BOOKS.
RA.BELA.IS.* WHEN we look at this book in a literary sense, there comes over us the same feeling of disgust as there does when we recall to mind some of those nasty nightmares which are full * Rabelais. Published fur the Rabelais Club by A. P. Watt, and edited by W. F. Smith, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 2 vols of foul matter, rotting wood, large, filthy puddles, bogs, detestable beasts, vermin, and immense black spiders, from which we wake up with delightful relief, and we turn from it with the utmost satisfaction that we are not compelled to read it through. But when we consider it in an historical light, we thank sincerely the Rabelais Club for publishing it, and Mr. W. F. Smith for editing it so carefully and efficiently, and thus fulfilling the wish of Mr. Besant that" some Englishman may yet be found" to do it. It will go down to posterity as our great translation of the great French writer. Mr. Smith's notes are excellent, the translation everything that could be desired, and we should not be surprised if many Frenchmen were to look at it with longing eyes, wishing they could read it. The only defect in the book is, as we think, the leaving in French a portion of it. It is not likely that boys and girls will get access to it, and as for women, they will learn more that is immoral from a few pages of a modern French novelist, than from all the works of Rabelais and Zola together ; but they would gain some knowledge of physiological science from this author,—among other things, the fact that he foresaw the truth of the circulation of the blood long before Harvey hit upon the discovery of it.
The preface is also exactly to the point, and the index so full and perfectly constracted, that we can at once pick out the passages we want without being obliged to hold our nose over the countless, less fragrant pages. The print and paper are splendid, and do credit to Mr. Watts, the publisher. We once began to read Rabelais through with the intention of finding out how much of his book might be read by everybody; but our task was so much against the grain that we made every excuse for stopping by the way to clear up difficulties and understand allusions, so that we were soon obliged to give in. On the other hand, we once started with Hamlet, on reading through Shakespeare, with the object of finding how little impure matter there was in him ; but we had not got beyond the first scene when we completely forgot our pur- pose, and were only reminded of it by the song of Ophelia, and so had to begin again. Shakespeare borrowed from Rabe- lais many thoughts, as also the first part of the passage,— " The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling."
The portrait of Rabelais is conspicuous by its absence ; perhaps all the better, for on looking at four good portraits of Montaigne, we could not from them determine whether he was a fool, a fox, or what not. As for our author, we had forgotten his exterior, and had naturally pictured him to our- selves as a kind of Rev. Father Sir John Falstaff, for he was a Rev. Father Confessor. Well, he had one qualification for this office, and that a very important one, as he knew what the sin of men was, and was not likely, as a modern Anglican priest might be, to order ignorantly too severe a penance for the innocent or too light a one for the guilty. A friend of the present writer, an officer, went to confess to an old and venerable monk, who gave him much too severe a penance, as he thought, for his offence. So he complained of his being an old woman, and not understanding men. Then he went and confessed to a priest who had been in the Army; and he, on hearing what he had to say, remarked, "Barrack sins, barrack sins ; I know what they are ; the Church looks leniently on them." "And so," said the officer, "he polished me off nicely." No doubt Rabelais understood how to polish off nicely. The house in which he was born became a tavern, a suitable place for getting drunk over the memory of this rollicking priest.
Historically, his book is the most powerful that was ever written, for it was one of the most important factors in the great reformation of the Church. What barrels of the nastiest oil he threw on the rising flames of that conflagra- tion ! How fearfully he exposed the wickedness of her priests For doing this he deserves the gratitude of Catholics and Protestants, and his success covers a multitude of sins. The Augean Stables had to be cleansed by a Hercules—he was, a Hercules with a vengeance 1—which was not to be done by mild circumlocution or pleasant irony. Terribly indecent is his book, but we doubt if it is at all immoral, except so far as indecency is itself immoral.
Rabelais had an extraordinary imagination, was a learned man ; he knew Greek, the study of which had not long before been revived, and was to have so much influence on the move- ment of reform, and he used his Greek slily to prove that the Sorbonne was inferior to himself in learning. It is very curious how the Church allowed him to escape with his life,
and that she put to death many whose influence would have been nil; the Pope even granted. him a special Bull of absolu- tion. He is considered by the French as one of their four great writers, the others being Montaigne, Pascal, and Voltaire. What a variety ! He was the Roisterer of the four. We may divide the world into roisterers and non-roisterers, but we have only space to pick out Aristophanes and Rabelais among the first, and Plato, Sophocles, Pascal, and Renan among the second class. Shakespeare was a fine roisterer in his Falstaff. We can fancy Rabelais and Renan, each reading aloud a page of his own work,—the former, in satin of all colours of the rainbow, bawling out his sentences flavoured with garlic ; the latter, in black velvet, reading softly his keen irony and elegant prose all fragrant with essence of violet in that doctored form in which these essences are usually manufactured.
