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Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete.
Francois Rabelais
Project Gutenberg's Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete., by Francois Rabelais
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. Five Books Of The Lives, Heroic Deeds And Sayings Of Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel
Author: Francois Rabelais
Release Date: August 8, 2004 [EBook #1200]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL,***
Produced by Sue Asscher and David Widger
MASTER FRANCIS RABELAIS
FIVE BOOKS OF THE LIVES, HEROIC DEEDS AND SAYINGS OF
GARGANTUA AND HIS SON PANTAGRUEL
Translated into English by
Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty
and
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Livros Grátis
http://www.livrosgratis.com.br
Milhares de livros grátis para download.
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Peter Antony Motteux
The text of the first Two Books of Rabelais has been reprinted from thefirst edition (1653) of Urquhart's translation. Footnotes initialled 'M.'are drawn from the Maitland Club edition (1838); other footnotes are by thetranslator. Urquhart's translation of Book III. appeared posthumously in1693, with a new edition of Books I. and II., under Motteux's editorship.Motteux's rendering of Books IV. and V. followed in 1708. Occasionally (asthe footnotes indicate) passages omitted by Motteux have been restored fromthe 1738 copy edited by Ozell.
CONTENTS.
Introduction
THE FIRST BOOK.
J. De la Salle, to the Honoured, Noble Translator of Rabelais.
Rablophila
The Author's Prologue to the First Book
Rabelais to the Reader
Chapter 1.I.--Of the Genealogy and Antiquity of Gargantua
Chapter 1.II.--The Antidoted Fanfreluches: or, a Galimatia of extravagantConceits found in an ancient Monument
Chapter 1.III.--How Gargantua was carried eleven months in his mother'sbelly
Chapter 1.IV.--How Gargamelle, being great with Gargantua, did eat a hugedeal of tripes
Chapter 1.V.--The Discourse of the Drinkers
Chapter 1.VI.--How Gargantua was born in a strange manner
Chapter 1.VII.--After what manner Gargantua had his name given him, and howhe tippled, bibbed, and curried the can
Chapter 1.VIII.--How they apparelled Gargantua
Chapter 1.IX.--The colours and liveries of Gargantua
Chapter 1.X.--Of that which is signified by the colours white and blue
Chapter 1.XI.--Of the youthful age of Gargantua
Chapter 1.XII.--Of Gargantua's wooden horses
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Chapter 1.XIII.--How Gargantua's wonderful understanding became known tohis father Grangousier, by the invention of a torchecul or wipebreech
Chapter 1.XIV.--How Gargantua was taught Latin by a Sophister
Chapter 1.XV.--How Gargantua was put under other schoolmasters
Chapter 1.XVI.--How Gargantua was sent to Paris, and of the huge great marethat he rode on; how she destroyed the oxflies of the Beauce
Chapter 1.XVII.--How Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians, and howhe took away the great bells of Our Lady's Church
Chapter 1.XVIII.--How Janotus de Bragmardo was sent to Gargantua to recoverthe great bells
Chapter 1.XIX.--The oration of Master Janotus de Bragmardo for recovery ofthe bells
Chapter 1.XX.--How the Sophister carried away his cloth, and how he had asuit in law against the other masters
Chapter 1.XXI.--The study of Gargantua, according to the discipline of hisschoolmasters the Sophisters
Chapter 1.XXII.--The games of Gargantua
Chapter 1.XXIII.--How Gargantua was instructed by Ponocrates, and in suchsort disciplinated, that he lost not one hour of the day
Chapter 1.XXIV.--How Gargantua spent his time in rainy weather
Chapter 1.XXV.--How there was great strife and debate raised betwixt thecake-bakers of Lerne, and those of Gargantua's country, whereupon werewaged great wars
Chapter 1.XXVI.--How the inhabitants of Lerne, by the commandment ofPicrochole their king, assaulted the shepherds of Gargantua unexpectedlyand on a sudden
Chapter 1.XXVII.--How a monk of Seville saved the close of the abbey frombeing ransacked by the enemy
Chapter 1.XXVIII.--How Picrochole stormed and took by assault the rockClermond, and of Grangousier's unwillingness and aversion from theundertaking of war
Chapter 1.XXIX.--The tenour of the letter which Grangousier wrote to hisson Gargantua
Chapter 1.XXX.--How Ulric Gallet was sent unto Picrochole
Chapter 1.XXXI.--The speech made by Gallet to Picrochole
Chapter 1.XXXII.--How Grangousier, to buy peace, caused the cakes to berestored
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Chapter 1.XXXIII.--How some statesmen of Picrochole, by hairbrainedcounsel, put him in extreme danger
Chapter 1.XXXIV.--How Gargantua left the city of Paris to succour hiscountry, and how Gymnast encountered with the enemy
Chapter 1.XXXV.--How Gymnast very souply and cunningly killed CaptainTripet and others of Picrochole's men
Chapter 1.XXXVI.--How Gargantua demolished the castle at the ford of Vede,and how they passed the ford
Chapter 1.XXXVII.--How Gargantua, in combing his head, made the greatcannon-balls fall out of his hair
Chapter 1.XXXVIII.--How Gargantua did eat up six pilgrims in a salad
Chapter 1.XXXIX.--How the Monk was feasted by Gargantua, and of the jovialdiscourse they had at supper
Chapter 1.XL.--Why monks are the outcasts of the world; and wherefore somehave bigger noses than others
Chapter 1.XLI.--How the Monk made Gargantua sleep, and of his hours andbreviaries
Chapter 1.XLII.--How the Monk encouraged his fellow-champions, and how hehanged upon a tree
Chapter 1.XLIII.--How the scouts and fore-party of Picrochole were met withby Gargantua, and how the Monk slew Captain Drawforth, and then was takenprisoner by his enemies
Chapter 1.XLIV.--How the Monk rid himself of his keepers, and howPicrochole's forlorn hope was defeated
Chapter 1.XLV.--How the Monk carried along with him the Pilgrims, and ofthe good words that Grangousier gave them
Chapter 1.XLVI.--How Grangousier did very kindly entertain Touchfaucet hisprisoner
Chapter 1.XLVII.--How Grangousier sent for his legions, and how Touchfaucetslew Rashcalf, and was afterwards executed by the command of Picrochole
Chapter 1.XLVIII.--How Gargantua set upon Picrochole within the rockClermond, and utterly defeated the army of the said Picrochole
Chapter 1.XLIX.--How Picrochole in his flight fell into great misfortunes,and what Gargantua did after the battle
Chapter 1.L.--Gargantua's speech to the vanquished
Chapter 1.LI.--How the victorious Gargantuists were recompensed after thebattle
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Chapter 1.LII.--How Gargantua caused to be built for the Monk the Abbey ofTheleme
Chapter 1.LIII.--How the abbey of the Thelemites was built and endowed
Chapter 1.LIV.--The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme
Chapter 1.LV.--What manner of dwelling the Thelemites had
Chapter 1.LVI.--How the men and women of the religious order of Thelemewere apparelled
Chapter 1.LVII.--How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner ofliving
Chapter 1.LVIII.--A prophetical Riddle
THE SECOND BOOK.
For the Reader
Mr. Hugh Salel to Rabelais
The Author's Prologue
Chapter 2.I.--Of the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel
Chapter 2.II.--Of the nativity of the most dread and redoubted Pantagruel
Chapter 2.III.--Of the grief wherewith Gargantua was moved at the deceaseof his wife Badebec
Chapter 2.IV.--Of the infancy of Pantagruel
Chapter 2.V.--Of the acts of the noble Pantagruel in his youthful age
Chapter 2.VI.--How Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly didcounterfeit the French language
Chapter 2.VII.--How Pantagruel came to Paris, and of the choice books ofthe Library of St. Victor
Chapter 2.VIII.--How Pantagruel, being at Paris, received letters from hisfather Gargantua, and the copy of them
Chapter 2.IX.--How Pantagruel found Panurge, whom he loved all his lifetime
Chapter 2.X.--How Pantagruel judged so equitably of a controversy, whichwas wonderfully obscure and difficult, that, by reason of his just decreetherein, he was reputed to have a most admirable judgment
Chapter 2.XI.--How the Lords of Kissbreech and Suckfist did plead beforePantagruel without an attorney
Chapter 2.XII.--How the Lord of Suckfist pleaded before Pantagruel
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Chapter 2.XIII.--How Pantagruel gave judgment upon the difference of thetwo lords
Chapter 2.XIV.--How Panurge related the manner how he escaped out of thehands of the Turks
Chapter 2.XV.--How Panurge showed a very new way to build the walls ofParis
Chapter 2.XVI.--Of the qualities and conditions of Panurge
Chapter 2.XVII.--How Panurge gained the pardons, and married the old women,and of the suit in law which he had at Paris
Chapter 2.XVIII.--How a great scholar of England would have argued againstPantagruel, and was overcome by Panurge
Chapter 2.XIX.--How Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that argued bysigns
Chapter 2.XX.--How Thaumast relateth the virtues and knowledge of Panurge
Chapter 2.XXI.--How Panurge was in love with a lady of Paris
Chapter 2.XXII.--How Panurge served a Parisian lady a trick that pleasedher not very well
Chapter 2.XXIII.--How Pantagruel departed from Paris, hearing news that theDipsodes had invaded the land of the Amaurots; and the cause wherefore theleagues are so short in France
Chapter 2.XXIV.--A letter which a messenger brought to Pantagruel from alady of Paris, together with the exposition of a posy written in a goldring
Chapter 2.XXV.--How Panurge, Carpalin, Eusthenes, and Epistemon, thegentlemen attendants of Pantagruel, vanquished and discomfited six hundredand threescore horsemen very cunningly
Chapter 2.XXVI.--How Pantagruel and his company were weary in eating stillsalt meats; and how Carpalin went a-hunting to have some venison
Chapter 2.XXVII.--How Pantagruel set up one trophy in memorial of theirvalour, and Panurge another in remembrance of the hares. How Pantagruellikewise with his farts begat little men, and with his fisgs little women;and how Panurge broke a great staff over two glasses
Chapter 2.XXVIII.--How Pantagruel got the victory very strangely over theDipsodes and the Giants
Chapter 2.XXIX.--How Pantagruel discomfited the three hundred giants armedwith free-stone, and Loupgarou their captain
Chapter 2.XXX.--How Epistemon, who had his head cut off, was finely healedby Panurge, and of the news which he brought from the devils, and of thedamned people in hell
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Chapter 2.XXXI.--How Pantagruel entered into the city of the Amaurots, andhow Panurge married King Anarchus to an old lantern-carrying hag, and madehim a crier of green sauce
Chapter 2.XXXII.--How Pantagruel with his tongue covered a whole army, andwhat the author saw in his mouth
Chapter 2.XXXIII.--How Pantagruel became sick, and the manner how he wasrecovered
Chapter 2.XXXIV.--The conclusion of this present book, and the excuse ofthe author
THE THIRD BOOK.
