with the bowling-green behind it, to live in It was certain profligate tracts that were published in his name. Nor were the papistical doctors his only critics and antagonists. In the great controversy between Ramus and Galland regarding the merits of Aristotle, the name of Rabelais was frequently and studiously bandied to and fro. Calvin, too, now "the Pope of Geneva," as the Catholics delighted to call him, and, since Luther's death, the chief of European protestantism, had thought it his duty to announce his opinion of the character and worth of so conspicuous a contemporary. "Quotquot videmus," he says in his treatise De Scandalis, published in 1550, "hodie Lucianicos homines, qui totam Christi religionem subsannant! Álii (ut Rabelæsus, Deperus, et Goveanus), gustato Evangelio, eâdem cæcitate sunt percussi. Cur istud, nisi quia illud vitæ æternæ pignus sacrilegâ ludendi aut ridendi audaciâ antè profanârant?" In Calvin's esti into a hopeless Lucianist. Here, however, the reference is clearly to the personal spiritual condition of Rabelais; Calvin's estimate of the secular force of his writings was probably more favorable. Many Calvinists, indeed, considered Rabelais one of themselves. Beza eulogized him. The opinion of Stephanus is well known. "Though Rabelais seems," said he, "to be one of us, he often throws stones into our garden." But the truth is exactly as Calvin perceived it. Rabelais, from whatever point he may have started, had ended at last as a confirmed Lucianist-sceptical, epicurean, creedless; habitually a scoffer and preacher of sensualism, yet liable, it is clear, to wild, speculative longings of his own, and with a soul capable by fits of grand poetic flashes. His young disciples, the Pantagruelists of the court, ("chacun s'est voulu mêler de pantagrueliser," says a contemporary gossip,) formulized his doctrine somewhat too easily, and yet not altogether falsely, when they interpreted it to mean-Laugh and get drunk. It was not till the year 1546, or ten years after the publication of Gargantua, that the second part of " The Heroic Deeds and Say-mation, therefore, Rabelais was a man who ings of the Noble Pantagruel” made its ap- had once tasted the gospel, but who, in conpearance. There were circumstances to acsequence of his inveterate habit of jesting count for this delay. The storm of Perse- on sacred things, had been struck with judicution had by no means yet blown over. Per-cial blindness, and hardened in his old age sonal friends of Rabelais had fallen victims. Etienne Dolet had been burnt as a heretic; Bonaventure des Periers had escaped a like fate by suicide; Marot was in exile. for the Canon of Saint-Maur des Fosses, now in his sixty-third year, to be as cautious as possible. Accordingly, when the new book did appear, it was under the protection of a special privilege or guarantee of copyright from the king; a favor obtained for Rabelais by his influential friends, on the ground that his previous books had been tampered with by the piratical printers. The pseudonym of Alcofribas Nasier was now discarded, and the real name of the author advertised. The second part of Pantagruel was quite as pungent and audacious as either of its predecessors; and the doctors of the Sorbonne were soon prepared to sustain a charge of atheism and heresy against it. A very simple accident, however, saved the author. The king, interested in the book by the extraordinary excitement it had created, and pestered with petitions for leave to put it on trial, notwithstanding the royal privilege by which it was protected, resolved to read it himself. He did read it; and after that, Rabelais was out of all danger. For four or five years, however, (during which time Francis I. died, and was succeeded by his son, Henry II.,) he had to bear attacks of all kinds through the press, directed partly against his real writings, and partly against The third part of "The Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the noble Pantagruel," constituting the fourth book of the general work, was published in 1552. Rabelais had, in the mean time, paid a third visit, of some length, to Rome, in the train of Cardinal du Bellay; and had amused himself while there by writing letters, issuing some fugitive publications, including two almanacs, and cast ing horoscopes for the Roman ladies. On his return to France, where the Cardinal de Lorraine now held the same position of influence under Henry II. that the Cardinal du Bellay had held under Francis I., he had been presented to the curacy of Meudon, near Paris, by an arrangement between the two cardinals. A third cardinal, who was known at this time as an open patron of Rabelais, was