musk, civet, jewels, and other precious things." He goes on to say that his book, like these sileni and Socrates, conceals things of the utmost value within a rude and absurd exterior; and then gives another illustration: "But did you ever see a dog meeting with a marrow-bone? He is, as Plato says ('Republic,' Book ii.), the most philosophical beast in the world. If you have seen him, you have been able to note with what devotion he watches it, with what care he guards it, with what fervour he holds it, with what prudence he manages it, with what affection he breaks it, and with what diligence he sucks it. What moves him to do all this? What is the hope of his labour? At what good does he aim? Nothing but a little marrow. It is true that this little is more delicious than much of anything else, because marrow is a nourishment elaborated to perfection by nature, as Galen says (iii. Facult. Nat. et xi., de Usu Partium). After the example of this dog, it becomes you to be wise, to smell, feel, and esteem these goodly books of high conception, easy in the pursuit, difficult in the encounter. Then, by sedulous reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck the substantial marrow, that is to say, what I mean by these Pythagorical symbols, with assured hope to be made discreet and valiant by the said study; for in this you shall find quite another taste, and a more abstruse doctrine, which will reveal to you most high sacraments and horrific mysteries, as well in what concerns our religion as in matters of public state and the life economical." Yet, immediately after, he ridicules these serious pretensions: "Do you believe, on your conscience, that Homer, writing the 'Iliad'

and 'Odyssey,' thought of the allegories which have been squeezed out of him by Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Cornatus, and which Politian filched again from them? If you believe it, with neither feet nor hands do you approach my opinion, which judges them to have been as little dreamed of by Homer as were by Ovid, in his 'Metamorphoses,' the Sacraments of the Church, which a wolfish friar, a true baconpicker, has tried to prove, if, perchance, he could meet with others as foolish as himself, and (as the proverb says) a lid worthy of the saucepan."

Now, while agreeing with Coleridge that Rabelais was among the deepest, as well as boldest, thinkers of his time, and even considering him, so far as I can judge, quite the boldest and deepest of all; while further agreeing that he is to be classed with the great creative minds of the world-Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c.; and, while yet further agreeing that his filth and zanyism show how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood, I must still think Pope's line not only plausible but also appropriate. Profound thought and creative genius may wear a riant not less than a tragic face, or, in some instances, the one and the other in alternation; and there are even instances in which one-half the mask has been of Thalia and the other of Melpomene; for wisdom and genius are not necessarily, though they are more frequently, grave. Democritus the laugher seems to have been a philosopher yet more subtle than Heraclitus the weeper, and our foremost scientific men are reviving his theories after more than two millenniums; and Aristophanes, I suppose, had at least as much imaginative genius as

Euripides. Now, Rabelais is essentially a laughing philosopher, endowed with the inestimable boon of high animal spirits, ardent and quenchless, not varied by fits of deep and gloomy depression, as in so many cases; his wisdom is always steeped in drollery, his imagination revels in riotous burlesque. If he felt bitterness against any class and institution in the world, it was against monks and monkery; and well might he feel bitter against these after the fifteen years, closing with the in pace, immured among the ignorant and bigoted Franciscans of Fontenay-leComte. Yet compare even this bitterness, kept acrid by such memories of personal wrong, with the doubledistilled gall and wormwood of Swift on subjects in which he had no personal interest, and you will see how sweet-natured was the illustrious Tourangean. Both see with a vision that cannot be muffled through all the hypocrisies and falsehoods, all the faults and follies of mankind; but the scorn of Rabelais rolls out in jolly laughter, while the scorn of Swift is a sæva indignatio-the one is vented in wine, the other in vitriol. Both are prodigal in dirt, having an immense and varied assortment always on hand, to be supplied at the shortest notice. But the dirt of Swift, in spite of all that has been said against it, is in most cases distinctly moral, being heaped on immorality and vileness in order to render them the more repulsive; and it can therefore be vindicated on the same grounds as the grossness and obscenity of the Hebrew prophets, for to high thought and intense moral earnestness nothing that will serve a purpose can be common or unclean. The dirt of Rabelais, on the other hand, when he does not intentionally

besmear himself with it in order to appear a buffoon when most audaciously sarcastic and heterodox, has nothing to do with morality or immorality, but is simply the dirt of a child, such as he has described in the infancy of Gargantua, in Book i., chap. xi. As Mr. Besant, in his "French Humourists," remarks, "The filth and dirt of Rabelais do not take hold of the mind-a little cold water washes all off." We find the same in Chaucer and other early writers, though not so abundantly as in Rabelais, who had to use much for mere disguise, like one crouching in a foul ditch in order to escape his enemies; and though offensive to us now, it is perfectly innocent compared with certain recent French and English novels, more read by fine ladies than by any other class, wherein the vilest obscenity, mingled with spurious sentimentalism and other sweet nastiness, is served up in choice language-a luscious and poisonous compound, as revolting to the really pure-minded as that hideous Thais of Dante (Inferno, xviii.) in that cesspool of Malebolge —

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quella sozza scapigliata fante,
Che là si graffia con l' unghie merdose,
Et or s'accoscia, et ora è in piede stante.
Taida è la puttana."

We may be sure that the rude and rigorous Dante, even the ineffably tender and ardent Dante of the Vita Nuova and the imparadised Beatrice, would have painted just such a picture of some lovely and fascinating countess of, say, Dumas fils-an exquisite and delicate creature, redolent of the costliest perfumes, and redolent of the impurest passions in the purest French.

Coleridge says: "It is impossible to read Rabelais without an admiration mixed with wonder at the depth and extent of his learning, his multifarious knowledge and original observation, beyond what books could in that age have supplied him with;" and Mr. Besant remarks that he knew more than any other man of the time. This learning and general knowledge he pours forth with the most careless prodigality on every page, à propos of everything and nothing, so as to suggest that his stores are really inexhaustible. The book-learning and the command over many languages are astonishing enough, especially to one who, like myself, is no scholar; but yet more astonishing is the other knowledge of which Coleridge speaks, the knowledge books could not furnish, and in which perhaps only Shakespeare can parallel him: in our day Robert Browning comes nearest to this quasi-omniscience. Rabelais' long medical studies may account for much of his acquaintance with natural history, which is such as to recall the precepts of Gargantua in that magnanimous letter to his son (ii. 8): "Now, in matter of the knowledge of the works of nature, I would have thee to study that exactly; that so there be no sea, river, nor fountain of which thou dost not know the fishes; all the fowls of the air; all the several kinds of shrubs and trees, whether in forests or orchards; all the sorts of herbs and flowers that grow upon the ground; all the various metals hidden within the bowels of the earth; the precious stones of all the Orient and the South-let nothing of all these be unknown to thee." But how and when and where did he gather, how did he find room in his head to store up that prodigious