Francois Rabelais to the Soul of the Deceased Queen of Navarre
The Author's Prologue
Chapter 3.I.--How Pantagruel transported a colony of Utopians into Dipsody
Chapter 3.II.--How Panurge was made Laird of Salmigondin in Dipsody, anddid waste his revenue before it came in
Chapter 3.III.--How Panurge praiseth the debtors and borrowers
Chapter 3.IV.--Panurge continueth his discourse in the praise of borrowersand lenders
Chapter 3.V.--How Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers
Chapter 3.VI.--Why new married men were privileged from going to the wars
Chapter 3.VII.--How Panurge had a flea in his ear, and forbore to wear anylonger his magnificent codpiece
Chapter 3.VIII.--Why the codpiece is held to be the chief piece of armouramongst warriors
Chapter 3.IX.--How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he shouldmarry, yea, or no
Chapter 3.X.--How Pantagruel representeth unto Panurge the difficulty ofgiving advice in the matter of marriage; and to that purpose mentionethsomewhat of the Homeric and Virgilian lotteries
Chapter 3.XI.--How Pantagruel showeth the trial of one's fortune by thethrowing of dice to be unlawful
Chapter 3.XII.--How Pantagruel doth explore by the Virgilian lottery whatfortune Panurge shall have in his marriage
Chapter 3.XIII.--How Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to try the future good orbad luck of his marriage by dreams
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Chapter 3.XIV.--Panurge's dream, with the interpretation thereof
Chapter 3.XV.--Panurge's excuse and exposition of the monastic mysteryconcerning powdered beef
Chapter 3.XVI.--How Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to consult with the Sibylof Panzoust
Chapter 3.XVII.--How Panurge spoke to the Sibyl of Panzoust
Chapter 3.XVIII.--How Pantagruel and Panurge did diversely expound theverses of the Sibyl of Panzoust
Chapter 3.XIX.--How Pantagruel praiseth the counsel of dumb men
Chapter 3.XX.--How Goatsnose by signs maketh answer to Panurge
Chapter 3.XXI.--How Panurge consulteth with an old French poet, namedRaminagrobis
Chapter 3.XXII.--How Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of theBegging Friars
Chapter 3.XXIII.--How Panurge maketh the motion of a return to Raminagrobis
Chapter 3.XXIV.--How Panurge consulteth with Epistemon
Chapter 3.XXV.--How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa
Chapter 3.XXVI.--How Panurge consulteth with Friar John of the Funnels
Chapter 3.XXVII.--How Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge
Chapter 3.XXVIII.--How Friar John comforteth Panurge in the doubtful matterof cuckoldry
Chapter 3.XXIX.--How Pantagruel convocated together a theologian,physician, lawyer, and philosopher, for extricating Panurge out of theperplexity wherein he was
Chapter 3.XXX.--How the theologue, Hippothadee, giveth counsel to Panurgein the matter and business of his nuptial enterprise
Chapter 3.XXXI.--How the physician Rondibilis counselleth Panurge
Chapter 3.XXXII.--How Rondibilis declareth cuckoldry to be naturally one ofthe appendances of marriage
Chapter 3.XXXIII.--Rondibilis the physician's cure of cuckoldry
Chapter 3.XXXIV.--How women ordinarily have the greatest longing afterthings prohibited
Chapter 3.XXXV.--How the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty ofmarriage
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Chapter 3.XXXVI.--A continuation of the answer of the Ephectic andPyrrhonian philosopher Trouillogan
Chapter 3.XXXVII.--How Pantagruel persuaded Panurge to take counsel of afool
Chapter 3.XXXVIII.--How Triboulet is set forth and blazed by Pantagruel andPanurge
Chapter 3.XXXIX.--How Pantagruel was present at the trial of JudgeBridlegoose, who decided causes and controversies in law by the chance andfortune of the dice
Chapter 3.XL.--How Bridlegoose giveth reasons why he looked upon those law-actions which he decided by the chance of the dice
Chapter 3.XLI.--How Bridlegoose relateth the history of the reconcilers ofparties at variance in matters of law
Chapter 3.XLII.--How suits at law are bred at first, and how they comeafterwards to their perfect growth
Chapter 3.XLIII.--How Pantagruel excuseth Bridlegoose in the matter ofsentencing actions at law by the chance of the dice
Chapter 3.XLIV.--How Pantagruel relateth a strange history of theperplexity of human judgment
Chapter 3.XLV.--How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet
Chapter 3.XLVI.--How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the wordsof Triboulet
Chapter 3.XLVII.--How Pantagruel and Panurge resolved to make a visit tothe Oracle of the Holy Bottle
Chapter 3.XLVIII.--How Gargantua showeth that the children ought not tomarry without the special knowledge and advice of their fathers and mothers
Chapter 3.XLIX.--How Pantagruel did put himself in a readiness to go tosea; and of the herb named Pantagruelion
Chapter 3.L.--How the famous Pantagruelion ought to be prepared and wrought
Chapter 3.LI.--Why it is called Pantagruelion, and of the admirable virtuesthereof
Chapter 3.LII.--How a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature thatthe fire is not able to consume it
THE FOURTH BOOK.
The Translator's Preface
The Author's Epistle Dedicatory
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The Author's Prologue
Chapter 4.I.--How Pantagruel went to sea to visit the oracle of Bacbuc,alias the Holy Bottle
Chapter 4.II.--How Pantagruel bought many rarities in the island ofMedamothy
Chapter 4.III.--How Pantagruel received a letter from his father Gargantua,and of the strange way to have speedy news from far distant places
Chapter 4.IV.--How Pantagruel writ to his father Gargantua, and sent himseveral curiosities
Chapter 4.V.--How Pantagruel met a ship with passengers returning fromLantern-land
Chapter 4.VI.--How, the fray being over, Panurge cheapened one ofDingdong's sheep
Chapter 4.VII.--Which if you read you'll find how Panurge bargained withDingdong
Chapter 4.VIII.--How Panurge caused Dingdong and his sheep to be drowned inthe sea
Chapter 4.IX.--How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of thestrange ways of being akin in that country
Chapter 4.X.--How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Chely, where hesaw King St. Panigon
Chapter 4.XI.--Why monks love to be in kitchens
Chapter 4.XII.--How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and ofthe strange way of living among the Catchpoles
Chapter 4.XIII.--How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Baschecommended his servants
Chapter 4.XIV.--A further account of catchpoles who were drubbed atBasche's house
Chapter 4.XV.--How the ancient custom at nuptials is renewed by thecatchpole
Chapter 4.XVI.--How Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles
Chapter 4.XVII.--How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; andof the strange death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills
Chapter 4.XVIII.--How Pantagruel met with a great storm at sea
Chapter 4.XIX.--What countenances Panurge and Friar John kept during thestorm
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Chapter 4.XX.--How the pilots were forsaking their ships in the greateststress of weather
Chapter 4.XXI.--A continuation of the storm, with a short discourse on thesubject of making testaments at sea
Chapter 4.XXII.--An end of the storm
Chapter 4.XXIII.--How Panurge played the good fellow when the storm wasover
Chapter 4.XXIV.--How Panurge was said to have been afraid without reasonduring the storm
Chapter 4.XXV.--How, after the storm, Pantagruel went on shore in theislands of the Macreons
Chapter 4.XXVI.--How the good Macrobius gave us an account of the mansionand decease of the heroes
Chapter 4.XXVII.--Pantagruel's discourse of the decease of heroic souls;and of the dreadful prodigies that happened before the death of the lateLord de Langey
Chapter 4.XXVIII.--How Pantagruel related a very sad story of the death ofthe heroes
Chapter 4.XXIX.--How Pantagruel sailed by the Sneaking Island, whereShrovetide reigned
Chapter 4.XXX.--How Shrovetide is anatomized and described by Xenomanes
Chapter 4.XXXI.--Shrovetide's outward parts anatomized
Chapter 4.XXXII.--A continuation of Shrovetide's countenance
Chapter 4.XXXIII.--How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, orwhirlpool, near the Wild Island
Chapter 4.XXXIV.--How the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel
Chapter 4.XXXV.--How Pantagruel went on shore in the Wild Island, theancient abode of the Chitterlings
Chapter 4.XXXVI.--How the wild Chitterlings laid an ambuscado forPantagruel
Chapter 4.XXXVII.--How Pantagruel sent for Colonel Maul-chitterling andColonel Cut-pudding; with a discourse well worth your hearing about thenames of places and persons
Chapter 4.XXXVIII.--How Chitterlings are not to be slighted by men
Chapter 4.XXXIX.--How Friar John joined with the cooks to fight theChitterlings
Chapter 4.XL.--How Friar John fitted up the sow; and of the valiant cooks
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that went into it
Chapter 4.XLI.--How Pantagruel broke the Chitterlings at the knees
Chapter 4.XLII.--How Pantagruel held a treaty with Niphleseth, Queen of theChitterlings
Chapter 4.XLIII.--How Pantagruel went into the island of Ruach
Chapter 4.XLIV.--How small rain lays a high wind
Chapter 4.XLV.--How Pantagruel went ashore in the island of Pope-Figland
Chapter 4.XLVI.--How a junior devil was fooled by a husbandman of Pope-Figland
Chapter 4.XLVII.--How the devil was deceived by an old woman of Pope-Figland
Chapter 4.XLVIII.--How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Papimany
Chapter 4.XLIX.--How Homenas, Bishop of Papimany, showed us the Uranopetdecretals
Chapter 4.L.--How Homenas showed us the archetype, or representation of apope
Chapter 4.LI.--Table-talk in praise of the decretals
Chapter 4.LII.--A continuation of the miracles caused by the decretals
Chapter 4.LIII.--How, by the virtue of the decretals, gold is subtilelydrawn out of France to Rome
Chapter 4.LIV.--How Homenas gave Pantagruel some bon-Christian pears
Chapter 4.LV.--How Pantagruel, being at sea, heard various unfrozen words
Chapter 4.LVI.--How among the frozen words Pantagruel found some odd ones
Chapter 4.LVII.--How Pantagruel went ashore at the dwelling of Gaster, thefirst master of arts in the world
Chapter 4.LVIII.--How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagrueldetested the Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters
Chapter 4.LIX.--Of the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what theGastrolaters sacrifice to their ventripotent god
Chapter 4.LX.--What the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlardedfish-days
Chapter 4.LXI.--How Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn
Chapter 4.LXII.--How Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touchedby cannon-balls
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Chapter 4.LXIII.--How Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph,and of the problems proposed to be solved when he waked
Chapter 4.LXIV.--How Pantagruel gave no answer to the problems
Chapter 4.LXV.--How Pantagruel passed the time with his servants
Chapter 4.LXVI.--How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted nearthe isle of Ganabim
Chapter 4.LXVII.--How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge catRodilardus, which he took for a puny devil
THE FIFTH BOOK.