the celebrated Odet de Châtillon, then at the height of his power, notwithstanding the strong suspicions that were already entertained of his orthodoxy-suspicions that were soon afterward justified by his declaration that he was a reformer, and by the scandal of his public marriage in his cardinal's robe. It was to him that Rabelais dedicated his new book; and it was by his influence that a prosecution, begun against it, was quashed, and an order of the Parliament of Paris, forbidding its sale, canceled. The circulation of such a book at such a time was indeed a wonder; for, surpassing all its predecessors in audacity, it is throughout, with but the thinnest possible veil of allegory thrown over it, a merciless onslaught on the papal system, in mass and in detail. Nor do those that had been recently attacking himself escape. The Ramists and Gallandists are made game of in the preface; and Calvin is paid off for his allusion in the "De Scandalis" by a studied passage in one of the chapters, where "demoniacal Calvins, impostors of Geneva," are classed along with "superstitious pope-mongers," "gluttonous monks," &c., as all alike the offspring of Antiphysis or Anti-Nature. tempered-one that is always glad to see his friends, and a most delightful talker.' All this we may take on the word of M. Jacob. Swift, Sterne, and (as good a Pantagruelist as any of them) Skinner of Aberdeenshire, the author of "Tullochgorum,' must have been just such priests. Nor are the following details less pleasant in their way. "Free from any of the infirmities of age, with the exception of a big belly, the result of good living, he preserved to the last his love of study. He had a library consisting of rare and curious books, for he used to buy all bad books, saying they were sure not to be reprinted; he had also a collection of manuscripts. He would cover the margins of the books he read with critical or explanatory notes, abandoning himself in these notes to the caprices of his imagination, and to his philosophic doubts." By no means an ungenial picture of an easy old priest in his parsonage! But what are we to make of the stories of his manner of death? He died, it appears, not at Meudon, but at Paris, in a house in the Rue des Jardins, on the 9th of April, 1553, having just completed his seventieth year. "When he had received extreme unction," says M. Jacob, he observed aloud, that they had greased his boots for the great journey." To this story, which is quoted by Bacon, are usually added two others-that of his profane pun, "Beati sunt qui in Domino moriuntur ;” and that of his last bequest, "I have nothing; I owe much; I leave the rest to the poor." Neither story seems in the least degree credible. More dismal in itself, and more difficult to be set aside, is the story of his answer to a page sent by the Cardinal du Bellay or the Cardinal de Châtillon to inquire how he was. "Tell Monseigneur," he said, "in what brave spirits you find me. I go to seek a great Perhaps; he is in the cockloft, tell him to keep there; as for you, you will never be anything else than a fool." Just before dying, it is added, he gathered his strength for one last burst of laughter, saying, when he had ceased, "Draw the curtain, the farce is over." Nay, to crown all, (and if, with M. Jacob, we accept the other stories, it will be but charitable to accept the solution,) "The priest that confessed him, and performed the last offices, spread the report everywhere that he died drunk.” Reading this, it is best to be dumb! 66 The last two years of the life of Rabelais were spent chiefly at his parish-cure of Meudon. There," says M. Jacob, "he acquitted himself as well as possible of the duties of his ministry. He admitted no females into his parsonage, careful lest, old as he was, their presence should occasion scandal; but he received continual visits from savans and distinguished persons from Paris. He occupied himself with the decoration of his church, and with teaching the children of the choir to sing, and the poor of the parish to read. People came from far and near to see him in his garb of curé, and to hear him preach or perform mass. Meudon became a favorite resort of the Parisians in their country walks; so that, even a century after the death of Rabelais, it was a proverbial saying in Paris, Let us go to Meudon; there we Such, as we are able now to represent it, shall see the castle, the terrace, the grottoes, was the history of a man, whom, to omit and M. le Cure, the most pleasant-looking meaner testimonies, Coleridge, whose admirold gentleman in the world, and the best-ation of him was unbounded, used to rank 6 with Shakespeare, Dante, and