little stomach to a leaping bout. Cod so, man, we dare not so much as grow stiff at the tip of the lowermost snout, though it were but to leak or so, for fear of being jerked and paid out of our lechery. As for anything else, we are as happy as our master, and perhaps more. By this packsaddle, my old acquaintance, quoth the ass, I have done with you; a fart for thy litter and hay, and a fart for thy oats ”

“ Then shall you many gallant men see by Valour stirr’d up, and youthful fervency, Who, trusting too much in their hopeful time, Live but a while, and perish in their prime. Neither shall any, who this course shall run, Leave off the race which he hath once begun, Till they the heavens with noise by their contention Have fill’d, and with their steps the earth’s dimension. Then those shall have no less authority, That have no faith, than those that will not lie; For all shall be governed by a rude, Base, ignorant, and foolish multitude; ”

“ In his fright at this great voice booming so high up in the air, the chief school-master dropped his rod with one hand, and, with his other, the poor little fellow whose turn had just come, while all the boys, big and little—those who had had their whipping, as well as those who hadn't had it—crowded around the good Giant's big feet to thank him.
At this moment the Mayor rode up on a mule with green trappings, and carried Pantagruel and his party off to dinner. Nothing could be finer than the feasting of this good people ”