The Author's Prologue
Chapter 5.I.--How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of thenoise that we heard
Chapter 5.II.--How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines,who were become birds
Chapter 5.III.--How there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island
Chapter 5.IV.--How the birds of the Ringing Island were all passengers
Chapter 5.V.--Of the dumb Knight-hawks of the Ringing Island
Chapter 5.VI.--How the birds are crammed in the Ringing Island
Chapter 5.VII.--How Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of thehorse and the ass
Chapter 5.VIII.--How with much ado we got a sight of the pope-hawk
Chapter 5.IX.--How we arrived at the island of Tools
Chapter 5.X.--How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Sharping
Chapter 5.XI.--How we passed through the wicket inhabited by Gripe-men-all,Archduke of the Furred Law-cats
Chapter 5.XII.--How Gripe-men-all propounded a riddle to us
Chapter 5.XIII.--How Panurge solved Gripe-men-all's riddle
Chapter 5.XIV.--How the Furred Law-cats live on corruption
Chapter 5.XV.--How Friar John talks of rooting out the Furred Law-cats
Chapter 5.XVI.--How Pantagruel came to the island of the Apedefers, orIgnoramuses, with long claws and crooked paws, and of terrible adventuresand monsters there
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Chapter 5.XVII.--How we went forwards, and how Panurge had like to havebeen killed
Chapter 5.XVIII.--How our ships were stranded, and we were relieved by somepeople that were subject to Queen Whims (qui tenoient de la Quinte)
Chapter 5.XIX.--How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy
Chapter 5.XX.--How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song
Chapter 5.XXI.--How the Queen passed her time after dinner
Chapter 5.XXII.--How Queen Whims' officers were employed; and how the saidlady retained us among her abstractors
Chapter 5.XXIII.--How the Queen was served at dinner, and of her way ofeating
Chapter 5.XXIV.--How there was a ball in the manner of a tournament, atwhich Queen Whims was present
Chapter 5.XXV.--How the thirty-two persons at the ball fought
Chapter 5.XXVI.--How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go upand down
Chapter 5.XXVII.--How we came to the island of Sandals; and of the order ofSemiquaver Friars
Chapter 5.XXVIII.--How Panurge asked a Semiquaver Friar many questions, andwas only answered in monosyllables
Chapter 5.XXIX.--How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent
Chapter 5.XXX.--How we came to the land of Satin
Chapter 5.XXXI.--How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a schoolof vouching
Chapter 5.XXXII.--How we came in sight of Lantern-land
Chapter 5.XXXIII.--How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came toLantern-land
Chapter 5.XXXIV.--How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle
Chapter 5.XXXV.--How we went underground to come to the Temple of the HolyBottle, and how Chinon is the oldest city in the world
Chapter 5.XXXVI.--How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge'sfear
Chapter 5.XXXVII.--How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened ofthemselves
Chapter 5.XXXVIII.--Of the temple's admirable pavement
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Chapter 5.XXXIX.--How we saw Bacchus's army drawn up in battalia in mosaicwork
Chapter 5.XL.--How the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew theIndians was represented in mosaic work
Chapter 5.XLI.--How the temple was illuminated with a wonderful lamp
Chapter 5.XLII.--How the Priestess Bacbuc showed us a fantastic fountain inthe temple, and how the fountain-water had the taste of wine, according tothe imagination of those who drank of it
Chapter 5.XLIII.--How the Priestess Bacbuc equipped Panurge in order tohave the word of the Bottle
Chapter 5.XLIV.--How Bacbuc, the high-priestess, brought Panurge before theHoly Bottle
Chapter 5.XLV.--How Bacbuc explained the word of the Goddess-Bottle
Chapter 5.XLVI.--How Panurge and the rest rhymed with poetic fury
Chapter 5.XLVII.--How we took our leave of Bacbuc, and left the Oracle ofthe Holy Bottle
Introduction.
Had Rabelais never written his strange and marvellous romance, no one wouldever have imagined the possibility of its production. It stands outsideother things--a mixture of mad mirth and gravity, of folly and reason, ofchildishness and grandeur, of the commonplace and the out-of-the-way, ofpopular verve and polished humanism, of mother-wit and learning, ofbaseness and nobility, of personalities and broad generalization, of thecomic and the serious, of the impossible and the familiar. Throughout thewhole there is such a force of life and thought, such a power of goodsense, a kind of assurance so authoritative, that he takes rank with thegreatest; and his peers are not many. You may like him or not, may attackhim or sing his praises, but you cannot ignore him. He is of those thatdie hard. Be as fastidious as you will; make up your mind to recognizeonly those who are, without any manner of doubt, beyond and above allothers; however few the names you keep, Rabelais' will always remain.
We may know his work, may know it well, and admire it more every time weread it. After being amused by it, after having enjoyed it, we may returnagain to study it and to enter more fully into its meaning. Yet there isno possibility of knowing his own life in the same fashion. In spite ofall the efforts, often successful, that have been made to throw light onit, to bring forward a fresh document, or some obscure mention in aforgotten book, to add some little fact, to fix a date more precisely, itremains nevertheless full of uncertainty and of gaps. Besides, it has beenburdened and sullied by all kinds of wearisome stories and foolishanecdotes, so that really there is more to weed out than to add.
This injustice, at first wilful, had its rise in the sixteenth century, in
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the furious attacks of a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel de Puy-Herbault, whoseems to have drawn his conclusions concerning the author from the book,and, more especially, in the regrettable satirical epitaph of Ronsard,piqued, it is said, that the Guises had given him only a little pavillon inthe Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to the chateau.From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has completely travestiedhim, till, bit by bit, it has made of him a buffoon, a veritable clown, avagrant, a glutton, and a drunkard.
The likeness of his person has undergone a similar metamorphosis. He hasbeen credited with a full moon of a face, the rubicund nose of anincorrigible toper, and thick coarse lips always apart because alwayslaughing. The picture would have surprised his friends no less thanhimself. There have been portraits painted of Rabelais; I have seen manysuch. They are all of the seventeenth century, and the greater number areconceived in this jovial and popular style.
As a matter of fact there is only one portrait of him that counts, that hasmore than the merest chance of being authentic, the one in the Chronologiecollee or coupee. Under this double name is known and cited a large sheetdivided by lines and cross lines into little squares, containing about ahundred heads of illustrious Frenchmen. This sheet was stuck on pasteboardfor hanging on the wall, and was cut in little pieces, so that theportraits might be sold separately. The majority of the portraits are ofknown persons and can therefore be verified. Now it can be seen that thesehave been selected with care, and taken from the most authentic sources;from statues, busts, medals, even stained glass, for the persons of mostdistinction, from earlier engravings for the others. Moreover, those ofwhich no other copies exist, and which are therefore the most valuable,have each an individuality very distinct, in the features, the hair, thebeard, as well as in the costume. Not one of them is like another. Therehas been no tampering with them, no forgery. On the contrary, there is ineach a difference, a very marked personality. Leonard Gaultier, whopublished this engraving towards the end of the sixteenth century,reproduced a great many portraits besides from chalk drawings, in the styleof his master, Thomas de Leu. It must have been such drawings that werethe originals of those portraits which he alone has issued, and which maytherefore be as authentic and reliable as the others whose correctness weare in a position to verify.