Cervantes, as one of the great creative minds of the world. The work on which his title to this eminence rests was composed by him during the last twenty years of his age. Had Rabelais died before the age of fifty, his name would have been quite unknown. his friend Panurge, accompanied by Friar John, and many other persons, shall proceed in a ship to the other end of the world, there to consult the famous oracle of Bacbuc, or the Holy Bottle. Finally, in Books Fourth and Fifth, (Book Fifth was published from the MS., after the death of Rabelais,) we have a narrative of the voyage-how the voyagers conversed and amused themselves while on board; how they encountered a great storm; how they touched at one place atter another-the land of the Chitterlings, or Sausages; the land of the Papimanes, or Pope-maniacs; the land of Gaster, or Lord Belly; the Ringing Island; the Queendom of Quintessence, &c. &c.-what wonders they saw in each; and how at last they arrived safely at their destination, and consulted the Bottle. And here the tale abruptly closes. To give one that does not know the work an idea of the extraordinary mass of miscellaneous matter that is piled up in it on this almost absurd basis, is impossible. Dissertation, dialogue, anecdote, quaint learning, grotesque conception, trenchant sarcasm, the oddest and sharpest wit, the most riotous laughter, the profoundest allegory, the most abject driveling, the filthiest word-garbage, the most astounding profanity are here mingled, and jumbled into union. The book is literally unique. There does not exist in the whole literature of the world any other that can be said really to resemble it. What Jean Paul is in German, Rabelais is in French; and yet the two men are wholly unlike. Of the work itself, considered as a narrative, it is easy to give an outline. In the First Book, or Gargantua, we are told how the great giant, Gargantua, the son of King Grangousier and his wife Gargamelle, is born into the world; how he is educated at home; how he is sent to Paris to be further instructed; how there he astonishes the citizens by various exploits, the chief of which is the carrying away of the great bells of Notre Dame round his mare's neck; how he is called back from his studies to help his father against Picrochole, King of Lerné, who has invaded his paternal territories; how, assisted by his friends, and especially by a jolly and valiant monk, called Friar John des Entomeures, or Friar John of the Choppingknives, he routs the enemy; and how peace is restored, and Friar John rewarded. In the next Book, or the First Part of Pantagruel, we have the early life and actions of Prince Pantagruel, the son of the foregoing Gargantua, who has now succeeded his father, Grangousier, on the throne; how this prince, who was a giant like his father, was sent, like him, to Paris to be educated; how, in a curious way, he there fell in with a strange being, called Panurge, whom he immediately engaged as his companion, and Dismissing, as irrelevant and absurd, the whom he loved all his life-time;" how, controversy carried on with such pitiful rewhile he and Panurge are having odd adven-sults by Motteux and others, as to the real tures in Paris, he receives intelligence of the invasion of his father's kingdom by the Dipsodes and the giants; and how, thereupon, he returns, defeats the invaders, and introduces Panurge to his father, and to all his friends, including, of course, Friar John of the Chopping-knives. In the Third Book, or Second Part of Pantagruel, we learn how Pantagruel colonizes Dipsody; how he makes Panurge laird of Salmagundin in that country, with a noble income; how, nevertheless, Panurge gets into debt, and becoming half crazy, resolves to marry, if only he can first be assured that his matrimonial fortune will be a happy one; how, in order to obtain this assurance, he consults one person after another-Pantagruel, Friar John, a lawyer, a theologian, a physician, a witch, a fool, a philosopher, but all without satisfaction; and how, at last, to put all beyond a doubt, it is arranged by Gargantua that Pantagruel and dramatis persona (Louis XII., Francis I., Henry II., Cardinal Châtillon, the Cardinal d'Amboise, &c. &c.) supposed to be represented under the names, Grangousier, Gargantua, Pantagruel, Friar John, Panurge, &c. &c., and believing nothing more than that Rabelais designed his work to be, as M. Jacob well names it, "a critique of the world," clutching here and there, possibly, at a real bit of fact when it suited his purpose, a judicious critic, we imagine, would find it convenient to discuss specially these four things in respect to Rabelais - his obscenity, his