18 SEPTEMBER 1920, Page 21

Rabelais. Readings Selected by W. F. Smith. (Cambridge University Press.

Ss. 6d. net.)—This little volume of select passages from Rabelais, with notes, was arranged by a Cambridge scholar who devoted the best part of a lifetime to the study of the great Frenchman. Sir John Sandya, in a prefatory memoir of his old friend and colleague, does justice to the late Mr. Smith's work. Those who hesitate to embark on the somewhat voluminous adventures of Gargantua and Pantagrue/ may be recommended to try these selections, which are charac- teristic of Rabelais at his best and are free from his peculiar grossness. The notes are excellent, and there is a short life of Rabelais.