Now Rabelais has here nothing of the Roger Bontemps of low degree abouthim. His features are strong, vigorously cut, and furrowed with deepwrinkles; his beard is short and scanty; his cheeks are thin and alreadyworn-looking. On his head he wears the square cap of the doctors and theclerks, and his dominant expression, somewhat rigid and severe, is that ofa physician and a scholar. And this is the only portrait to which we needattach any importance.
This is not the place for a detailed biography, nor for an exhaustivestudy. At most this introduction will serve as a framework on which to fixa few certain dates, to hang some general observations. The date ofRabelais' birth is very doubtful. For long it was placed as far back as1483: now scholars are disposed to put it forward to about 1495. Thereason, a good one, is that all those whom he has mentioned as his friends,or in any real sense his contemporaries, were born at the very end of thefifteenth century. And, indeed, it is in the references in his romance tonames, persons, and places, that the most certain and valuable evidence is
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to be found of his intercourse, his patrons, his friendships, hissojournings, and his travels: his own work is the best and richest mine inwhich to search for the details of his life.
Like Descartes and Balzac, he was a native of Touraine, and Tours andChinon have only done their duty in each of them erecting in recent years astatue to his honour, a twofold homage reflecting credit both on theprovince and on the town. But the precise facts about his birth arenevertheless vague. Huet speaks of the village of Benais, near Bourgeuil,of whose vineyards Rabelais makes mention. As the little vineyard of LaDeviniere, near Chinon, and familiar to all his readers, is supposed tohave belonged to his father, Thomas Rabelais, some would have him bornthere. It is better to hold to the earlier general opinion that Chinon washis native town; Chinon, whose praises he sang with such heartiness andaffection. There he might well have been born in the Lamproie house, whichbelonged to his father, who, to judge from this circumstance, must havebeen in easy circumstances, with the position of a well-to-do citizen. AsLa Lamproie in the seventeenth century was a hostelry, the father ofRabelais has been set down as an innkeeper. More probably he was anapothecary, which would fit in with the medical profession adopted by hisson in after years. Rabelais had brothers, all older than himself.Perhaps because he was the youngest, his father destined him for theChurch.
The time he spent while a child with the Benedictine monks at Seuille isuncertain. There he might have made the acquaintance of the prototype ofhis Friar John, a brother of the name of Buinart, afterwards Prior ofSermaize. He was longer at the Abbey of the Cordeliers at La Baumette,half a mile from Angers, where he became a novice. As the brothers DuBellay, who were later his Maecenases, were then studying at the Universityof Angers, where it is certain he was not a student, it is doubtless fromthis youthful period that his acquaintance and alliance with them shoulddate. Voluntarily, or induced by his family, Rabelais now embraced theecclesiastical profession, and entered the monastery of the FranciscanCordeliers at Fontenay-le-Comte, in Lower Poitou, which was honoured by hislong sojourn at the vital period of his life when his powers were ripening.There it was he began to study and to think, and there also began histroubles.
In spite of the wide-spread ignorance among the monks of that age, theencyclopaedic movement of the Renaissance was attracting all the loftyminds. Rabelais threw himself into it with enthusiasm, and Latin antiquitywas not enough for him. Greek, a study discountenanced by the Church,which looked on it as dangerous and tending to freethought and heresy, tookpossession of him. To it he owed the warm friendship of Pierre Amy and ofthe celebrated Guillaume Bude. In fact, the Greek letters of the latterare the best source of information concerning this period of Rabelais'life. It was at Fontenay-le-Comte also that he became acquainted with theBrissons and the great jurist Andre Tiraqueau, whom he never mentions butwith admiration and deep affection. Tiraqueau's treatise, De legibusconnubialibus, published for the first time in 1513, has an importantbearing on the life of Rabelais. There we learn that, dissatisfied withthe incomplete translation of Herodotus by Laurent Valla, Rabelais hadretranslated into Latin the first book of the History. That translationunfortunately is lost, as so many other of his scattered works. It isprobably in this direction that the hazard of fortune has most discoveriesand surprises in store for the lucky searcher. Moreover, as in this law
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treatise Tiraqueau attacked women in a merciless fashion, President AmauryBouchard published in 1522 a book in their defence, and Rabelais, who was afriend of both the antagonists, took the side of Tiraqueau. It should beobserved also in passing, that there are several pages of such audaciousplain-speaking, that Rabelais, though he did not copy these in his Marriageof Panurge, has there been, in his own fashion, as out spoken as Tiraqueau.If such freedom of language could be permitted in a grave treatise of law,similar liberties were certainly, in the same century, more natural in abook which was meant to amuse.
The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want ofreserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness,which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value. LaBruyere, in the chapter Des ouvrages de l'esprit, not in the first editionof the Caracteres, but in the fifth, that is to say in 1690, at the end ofthe great century, gives us on this subject his own opinion and that of hisage:
'Marot and Rabelais are inexcusable in their habit of scattering filthabout their writings. Both of them had genius enough and wit enough to dowithout any such expedient, even for the amusement of those persons wholook more to the laugh to be got out of a book than to what is admirable init. Rabelais especially is incomprehensible. His book is an enigma,--onemay say inexplicable. It is a Chimera; it is like the face of a lovelywoman with the feet and the tail of a reptile, or of some creature stillmore loathsome. It is a monstrous confusion of fine and rare morality withfilthy corruption. Where it is bad, it goes beyond the worst; it is thedelight of the basest of men. Where it is good, it reaches the exquisite,the very best; it ministers to the most delicate tastes.'
Putting aside the rather slight connection established between two men ofwhom one is of very little importance compared with the other, this isotherwise very admirably said, and the judgment is a very just one, exceptwith regard to one point--the misunderstanding of the atmosphere in whichthe book was created, and the ignoring of the examples of a similartendency furnished by literature as well as by the popular taste. Was itnot the Ancients that began it? Aristophanes, Catullus, Petronius,Martial, flew in the face of decency in their ideas as well as in the wordsthey used, and they dragged after them in this direction not a few of theLatin poets of the Renaissance, who believed themselves bound to imitatethem. Is Italy without fault in this respect? Her story-tellers in proselie open to easy accusation. Her Capitoli in verse go to incrediblelengths; and the astonishing success of Aretino must not be forgotten, northe licence of the whole Italian comic theatre of the sixteenth century.The Calandra of Bibbiena, who was afterwards a Cardinal, and the Mandragolaof Machiavelli, are evidence enough, and these were played before Popes,who were not a whit embarrassed. Even in England the drama went very farfor a time, and the comic authors of the reign of Charles II., evidentlyfrom a reaction, and to shake off the excess and the wearisomeness ofPuritan prudery and affectation, which sent them to the opposite extreme,are not exactly noted for their reserve. But we need not go beyond France.Slight indications, very easily verified, are all that may be set downhere; a formal and detailed proof would be altogether too dangerous.
Thus, for instance, the old Fabliaux--the Farces of the fifteenth century,the story-tellers of the sixteenth--reveal one of the sides, one of theveins, so to speak, of our literature. The art that addresses itself to
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the eye had likewise its share of this coarseness. Think of the sculptureson the capitals and the modillions of churches, and the crude frankness ofcertain painted windows of the fifteenth century. Queen Anne was, withoutany doubt, one of the most virtuous women in the world. Yet she used to goup the staircase of her chateau at Blois, and her eyes were not offended atseeing at the foot of a bracket a not very decent carving of a monk and anun. Neither did she tear out of her book of Hours the large miniature ofthe winter month, in which, careless of her neighbours' eyes, the mistressof the house, sitting before her great fireplace, warms herself in afashion which it is not advisable that dames of our age should imitate.The statue of Cybele by the Tribolo, executed for Francis I., and placed,not against a wall, but in the middle of Queen Claude's chamber atFontainebleau, has behind it an attribute which would have been more inplace on a statue of Priapus, and which was the symbol of generativeness.The tone of the conversations was ordinarily of a surprising coarseness,and the Precieuses, in spite of their absurdities, did a very good work insetting themselves in opposition to it. The worthy Chevalier deLa-Tour-Landry, in his Instructions to his own daughters, without a thoughtof harm, gives examples which are singular indeed, and in Caxton'stranslation these are not omitted. The Adevineaux Amoureux, printed atBruges by Colard Mansion, are astonishing indeed when one considers thatthey were the little society diversions of the Duchesses of Burgundy and ofthe great ladies of a court more luxurious and more refined than the Frenchcourt, which revelled in the Cent Nouvelles of good King Louis XI.Rabelais' pleasantry about the woman folle a la messe is exactly in thestyle of the Adevineaux.
A later work than any of his, the Novelle of Bandello, should be kept inmind--for the writer was Bishop of Agen, and his work was translated intoFrench--as also the Dames Galantes of Brantome. Read the Journal ofHeroard, that honest doctor, who day by day wrote down the detailsconcerning the health of Louis XIII. from his birth, and you willunderstand the tone of the conversation of Henry IV. The jokes at acountry wedding are trifles compared with this royal coarseness. Le Moyende Parvenir is nothing but a tissue and a mass of filth, and the toocelebrated Cabinet Satyrique proves what, under Louis XIII., could bewritten, printed, and read. The collection of songs formed by Clairambaultshows that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were no purer than thesixteenth. Some of the most ribald songs are actually the work ofPrincesses of the royal House.