humor, his poetic or dramatic power, and his opinions or philosophy. We have space but for a word on each. The obscenity of Rabelais, it has been remarked, is something stupendous. "He who has his mind stored," says a critic, "with the objectionable passages of Swift, Sterne, Boccaccio, and the Elizabethan dramatists, may fancy that he knows the limit to which grossness in writing may extend. But alas! if he has not read Rabelais, his knowledge in this respect is as nothing; he cannot conceive the full strong torrent of undisguised and elaborated filth which rolls through a work as bulky as Don Quixote." All that mass of objects and facts, in short, that society has agreed to keep nailed down under hatches, as suppressed and unnameable between cleanly men, is here broken in upon, shoveled out, and exposed to the sun. Here, of course, there start up the two apologetic commonplaces-the custom of the age, and the difference between mere coarseness and studiously-seductive description. Both apologies are worth something; but neither is sufficient. That gentlemen and ladies of the age of Francis I. read Rabelais and found him "delectable ;" that the Cardinal du Bellay called his book, par excellence, "The Book," and caused a gentleman that had not read it to retire from his table,—is all very true; but it is just as true, that in no age whatever could "The Book" have been written except by a man aesthetically depraved. Again; that the style is not purposely seductive-that it is not pictures of intellectual Aspasias, or of Laises rosy from the bath, that Rabelais delights to offer, but pictures of dirty Molls and hag-like Sycoraxes-is just as true; but we question if, all things considered, this mends the matter. In short, let it be distinctly understood by all heads of households that Rabelais is not a family author. Nor is our English translation a whit purer, in this respect, than the original. Begun by Sir Thomas Urquhart, a wit of the reign of Charles II., who, in the execution of his difficult task, ransacked the entire vocabulary of the English tongue, besides dipping occasionally into his native Scotch, for expressions tantamount to those of the original; and continued by Mr. Peter Motteux, a naturalized French Londoner of the beginning of last century, who, after a desultory, semi-literary life, was found dead, under suspicious circumstances, in a house of bad fame in St. Clement Danes, on the morning of his fifty-eighth birthday,-this translation is a perfect marvel for exuberance of foul speech. The most terrible sight on earth, as the critic quoted above has very truly said, would be that of a young lady in white muslin opening a volume of Urquhart's "Rabelais." We are not sure, indeed, if Mr. Bohn has done right in including this work in his valuable series of reprints, and so VOL. XIX. NO. II. It making it more accessible than it was. is but fair, however, after all this, to quote, in regard to this very point, the deliberate judgment of so high an authority as Coleridge. "I could write," says Coleridge, "a treatise in praise of the moral elevation of Rabelais' work, which would make the church stare and the conventicle groan, and yet would be truth and nothing but truth." And again (Table Talk, p. 93), "the morality of the work is of the most refined and exalted kind; as for the manners, to be sure, I cannot say as much." And really, whatever may be the impression made by parts, it is with a feeling toward the author very different from that of disgust, that one concludes a continuous perusal of the Pantagruel. The humor of Rabelais is a subject for a dissertation rather than a paragraph; and the critic in such a case should prepare his ground by means of whole pages of examples. All that we can do here is to quote a specimen or two, to exhibit a frequent verbal form of the Rabelæsian jest. Panurge's Praise of Indebtedness.—“ God forbid that I should ever be out of debt. He that leaves not some leaven overnight will hardly have paste the next morning. Be still indebted to somebody or other, that there may always be somebody to pray for you. * * Creditors, I will maintain it to the very fire, are fair and goodly creatures; and whoso lendeth nothing is a foul and ugly creature-an imp of the rogue below. O what a rare and ancient thing are debts! * * I give myself to Saint Babolin, if, all my life, I have not esteemed debts to be, as it were, a connection and colligation of the heavens and the earth-the sole cement of the human lineage (yea, without them all humanity would perish); perchance that they are even that great soul of the universe which, according to the academicians, vivifies all things. To perceive this, only represent to your calm mind the idea and form of some world (take, if you please, the thirtieth of those that the philosopher, Metrodorus, imagined) wherein there shall be neither debtor nor creditor. A world without debts! Then, among the stars there will be no regular course; all will be disorder. Jupiter, not considering himself a debtor to Saturn, will depose him from his sphere; and &c."