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ence, or transient impression, must perish with their parents." To us who are unacquainted with the follies and impieties of the Greek sophists, nothing can appear more wretched than the ridicule with which these pretended philosophers were persecuted by Aristophanes, yet it is said to have acted with wonderful effect among a people distinguished for wit and refinement of taste. The humour, which in Hudibras transported the age which gave it birth with merriment, is lost, in a great degree, to a posterity unaccustomed to puritanical moroseness.

No satirical writings have suffered more by lapse of time than those of Rabelais; for, besides being in a great measure confined to temporary and local subjects, he was obliged to write with ambiguity, on account of the delicate matters of which he treated, the arbitrary and persecuting spirit of the age and country in which he lived, and the multitude of enemies by whom he was surrounded. Accordingly, even to those who are most minutely acquainted with the political transactions and ecclesiastical history of the sixteenth century, there will be many things from which no meaning can be deciphered, and to most readers the works of Rabelais must appear a mass of unintelligible extravagance. The advantages which he formerly

derived from temporary opinions, personal allusions, and local customs, have long been lost, and every topic of merriment which the modes of artificial life afforded, now only "obscure the page which they once illumined." Even the outline of the story, with which Rabelais has chosen to surround his satire, has furnished matter of dispute, and commentators are not agreed what persons are intended by the two chief characters, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Thus it has been said by some writers, that Gargantua is Francis I. and Pantagruel Henry II., while, in fact, there is not one circumstance in the lives, nor one feature in the characters, of these French princes, which appears to correspond with the actions or dispositions of the imaginary heroes of Rabelais.

Other critics have supposed that Grangousier, the father of Gargantua, is John D'Albret, king of Navarre; Gargantua, Henry D'Albret, son and successor of John; Pantagruel, Anthony Bourbon, duke of Vendosme, who was father to Henry IV., and by his marriage with Jean D'Albret, the daughter of Henry D'Albret, succeeded his father-in-law in the throne of Navarre. Picrohole, according to this explication, is king of Spain, either Ferdinand of Arragon, or Charles V. Panurge, the companion of Pantagruel, who is the

secondary hero of the work, is said to be John de Montluc, bishop of Valence, who, like Panurge, was well versed in ancient and modern languages; like him, penetrating and deceitful; like him, professed the popish religion, while he despised its superstitions, and owed, like Panurge, his elevation to the family of Navarre. That want of accordance, which exists in many particulars between the real characters and the delineations of Rabelais, and which is the great cause of the intricacy of the subject, arises from individuals in the work being made to represent two or more persons, whose aggregate qualities and adventures are thus concentrated in one. On the other hand, the author often subdivides an integral history, so that the same individual is represented under different names. Nor does he confine himself to the order of chronology, but frequently joins together events which followed each other at long intervals.

Holding this in view, it will be found that the commentators who have adopted the above-mentioned key, explain more successfully than could have been expected the meaning and tendency of the five books of Rabelais.

The first is occupied chiefly with the life of Gargantua. An absurd and disgusting carousal of

his father Grangousier ridicules the debaucheries of John D'Albret, which often consisted in going privately to eat and drink immoderately at the houses of his meanest subjects. The account of the manner in which Gargantua, or Henry D'Albret, was brought up, corresponds with the mode in which we are informed by historians the young princes of Navarre passed their childhood, espe cially Henry IV., whom his grandfather inured in his tender age to all sorts of hardship. After some time Gargantua is sent to Paris, and put under the tuition of a pedant called Holofernes, whence Shakspeare has probably taken the name of his pedantic character in Love's Labour's Lost. The education of Gargantua is a satire on the tedious and scholastic mode of instruction which was then in use, and is, at the same time, expressive of the little improvement derived by Henry D'Albret from popish tuition, while the progress Gargantua afterwards made in every science under the care of Ponocrates, points out the benefit derived by the prince of Navarre from his protestant teachers, to whose religion he was ardently, though secretly, attached. Gargantua called from Paris to defend his own country, which had been invaded by the Truans, alludes to the wars between the house of D'Albret and the Spaniards

truand signifying idle or lazy, which the French imagined to be the character of that people.

Book second commences with a detail of the pedigree of Pantagruel, which the author deduces from the giants, a satire on the family pride of some of the princes of Navarre. Next follow the wonderful feats he performed in his childhood, and then his youthful expedition to Paris. In this excursion he meets with a Limousin, who addresses him in a pedantic and unintelligible jargon, by which Rabelais mocks the writers of the age, who stuffed their compositions with Latin terms, to which they gave a French inflection. Pantagruel arrives at Paris, and enters on his studies. The catalogue of the books in St Victor's library, the names of which are partly real and partly fictitious, is meant as a sarcasm on those who form a collection of absurd works. Pantagruel makes such proficiency in his studies, that he is appointed umpire in an important cause, in which the incoherent nonsense of the pleadings of the parties, and Pantagruel's unintelligible decision, are a satire on the judicial proceedings of the age, particularly those that took place in the trial concerning the domains possessed by the Constable of Bourbon, and which were claimed by Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis I.

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