It is, therefore, altogether unjust to make Rabelais the scapegoat, tocharge him alone with the sins of everybody else. He spoke as those of histime used to speak; when amusing them he used their language to makehimself understood, and to slip in his asides, which without this saucewould never have been accepted, would have found neither eyes nor ears.Let us blame not him, therefore, but the manners of his time.
Besides, his gaiety, however coarse it may appear to us--and how rare athing is gaiety!--has, after all, nothing unwholesome about it; and this istoo often overlooked. Where does he tempt one to stray from duty? Where,even indirectly, does he give pernicious advice? Whom has he led to evilways? Does he ever inspire feelings that breed misconduct and vice, or ishe ever the apologist of these? Many poets and romance writers, undercover of a fastidious style, without one coarse expression, have beenreally and actively hurtful; and of that it is impossible to accuseRabelais. Women in particular quickly revolt from him, and turn away
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repulsed at once by the archaic form of the language and by theoutspokenness of the words. But if he be read aloud to them, omitting therougher parts and modernizing the pronunciation, it will be seen that theytoo are impressed by his lively wit as by the loftiness of his thought. Itwould be possible, too, to extract, for young persons, withoutmodification, admirable passages of incomparable force. But those who havebrought out expurgated editions of him, or who have thought to improve himby trying to rewrite him in modern French, have been fools for their pains,and their insulting attempts have had, and always will have, the successthey deserve.
His dedications prove to what extent his whole work was accepted. Not tospeak of his epistolary relations with Bude, with the Cardinal d'Armagnacand with Pellissier, the ambassador of Francis I. and Bishop of Maguelonne,or of his dedication to Tiraqueau of his Lyons edition of the EpistolaeMedicinales of Giovanni Manardi of Ferrara, of the one addressed to thePresident Amaury Bouchard of the two legal texts which he believed antique,there is still the evidence of his other and more important dedications.In 1532 he dedicated his Hippocrates and his Galen to Geoffroy d'Estissac,Bishop of Maillezais, to whom in 1535 and 1536 he addressed from Rome thethree news letters, which alone have been preserved; and in 1534 hededicated from Lyons his edition of the Latin book of Marliani on thetopography of Rome to Jean du Bellay (at that time Bishop of Paris) who wasraised to the Cardinalate in 1535. Beside these dedications we must setthe privilege of Francis I. of September, 1545, and the new privilegegranted by Henry II. on August 6th, 1550, Cardinal de Chatillon present,for the third book, which was dedicated, in an eight-lined stanza, to theSpirit of the Queen of Navarre. These privileges, from the praises andeulogies they express in terms very personal and very exceptional, are asimportant in Rabelais' life as were, in connection with other matters, theApostolic Pastorals in his favour. Of course, in these the popes had notto introduce his books of diversions, which, nevertheless, would haveseemed in their eyes but very venial sins. The Sciomachie of 1549, anaccount of the festivities arranged at Rome by Cardinal du Bellay in honourof the birth of the second son of Henry II., was addressed to Cardinal deGuise, and in 1552 the fourth book was dedicated, in a new prologue, toCardinal de Chatillon, the brother of Admiral de Coligny.
These are no unknown or insignificant personages, but the greatest lordsand princes of the Church. They loved and admired and protected Rabelais,and put no restrictions in his way. Why should we be more fastidious andsevere than they were? Their high contemporary appreciation gives muchfood for thought.
There are few translations of Rabelais in foreign tongues; and certainlythe task is no light one, and demands more than a familiarity with ordinaryFrench. It would have been easier in Italy than anywhere else. Italian,from its flexibility and its analogy to French, would have lent itselfadmirably to the purpose; the instrument was ready, but the hand was notforthcoming. Neither is there any Spanish translation, a fact which can bemore easily understood. The Inquisition would have been a far more seriousopponent than the Paris' Sorbonne, and no one ventured on the experiment.Yet Rabelais forces comparison with Cervantes, whose precursor he was inreality, though the two books and the two minds are very different. Theyhave only one point in common, their attack and ridicule of the romances ofchivalry and of the wildly improbable adventures of knight-errants. But inDon Quixote there is not a single detail which would suggest that Cervantes
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knew Rabelais' book or owed anything to it whatsoever, even thestarting-point of his subject. Perhaps it was better he should not havebeen influenced by him, in however slight a degree; his originality is themore intact and the more genial.
On the other hand, Rabelais has been several times translated into German.In the present century Regis published at Leipsic, from 1831 to 1841, withcopious notes, a close and faithful translation. The first one cannot beso described, that of Johann Fischart, a native of Mainz or Strasburg, whodied in 1614. He was a Protestant controversialist, and a satirist offantastic and abundant imagination. In 1575 appeared his translation ofRabelais' first book, and in 1590 he published the comic catalogue of thelibrary of Saint Victor, borrowed from the second book. It is not atranslation, but a recast in the boldest style, full of alterations and ofexaggerations, both as regards the coarse expressions which he took uponhimself to develop and to add to, and in the attacks on the Roman CatholicChurch. According to Jean Paul Richter, Fischart is much superior toRabelais in style and in the fruitfulness of his ideas, and his equal inerudition and in the invention of new expressions after the manner ofAristophanes. He is sure that his work was successful, because it wasoften reprinted during his lifetime; but this enthusiasm of Jean Paul wouldhardly carry conviction in France. Who treads in another's footprints mustfollow in the rear. Instead of a creator, he is but an imitator. Thosewho take the ideas of others to modify them, and make of them creations oftheir own, like Shakespeare in England, Moliere and La Fontaine in France,may be superior to those who have served them with suggestions; but thenthe new works must be altogether different, must exist by themselves.Shakespeare and the others, when they imitated, may be said always to havedestroyed their models. These copyists, if we call them so, created suchworks of genius that the only pity is they are so rare. This is not thecase with Fischart, but it would be none the less curious were some onethoroughly familiar with German to translate Fischart for us, or at least,by long extracts from him, give an idea of the vagaries of German tastewhen it thought it could do better than Rabelais. It is dangerous totamper with so great a work, and he who does so runs a great risk ofburning his fingers.
England has been less daring, and her modesty and discretion have broughther success. But, before speaking of Urquhart's translation, it is butright to mention the English-French Dictionary of Randle Cotgrave, thefirst edition of which dates from 1611. It is in every way exceedinglyvaluable, and superior to that of Nicot, because instead of keeping to theplane of classic and Latin French, it showed an acquaintance with andmastery of the popular tongue as well as of the written and learnedlanguage. As a foreigner, Cotgrave is a little behind in his information.He is not aware of all the changes and novelties of the passing fashion.The Pleiad School he evidently knew nothing of, but kept to the writers ofthe fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. Thus words outof Rabelais, which he always translates with admirable skill, are frequent,and he attaches to them their author's name. So Rabelais had alreadycrossed the Channel, and was read in his own tongue. Somewhat later,during the full sway of the Commonwealth--and Maitre Alcofribas Nasier musthave been a surprising apparition in the midst of Puritan severity--CaptainUrquhart undertook to translate him and to naturalize him completely inEngland.
Thomas Urquhart belonged to a very old family of good standing in the North
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of Scotland. After studying in Aberdeen he travelled in France, Spain, andItaly, where his sword was as active as that intelligent curiosity of hiswhich is evidenced by his familiarity with three languages and the largelibrary which he brought back, according to his own account, from sixteencountries he had visited.
On his return to England he entered the service of Charles I., who knightedhim in 1641. Next year, after the death of his father, he went to Scotlandto set his family affairs in order, and to redeem his house in Cromarty.But, in spite of another sojourn in foreign lands, his efforts to freehimself from pecuniary embarrassments were unavailing. At the king's deathhis Scottish loyalty caused him to side with those who opposed theParliament. Formally proscribed in 1649, taken prisoner at the defeat ofWorcester in 1651, stripped of all his belongings, he was brought toLondon, but was released on parole at Cromwell's recommendation. Afterreceiving permission to spend five months in Scotland to try once more tosettle his affairs, he came back to London to escape from his creditors.And there he must have died, though the date of his death is unknown. Itprobably took place after 1653, the date of the publication of the twofirst books, and after having written the translation of the third, whichwas not printed from his manuscript till the end of the seventeenthcentury.
His life was therefore not without its troubles, and literary activity musthave been almost his only consolation. His writings reveal him as thestrangest character, fantastic, and full of a naive vanity, which, even atthe time he was translating the genealogy of Gargantua--surely wellcalculated to cure any pondering on his own--caused him to trace hisunbroken descent from Adam, and to state that his family name was derivedfrom his ancestor Esormon, Prince of Achaia, 2139 B.C., who was surnamedOurochartos, that is to say the Fortunate and the Well-beloved. A Gasconcould not have surpassed this.
Gifted as he was, learned in many directions, an enthusiasticmathematician, master of several languages, occasionally full of wit andhumour, and even good sense, yet he gave his books the strangest titles,and his ideas were no less whimsical. His style is mystic, fastidious, andtoo often of a wearisome length and obscurity; his verses rhyme anyhow, ornot at all; but vivacity, force and heat are never lacking, and theMaitland Club did well in reprinting, in 1834, his various works, which arevery rare. Yet, in spite of their curious interest, he owes his realdistinction and the survival of his name to his translation of Rabelais.