-Book iii., chap. 3. How Panurge behaved during the Storm.Panurge having fed the fishes with the contents of his stomach, lay on the deck all huddled up, forlorn, jointless, and half dead; invoked all the blessed saints and saintesses to his aid; vowed he would confess himself in time and place confather, my uncle, a little salt meat; we shall venient; then called out Steward, my friend, my drink too much anon, I fear. Would I were now at this very moment safe on shore. O thrice and four times happy those that plant cabbages! O 15 * * * Fates, why did you not spin me to be a planter 6 Consummatum est. neither heaven nor earth! Alas, alas! O that at this present hour I were in the close of Seuille, or at Innocent the pastrycook's, before the public house at Chinon, though I had to put on an apron and make pies myself! My honest man-(he speaks to a sailor)--could you throw me ashore? You can do never so many things, they have informed me. I will give you all Salmagundin to yourself, if by any contrivance you can get me ashore."-Book iv. chapters 18-20. In ordina Were we required to characterize, in one word, the style, or method, as it may be called, of the peculiar humor of Rabelais, we should say it consists in abandonment-i. e., in unchecked, headlong effusion of everything that comes into the head. In many passages he reminds us of a rough, uncultivated genius, scribbling off page after page of prose fit for horses, simply to make his friends laugh. There is no erasure, no suppression; sentence tumbles after sentence; rubbish is rolled upon sense; good things are not picked out and placed in concatenation, but are presented native as they grew, amid whole beds of weeds. Analyzing this method of humorous invention by sheer abandonment of the faculties to their own course, psychologists would probably arrive at the conclusion that its extreme efficacy depends on the extraordinary complexity of the associative or suggestive processes it gives rise to. ry conversation, in a calm mood, one passes from thought to thought by very simple bonds of association; in public speaking, again, the associative links or hooks by which one advan-ces from one thought on to its successor, are more numerous-the associations of cadence or rhythm, for example, and those of gesticuIlation or muscular movement, not to speak of the high suggestive power of emotional warmth, all working in unison with the mere logical connection of reason, so as to lead to more splendid reaches of invention, and produce richer effects; but a higher complication still, and consequently a more marvelous power of production, comes into play, in those special moods of either Pythic fervor on the one hand, or voluntary zanyism on the other, when the mind loses all control, as it were, over any part of itself, and drifts along as fate decrees. Omitting the higher kind of abandonment-Pythic fervor, as we have here named it-that leads to bursts of lofty and earnest expression, we think we could cull passages in abundance from our noted humorists, illustrative of the force, for purely humorous effect, of that other variety of the same mental condition, that consists in mere zanyism. "I would I were a weaver; I could sing am a dead man.' (Friar John swears again.) O, Friar John, my spiritual father, my friend, let us not swear. You sin. Alas, alas! bebebebous, manus bous, bous! I drown, I die, my friends! I die at peace with all the world! Farewell! In -Bous, bous, bouououous! St. Michael! St. Nicholas! now or never! I here solemnly vow, that if you help me this bout-I mean, if you set me ashore out of this danger, I will build you a fine, large, little chapel or two, between Luande and Moussoreau. Alas, alas! there has gone into my mouth above eighteen bucketfuls or so! Bous, bous, bous, bous! How bitter and salt it is!' (Another shower of curses from Friar John, who threatens to throw him overboard.) Oh,' said Panurge, you sin, Friar John, my former crony! Former, I say, for at present am not, you are not. It grieves me to tell you so; for I believe this swearing does your spleen a deal of good, as a wood-cleaver finds great relief in crying" hem!" at every blow. Nevertheless, you sin, my sweet friend. * Bebebebous, bous, bous, bous, bous-I drown! I see * |