Rabelais was the companion of good men throughout his life, both at school and in the world, and no doubt he was "good company" himself, for he had a full mind, a ready tongue, and the temperament of a boon companion. He was well learned in medicine, and might have done in our days for a medical missionary to the savages ; but he would have worn a top hat, which is now the only dis- tinct dress of the doctor in the provinces. When he took his Doctor's degree, he marched with the Father of his College, followed by the whole body of the University and bands of music, to church, the bells ringing, and there he put on his red robe, black bonnet, gold ring, and gilt belt. When the cere- mony was over, he had to distribute sweetmeats, gloves, and preserved fruits. He was somewhat of a glutton himself. His robe was preserved for nearly two centuries ; but, unfor- tunately, it had to be renewed more than twice, as every student used to cut off a piece as a relic. At the age of fifty, he acted in a play. This must have given mortal offence to several good people in those days, as it is not so many years ago that an Evangelical clergyman told the present writer that the then Duke of Bedford could not be a " good " man, as he allowed private theatricals in his house. What a rogue our author was 1—for, wishing to see the Chancellor at Paris, and not being admitted, he put on a green robe and a grey beard, and walked up and down before the door, so that the servants demanded what was his business. "A calf-skinner; those who wish to be skinned had better make haste and present themselves." The Chancellor, hearing the foolery, ordered the madman to be brought to him, and the fool spoke so learnedly in nine languages that he was forthwith invited by the host to dine with him, and. gained his request. He was fond of flowers, and had the honour of introducing into France the melon and the carnation.
In a very important chapter, Rabelais gives in full his ideas of education, which were before the age, but which we pass over, and merely give a sample or two of the state of education up to his time as satirised by him. No early rising, according to the injunction in the Psalms : "It is but lost labour that ye hasten to get up early." "After breakfast, go to church and hear twenty-six to thirty masses ; then say pateinosters enough for sixteen hermits. Heaps of food, lots of drink ; ferreting, card-playing, and no teaching." Listen how he could parody :—" My Lord, no, for libentissimally, as soon as it illuscesceth any minutute slice of the day, I demigrate into one of these fair minsters, and there irrorating myself and submurmurating my horary precules, I absterge my anime from its nocturnal inquinations. I observe the decalogical precepts, and according to the faoultatute of my vires, I do not decede from them one unguicule." "Don't you P" we reply; and so did Pa,nurge, with a kick and an oath. This is a skit on the French style sought to be introduced by
Ronsard.
Among the medical-scholastic books in the library, was one entitled "The Potations of Potative Bishops," which we would have recommended to the late Dean Waddington, of Durham (R.I.P.), who remarked—t0 himself, we hope—when Bishop Baring declined taking any wine : "The late Bishop Villiers did condescend to share a bottle of champagne with me at lunch; but what is to be done with this man P" A good sample of Rabelais' lively style isg iven in his description of begins to Diogenes carrying his tub till he is out of breath, and then he "Twirl it, whirl it, Rumble it, atonable it, fumble it, tumble it, Hustle it, :jostle it, tustle it, Thatch, scratch it, patch it,
Stamp it, damp it, ting it, ring it,"
and so on, for eighteen lines more.
Among Panurge's naughty tricks, and perhaps his own, were, —dropping evil-smelling compounds into the hoods of the Masters of Arts, throwing verjuice into people's eyes, taking a horn full of fleas to church to slily put down the necks of young ladies as they were reverently kneeling, secretly hooking or sewing together men and women there, and setting all around him sneezing with some kind of powder. He had sixty-three ways of finding money—stealing the bags from church, &c.—and two hundred and fourteen ways of spending it, so that he (Panurge) was terribly poor. However, he was so pious that he fasted so long that the spiders kept on spinning their webs across his teeth.
We commend Rabelais' view of Hell to those extreme men of our own Church who send everybody not agreeing with them in doctrine to everlasting fire and brimstone, and who would consider the following innocent passage as highly dangerous to the author's salvation : "There the wicked are not tortured bodily, but in a manner to show them what they have lost by their conduct in life. Alexander the Great has to darn stockings, Pope Alexander VI. is a rat-catcher, Cleopatra sells onions in the streets." We add : Rabelais is not selling onions, but cultivating acres of violets to drown the smell of the onions cultivatsd by him here.
On his death-bed the priest came unsent for, to whom he said : "I have done hitherto without the assistance of monk or priest, and now I am going to the great Unknown, who alone can help me through the valley of the shadow of death." Good- bye I Rabelais. We began by looking askance at your book; now we say : "Adieu! Water your violets well in those hot regions, which are, we fear, much hotter than you expected."
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