The first two books appeared in 1653. The original edition, exceedinglyscarce, was carefully reprinted in 1838, only a hundred copies beingissued, by an English bibliophile T(heodore) M(artin), whose interestingpreface I regret to sum up so cursorily. At the end of the seventeenthcentury, in 1693, a French refugee, Peter Antony Motteux, whose Englishverses and whose plays are not without value, published in a little octavovolume a reprint, very incorrect as to the text, of the first two books, towhich he added the third, from the manuscript found amongst Urquhart'spapers. The success which attended this venture suggested to Motteux theidea of completing the work, and a second edition, in two volumes, appearedin 1708, with the translation of the fourth and fifth books, and notes.Nineteen years after his death, John Ozell, translator on a large scale ofFrench, Italian, and Spanish authors, revised Motteux's edition, which hepublished in five volumes in 1737, adding Le Duchat's notes; and this
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version has often been reprinted since.
The continuation by Motteux, who was also the translator of Don Quixote,has merits of its own. It is precise, elegant, and very faithful.Urquhart's, without taking liberties with Rabelais like Fischart, is notalways so closely literal and exact. Nevertheless, it is much superior toMotteux's. If Urquhart does not constantly adhere to the form of theexpression, if he makes a few slight additions, not only has he anunderstanding of the original, but he feels it, and renders the sense witha force and a vivacity full of warmth and brilliancy. His own learningmade the comprehension of the work easy to him, and his anglicization ofwords fabricated by Rabelais is particularly successful. The necessity ofkeeping to his text prevented his indulgence in the convolutions anddivagations dictated by his exuberant fancy when writing on his ownaccount. His style, always full of life and vigour, is here balanced,lucid, and picturesque. Never elsewhere did he write so well. And thusthe translation reproduces the very accent of the original, besidespossessing a very remarkable character of its own. Such a literary toneand such literary qualities are rarely found in a translation. Urquhart's,very useful for the interpretation of obscure passages, may, and indeedshould be read as a whole, both for Rabelais and for its own merits.
Holland, too, possesses a translation of Rabelais. They knew French inthat country in the seventeenth century better than they do to-day, andthere Rabelais' works were reprinted when no editions were appearing inFrance. This Dutch translation was published at Amsterdam in 1682, by J.Tenhoorn. The name attached to it, Claudio Gallitalo (ClaudiusFrench-Italian) must certainly be a pseudonym. Only a Dutch scholar couldidentify the translator, and state the value to be assigned to his work.
Rabelais' style has many different sources. Besides its force andbrilliancy, its gaiety, wit, and dignity, its abundant richness is no lessremarkable. It would be impossible and useless to compile a glossary ofVoltaire's words. No French writer has used so few, and all of them are ofthe simplest. There is not one of them that is not part of the commonspeech, or which demands a note or an explanation. Rabelais' vocabulary,on the other hand, is of an astonishing variety. Where does it all comefrom? As a fact, he had at his command something like three languages,which he used in turn, or which he mixed according to the effect he wishedto produce.
First of all, of course, he had ready to his hand the whole speech of histime, which had no secrets for him. Provincials have been too eager toappropriate him, to make of him a local author, the pride of some village,in order that their district might have the merit of being one of thecauses, one of the factors of his genius. Every neighbourhood where heever lived has declared that his distinction was due to his knowledge ofits popular speech. But these dialect-patriots have fallen out amongthemselves. To which dialect was he indebted? Was it that of Touraine, orBerri, or Poitou, or Paris? It is too often forgotten, in regard to Frenchpatois--leaving out of count the languages of the South--that the words orexpressions that are no longer in use to-day are but a survival, a stillliving trace of the tongue and the pronunciation of other days. Rabelais,more than any other writer, took advantage of the happy chances and therichness of the popular speech, but he wrote in French, and nothing butFrench. That is why he remains so forcible, so lucid, and so living, moreliving even--speaking only of his style out of charity to the others--than
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any of his contemporaries.
It has been said that great French prose is solely the work of theseventeenth century. There were nevertheless, before that, two men,certainly very different and even hostile, who were its initiators and itsmasters, Calvin on the one hand, on the other Rabelais.
Rabelais had a wonderful knowledge of the prose and the verse of thefifteenth century: he was familiar with Villon, Pathelin, the Quinze Joiesde Mariage, the Cent Nouvelles, the chronicles and the romances, and evenearlier works, too, such as the Roman de la Rose. Their words, their turnsof expression came naturally to his pen, and added a piquancy and, as itwere, a kind of gloss of antique novelty to his work. He fabricated words,too, on Greek and Latin models, with great ease, sometimes audaciously andwith needless frequency. These were for him so many means, so manyelements of variety. Sometimes he did this in mockery, as in the humorousdiscourse of the Limousin scholar, for which he is not a little indebted toGeoffroy Tory in the Champfleury; sometimes, on the contrary, seriously,from a habit acquired in dealing with classical tongues.
Again, another reason of the richness of his vocabulary was that heinvented and forged words for himself. Following the example ofAristophanes, he coined an enormous number of interminable words, drollexpressions, sudden and surprising constructions. What had made Greece andthe Athenians laugh was worth transporting to Paris.
With an instrument so rich, resources so endless, and the skill to usethem, it is no wonder that he could give voice to anything, be as humorousas he could be serious, as comic as he could be grave, that he couldexpress himself and everybody else, from the lowest to the highest. He hadevery colour on his palette, and such skill was in his fingers that hecould depict every variety of light and shade.
We have evidence that Rabelais did not always write in the same fashion.The Chronique Gargantuaine is uniform in style and quite simple, but cannotwith certainty be attributed to him. His letters are bombastic and thin;his few attempts at verse are heavy, lumbering, and obscure, altogetherlacking in harmony, and quite as bad as those of his friend, Jean Bouchet.He had no gift of poetic form, as indeed is evident even from his prose.And his letters from Rome to the Bishop of Maillezais, interesting as theyare in regard to the matter, are as dull, bare, flat, and dry in style aspossible. Without his signature no one would possibly have thought ofattributing them to him. He is only a literary artist when he wishes to besuch; and in his romance he changes the style completely every othermoment: it has no constant character or uniform manner, and thereforeunity is almost entirely wanting in his work, while his endeavours aftercontrast are unceasing. There is throughout the whole the evidence ofcareful and conscious elaboration.
Hence, however lucid and free be the style of his romance, and though itsflexibility and ease seem at first sight to have cost no trouble at all,yet its merit lies precisely in the fact that it succeeds in concealing thetoil, in hiding the seams. He could not have reached this perfection at afirst attempt. He must have worked long at the task, revised it again andagain, corrected much, and added rather than cut away. The aptness of formand expression has been arrived at by deliberate means, and owes nothing tochance. Apart from the toning down of certain bold passages, to soften
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their effect, and appease the storm--for these were not literaryalterations, but were imposed on him by prudence--one can see how numerousare the variations in his text, how necessary it is to take account ofthem, and to collect them. A good edition, of course, would make noattempt at amalgamating these. That would give a false impression and endin confusion; but it should note them all, and show them all, not combined,but simply as variations.
After Le Duchat, all the editions, in their care that nothing should belost, made the mistake of collecting and placing side by side things whichhad no connection with each other, which had even been substituted for eachother. The result was a fabricated text, full of contradictions naturally.But since the edition issued by M. Jannet, the well-known publisher of theBibliotheque Elzevirienne, who was the first to get rid of this patchwork,this mosaic, Rabelais' latest text has been given, accompanied by all theearlier variations, to show the changes he made, as well as hissuppressions and additions. It would also be possible to reverse themethod. It would be interesting to take his first text as the basis,noting the later modifications. This would be quite as instructive andreally worth doing. Perhaps one might then see more clearly with what carehe made his revisions, after what fashion he corrected, and especially whatwere the additions he made.
No more striking instance can be quoted than the admirable chapter aboutthe shipwreck. It was not always so long as Rabelais made it in the end:it was much shorter at first. As a rule, when an author recasts somepassage that he wishes to revise, he does so by rewriting the whole, or atleast by interpolating passages at one stroke, so to speak. Nothing of thekind is seen here. Rabelais suppressed nothing, modified nothing; he didnot change his plan at all. What he did was to make insertions, to slip inbetween two clauses a new one. He expressed his meaning in a lengthierway, and the former clause is found in its integrity along with theadditional one, of which it forms, as it were, the warp. It was by thismethod of touching up the smallest details, by making here and there suchlittle noticeable additions, that he succeeded in heightening the effectwithout either change or loss. In the end it looks as if he had alterednothing, added nothing new, as if it had always been so from the first, andhad never been meddled with.
The comparison is most instructive, showing us to what an extent Rabelais'admirable style was due to conscious effort, care, and elaboration, a factwhich is generally too much overlooked, and how instead of leaving anytrace which would reveal toil and study, it has on the contrary amarvellous cohesion, precision, and brilliancy. It was modelled andremodelled, repaired, touched up, and yet it has all the appearance ofhaving been created at a single stroke, or of having been run like moltenwax into its final form.
Something should be said here of the sources from which Rabelais borrowed.He was not the first in France to satirize the romances of chivalry. Theromance in verse by Baudouin de Sebourc, printed in recent years, was aparody of the Chansons de Geste. In the Moniage Guillaume, and especiallyin the Moniage Rainouart, in which there is a kind of giant, andoccasionally a comic giant, there are situations and scenes which remind usof Rabelais. The kind of Fabliaux in mono-rhyme quatrains of the oldAubery anticipate his coarse and popular jests. But all that is beside thequestion; Rabelais did not know these. Nothing is of direct interest save
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what was known to him, what fell under his eyes, what lay to his hand--asthe Facetiae of Poggio, and the last sermonnaires. In the course of one'sreading one may often enough come across the origin of some of Rabelais'witticisms; here and there we may discover how he has developed asituation. While gathering his materials wherever he could find them, hewas nevertheless profoundly original.
On this point much research and investigation might be employed. But thereis no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy.Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he isa solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected populartraditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by thelarge number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the name ofGargantua. It was, of course, quite right to make a list of these, to drawup, as it were, a chart of them, but the conclusion is not justified. Thename, instead of being earlier, is really later, and is a witness, not tothe origin, but to the success and rapid popularity of his novel. No onehas ever yet produced a written passage or any ancient testimony to provethe existence of the name before Rabelais. To place such a tradition on asure basis, positive traces must be forthcoming; and they cannot be adducedeven for the most celebrated of these monuments, since he mentions himselfthe great menhir near Poitiers, which he christened by the name ofPasselourdin. That there is something in the theory is possible. Perraultfound the subjects of his stories in the tales told by mothers and nurses.He fixed them finally by writing them down. Floating about vaguely as theywere, he seized them, worked them up, gave them shape, and yet of scarcelyany of them is there to be found before his time a single trace. So wemust resign ourselves to know just as little of what Gargantua andPantagruel were before the sixteenth century.
In a book of a contemporary of Rabelais, the Legende de Pierre Faifeu bythe Angevin, Charles de Bourdigne, the first edition of which dates from1526 and the second 1531--both so rare and so forgotten that the work isonly known since the eighteenth century by the reprint of Custelier--in theintroductory ballad which recommends this book to readers, occur theselines in the list of popular books which Faifeu would desire to replace:
'Laissez ester Caillette le folastre, Les quatre filz Aymon vestuz de bleu, Gargantua qui a cheveux de plastre.'
He has not 'cheveux de plastre' in Rabelais. If the rhyme had notsuggested the phrase--and the exigencies of the strict form of the balladeand its forced repetitions often imposed an idea which had its whole originin the rhyme--we might here see a dramatic trace found nowhere else. Thename of Pantagruel is mentioned too, incidentally, in a Mystery of thefifteenth century. These are the only references to the names which uptill now have been discovered, and they are, as one sees, of but littleaccount.
On the other hand, the influence of Aristophanes and of Lucian, hisintimate acquaintance with nearly all the writers of antiquity, Greek aswell as Latin, with whom Rabelais is more permeated even than Montaigne,were a mine of inspiration. The proof of it is everywhere. Plinyespecially was his encyclopaedia, his constant companion. All he says ofthe Pantagruelian herb, though he amply developed it for himself, is takenfrom Pliny's chapter on flax. And there is a great deal more of this kind
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to be discovered, for Rabelais does not always give it as quotation. Onthe other hand, when he writes, 'Such an one says,' it would be difficultenough to find who is meant, for the 'such an one' is a fictitious writer.The method is amusing, but it is curious to account of it.
The question of the Chronique Gargantuaine is still undecided. Is it byRabelais or by someone else? Both theories are defensible, and can besupported by good reasons. In the Chronique everything is heavy,occasionally meaningless, and nearly always insipid. Can the same man havewritten the Chronique and Gargantua, replaced a book really commonplace bya masterpiece, changed the facts and incidents, transformed a heavy icypleasantry into a work glowing with wit and life, made it no longer a massof laborious trifling and cold-blooded exaggerations but a satire on humanlife of the highest genius? Still there are points common to the two.Besides, Rabelais wrote other things; and it is only in his romance that heshows literary skill. The conception of it would have entered his mindfirst only in a bare and summary fashion. It would have been taken upagain, expanded, developed, metamorphosed. That is possible, and, for mypart, I am of those who, like Brunet and Nodier, are inclined to think thatthe Chronique, in spite of its inferiority, is really a first attempt,condemned as soon as the idea was conceived in another form. As itsearlier date is incontestable, we must conclude that if the Chronique isnot by him, his Gargantua and its continuation would not have existedwithout it. This would be a great obligation to stand under to someunknown author, and in that case it is astonishing that his enemies did notreproach him during his lifetime with being merely an imitator and aplagiarist. So there are reasons for and against his authorship of it, andit would be dangerous to make too bold an assertion.
One fact which is absolutely certain and beyond all controversy, is thatRabelais owed much to one of his contemporaries, an Italian, to theHistoire Macaronique of Merlin Coccaie. Its author, Theophilus Folengo,who was also a monk, was born in 1491, and died only a short time beforeRabelais, in 1544. But his burlesque poem was published in 1517. It wasin Latin verse, written in an elaborately fabricated style. It is not dogLatin, but Latin ingeniously italianized, or rather Italian, even Mantuan,latinized. The contrast between the modern form of the word and its Romangarb produces the most amusing effect. In the original it is sometimesdifficult to read, for Folengo has no objection to using the mostcolloquial words and phrases.
The subject is quite different. It is the adventures of Baldo, son of Guyde Montauban, the very lively history of his youth, his trial, imprisonmentand deliverance, his journey in search of his father, during which hevisits the Planets and Hell. The narration is constantly interrupted byincidental adventures. Occasionally they are what would be called to-dayvery naturalistic, and sometimes they are madly extravagant.
But Fracasso, Baldo's friend, is a giant; another friend, Cingar, whodelivers him, is Panurge exactly, and quite as much given to practicaljoking. The women in the senile amour of the old Tognazzo, the judges, andthe poor sergeants, are no more gently dealt with by Folengo than by themonk of the Iles d'Hyeres. If Dindenaut's name does not occur, there arethe sheep. The tempest is there, and the invocation to all the saints.Rabelais improves all he borrows, but it is from Folengo he starts. Hedoes not reproduce the words, but, like the Italian, he revels in drinkingscenes, junkettings, gormandizing, battles, scuffles, wounds and corpses,
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magic, witches, speeches, repeated enumerations, lengthiness, and asolemnly minute precision of impossible dates and numbers. The atmosphere,the tone, the methods are the same, and to know Rabelais well, you mustknow Folengo well too.
Detailed proof of this would be too lengthy a matter; one would have toquote too many passages, but on this question of sources nothing is moreinteresting than a perusal of the Opus Macaronicorum. It was translatedinto French only in 1606--Paris, Gilley Robinot. This translation ofcourse cannot reproduce all the many amusing forms of words, but it isuseful, nevertheless, in showing more clearly the points of resemblancebetween the two works,--how far in form, ideas, details, and phrasesRabelais was permeated by Folengo. The anonymous translator saw this quitewell, and said so in his title, 'Histoire macaronique de Merlin Coccaie,prototype of Rabelais.' It is nothing but the truth, and Rabelais, whodoes not hide it from himself, on more than one occasion mentions the nameof Merlin Coccaie.
Besides, Rabelais was fed on the Italians of his time as on the Greeks andRomans. Panurge, who owes much to Cingar, is also not free fromobligations to the miscreant Margutte in the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci.Had Rabelais in his mind the tale from the Florentine Chronicles, how inthe Savonarola riots, when the Piagnoni and the Arrabiati came to blows inthe church of the Dominican convent of San-Marco, Fra Pietro in the scufflebroke the heads of the assailants with the bronze crucifix he had takenfrom the altar? A well-handled cross could so readily be used as a weapon,that probably it has served as such more than once, and other and evenquite modern instances might be quoted.
But other Italian sources are absolutely certain. There are few morewonderful chapters in Rabelais than the one about the drinkers. It is nota dialogue: those short exclamations exploding from every side, allreferring to the same thing, never repeating themselves, and yet alwaysvarying the same theme. At the end of the Novelle of Gentile Sermini ofSiena, there is a chapter called Il Giuoco della pugna, the Game of Battle.Here are the first lines of it: 'Apre, apre, apre. Chi gioca, chi gioca--uh, uh!--A Porrione, a Porrione.--Viela, viela; date a ognuno.--Allemantella, alle mantella.--Oltre di corsa; non vi fermate.--Voltate qui;ecco costoro; fate veli innanzi.--Viela, viela; date costi.--Chi la fa?Io--Ed io.--Dagli; ah, ah, buona fu.--Or cosi; alla mascella, al fianco.--Dagli basso; di punta, di punta.--Ah, ah, buon gioco, buon gioco.'
And thus it goes on with fire and animation for pages. Rabelais probablytranslated or directly imitated it. He changed the scene; there was nogiuooco della pugna in France. He transferred to a drinking-bout thisclatter of exclamations which go off by themselves, which cross each otherand get no answer. He made a wonderful thing of it. But though he did notcopy Sermini, yet Sermini's work provided him with the form of the subject,and was the theme for Rabelais' marvellous variations.
Who does not remember the fantastic quarrel of the cook with the poor devilwho had flavoured his dry bread with the smoke of the roast, and thejudgment of Seyny John, truly worthy of Solomon? It comes from the CentoNovelle Antiche, rewritten from tales older than Boccaccio, and moreover ofan extreme brevity and dryness. They are only the framework, the notes,the skeleton of tales. The subject is often wonderful, but nothing is madeof it: it is left unshaped. Rabelais wrote a version of one, the ninth.
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The scene takes place, not at Paris, but at Alexandria in Egypt among theSaracens, and the cook is called Fabrac. But the surprise at the end, thesagacious judgment by which the sound of a piece of money was made theprice of the smoke, is the same. Now the first dated edition of the CentoNovelle (which were frequently reprinted) appeared at Bologna in 1525, andit is certain that Rabelais had read the tales. And there would be muchelse of the same kind to learn if we knew Rabelais' library.
A still stranger fact of this sort may be given to show how nothing cameamiss to him. He must have known, and even copied the Latin Chronicle ofthe Counts of Anjou. It is accepted, and rightly so, as an historicaldocument, but that is no reason for thinking that the truth may not havebeen manipulated and adorned. The Counts of Anjou were not saints. Theywere proud, quarrelsome, violent, rapacious, and extravagant, as greedy asthey were charitable to the Church, treacherous and cruel. Yet theiranonymous panegyrist has made them patterns of all the virtues. In realityit is both a history and in some sort a romance; especially is it acollection of examples worthy of being followed, in the style of theCyropaedia, our Juvenal of the fifteenth century, and a little likeFenelon's Telemaque. Now in it there occurs the address of one of thecounts to those who rebelled against him and who were at his mercy.Rabelais must have known it, for he has copied it, or rather, literallytranslated whole lines of it in the wonderful speech of Gargantua to thevanquished. His contemporaries, who approved of his borrowing fromantiquity, could not detect this one, because the book was not printed tillmuch later. But Rabelais lived in Maine. In Anjou, which often figuresamong the localities he names, he must have met with and read theChronicles of the Counts in manuscript, probably in some monastery library,whether at Fontenay-le-Comte or elsewhere it matters little. There is notonly a likeness in the ideas and tone, but in the words too, which cannotbe a mere matter of chance. He must have known the Chronicles of theCounts of Anjou, and they inspired one of his finest pages. One sees,therefore, how varied were the sources whence he drew, and how many of themmust probably always escape us.
When, as has been done for Moliere, a critical bibliography of the worksrelating to Rabelais is drawn up--which, by the bye, will entail a verygreat amount of labour--the easiest part will certainly be the bibliographyof the old editions. That is the section that has been most satisfactorilyand most completely worked out. M. Brunet said the last word on thesubject in his Researches in 1852, and in the important article in thefifth edition of his Manuel du Libraire (iv., 1863, pp. 1037-1071).
The facts about the fifth book cannot be summed up briefly. It was printedas a whole at first, without the name of the place, in 1564, and next yearat Lyons by Jean Martin. It has given, and even still gives rise to twocontradictory opinions. Is it Rabelais' or not?
First of all, if he had left it complete, would sixteen years have gone bybefore it was printed? Then, does it bear evident marks of hisworkmanship? Is the hand of the master visible throughout? Antoine DuVerdier in the 1605 edition of his Prosopographie writes: '(Rabelais')misfortune has been that everybody has wished to "pantagruelize!" andseveral books have appeared under his name, and have been added to hisworks, which are not by him, as, for instance, l'Ile Sonnante, written by acertain scholar of Valence and others.'
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The scholar of Valence might be Guillaume des Autels, to whom with morecertainty can be ascribed the authorship of a dull imitation of Rabelais,the History of Fanfreluche and Gaudichon, published in 1578, which, to saythe least of it, is very much inferior to the fifth book.
Louis Guyon, in his Diverses Lecons, is still more positive: 'As to thelast book which has been included in his works, entitled l'Ile Sonnante,the object of which seems to be to find fault with and laugh at the membersand the authorities of the Catholic Church, I protest that he did notcompose it, for it was written long after his death. I was at Paris whenit was written, and I know quite well who was its author; he was not adoctor.' That is very emphatic, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Yet everyone must recognize that there is a great deal of Rabelais in thefifth book. He must have planned it and begun it. Remembering that in1548 he had published, not as an experiment, but rather as a bait and as anannouncement, the first eleven chapters of the fourth book, we may concludethat the first sixteen chapters of the fifth book published by themselvesnine years after his death, in 1562, represent the remainder of hisdefinitely finished work. This is the more certain because these firstchapters, which contain the Apologue of the Horse and the Ass and theterrible Furred Law-cats, are markedly better than what follows them. Theyare not the only ones where the master's hand may be traced, but they arethe only ones where no other hand could possibly have interfered.
In the remainder the sentiment is distinctly Protestant. Rabelais was muchstruck by the vices of the clergy and did not spare them. Whether we areunable to forgive his criticisms because they were conceived in a spirit ofraillery, or whether, on the other hand, we feel admiration for him on thispoint, yet Rabelais was not in the least a sectary. If he strongly desireda moral reform, indirectly pointing out the need of it in his mockingfashion, he was not favourable to a political reform. Those who would makeof him a Protestant altogether forget that the Protestants of his time werenot for him, but against him. Henri Estienne, for instance, Ramus,Theodore de Beze, and especially Calvin, should know how he was to beregarded. Rabelais belonged to what may be called the early reformation,to that band of honest men in the beginning of the sixteenth century,precursors of the later one perhaps, but, like Erasmus, between the twoextremes. He was neither Lutheran nor Calvinist, neither German norGenevese, and it is quite natural that his work was not reprinted inSwitzerland, which would certainly have happened had the Protestants lookedon him as one of themselves.
That Rabelais collected the materials for the fifth book, had begun it, andgot on some way, there can be no doubt: the excellence of a large numberof passages prove it, but--taken as a whole--the fifth book has not thevalue, the verve, and the variety of the others. The style is quitedifferent, less rich, briefer, less elaborate, drier, in parts evenwearisome. In the first four books Rabelais seldom repeats himself. Thefifth book contains from the point of view of the vocabulary really theleast novelty. On the contrary, it is full of words and expressionsalready met with, which is very natural in an imitation, in a copy, forcedto keep to a similar tone, and to show by such reminders and likenessesthat it is really by the same pen. A very striking point is the profounddifference in the use of anatomical terms. In the other books they aremost frequently used in a humorous sense, and nonsensically, with a quiteother meaning than their own; in the fifth they are applied correctly. It
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was necessary to include such terms to keep up the practice, but the writerhas not thought of using them to add to the comic effect: one cannotalways think of everything. Trouble has been taken, of course, to includeenumerations, but there are much fewer fabricated and fantastic words. Inshort, the hand of the maker is far from showing the same suppleness andstrength.
A eulogistic quatrain is signed Nature quite, which, it is generallyagreed, is an anagram of Jean Turquet. Did the adapter of the fifth booksign his work in this indirect fashion? He might be of the Genevese familyto whom Louis Turquet and his son Theodore belonged, both well-known, andboth strong Protestants. The obscurity relating to this matter is far frombeing cleared up, and perhaps never will be.
It fell to my lot--here, unfortunately, I am forced to speak of a personalmatter--to print for the first time the manuscript of the fifth book. Atfirst it was hoped it might be in Rabelais' own hand; afterwards that itmight be at least a copy of his unfinished work. The task was a difficultone, for the writing, extremely flowing and rapid, is execrable, and mostdifficult to decipher and to transcribe accurately. Besides, it oftenhappens in the sixteenth and the end of the fifteenth century, thatmanuscripts are much less correct than the printed versions, even when theyhave not been copied by clumsy and ignorant hands. In this case, it is thewriting of a clerk executed as quickly as possible. The farther it goesthe more incorrect it becomes, as if the writer were in haste to finish.
What is really the origin of it? It has less the appearance of notes orfragments prepared by Rabelais than of a first attempt at revision. It isnot an author's rough draft; still less is it his manuscript. If I had notprinted this enigmatical text with scrupulous and painful fidelity, I woulddo it now. It was necessary to do it so as to clear the way. But as thething is done, and accessible to those who may be interested, and who wishto critically examine it, there is no further need of reprinting it. Allthe editions of Rabelais continue, and rightly, to reproduce the edition of1564. It is not the real Rabelais, but however open to criticism it maybe, it was under that form that the fifth book appeared in the sixteenthcentury, under that form it was accepted. Consequently it is convenientand even necessary to follow and keep to the original edition.
The first sixteen chapters may, and really must be, the text of Rabelais,in the final form as left by him, and found after his death; the framework,and a number of the passages in the continuation, the best ones, of course,are his, but have been patched up and tampered with. Nothing can have beensuppressed of what existed; it was evidently thought that everything shouldbe admitted with the final revision; but the tone was changed, additionswere made, and 'improvements.' Adapters are always strangely vain.
In the seventeenth century, the French printing-press, save for an editionissued at Troyes in 1613, gave up publishing Rabelais, and the work passedto foreign countries. Jean Fuet reprinted him at Antwerp in 1602. Afterthe Amsterdam edition of 1659, where for the first time appears 'TheAlphabet of the French Author,' comes the Elzevire edition of 1663. Thetype, an imitation of what made the reputation of the little volumes of theGryphes of Lyons, is charming, the printing is perfect, and the paper,which is French--the development of paper-making in Holland and England didnot take place till after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes--isexcellent. They are pretty volumes to the eye, but, as in all the reprints
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of the seventeenth century, the text is full of faults and mostuntrustworthy.
France, through a representative in a foreign land, however, comes intoline again in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in a reallyserious fashion, thanks to the very considerable learning of a Frenchrefugee, Jacob Le Duchat, who died in 1748. He had a most thoroughknowledge of the French prose-writers of the sixteenth century, and he madethem accessible by his editions of the Quinze Joies du Mariage, of HenriEstienne, of Agrippa d'Aubigne, of L'Etoile, and of the Satyre Menippee.In 1711 he published an edition of Rabelais at Amsterdam, through HenryBordesius, in five duodecimo volumes. The reprint in quarto which heissued in 1741, seven years before his death, is, with its engravings byBernard Picot, a fine library edition. Le Duchat's is the first of thecritical editions. It takes account of differences in the texts, andbegins to point out the variations. His very numerous notes arer