New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-03-14
FOUR MEN OF HUMOR.
BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON

|
Wit and humOr have always found thei
| natural home in France. OF broad fur
| SUCH as the English Pinch gives us, such a
has made Mark Twain rich through til
cheerful contributions of a laughing cont
! nent always eager TO buy his books or 60 t
his lectures. We find little in France
French wit is subtler thing-the Damas
Gus blade, and not the breads word. 1t i
the esprit galOis, as Walter Besant saws the,
love 10 call it, which has come down midi
luted through seven centuries, from tn
time of the poets of the chansons to tn
present. For the story of these keen wit
and hooking minstreis we have to thanl
Besant, who has done it ample justice. Blu
from the somewhat crowded portrait gallery
he has given us | purpose to select four O.
the most striking portraits, and show yOr
what was the manner of life of these mer
who have left such enduring record in the
history of literature.
Rabelais is the first of the really great
names. He is spoken of very often as the
Cure Of MendOn," which might convey
the impression of a gOod-natured country
priest, living among posies and penitents,
and writing satire out of the depth of his
own content. But nothing could be less
like the facts. Out of long life of seventy
years, Rabelais was cure but two Of them,
but he was q monk until he was past forty.
And it was because he had learned monk
ish rule by heart in his own experience
that he had such an intolerant hatred of it,
Rabelais was born in l4S3 in Touraine. HIS
parentage was humble, and his father
thought he was providing we'll for him
when he sent him to the Benedictine monks
OF Scully. He made mistake when he
left the Benedictines and removed to a
franciscan convent; for the Francscans re-
garded learning as the foe OF religion, and
even considered the knowledge OF the
Greek language as deadly sin.
1t is a wonder how Kabeiias was able to
pursue his studies under go many difficult
ties; but scholarship was his passion, and
rule. He was forty years old before he got
out into the world free man-nOt free
from priestly vows even then, but free to
write and study, and be himself. How hard
he worked Tor the next ten years, with no
ambition, even yet. beyond scholarship, and
least Of all suspecting that he was endowed
with the gilt OF satire beyond all other men.
He was fifty when he published his first
book of ''Pantagruel.' The second book
did not appear until he was sixty-three,
and the third when ne was seventy, lust a
month before his death. There is no story
IN the lite OF Rabelais, save that Of his long
and bitter hatred of the monks, and the
passionate and powerful and witty satire to
which that hatred gave rise. There were
40 women in his books-there was no wo-
man in his life. He scarcely knew any
mother save Mother Church, to whom he
was SO unfilial a son. Sweetheart he had
none. No gentle nun pined under her veil
Tor him, or plaintive penitent said her
prayers at his feet. The feminine half of
creation was dead for him, as absent from
n Lost ne
Was he a Christians Surely not; and vet
10 never protested himself anything else
4 go;" said he, at the end, ito seek the
great Perhaps And a little afterward.
With just his latest breath, DRAW the cur.
ain; the farce is played" He was the
greatest man of his time, and he did the
'reatest harm. He sneered earnestness
nut Of France. He took away the faith of |
he people in what they had been taught to
evere, and he supplied them with nothing
q place OF it but sneer and an abstrac- |
ion. |
The very year in which the first book of |
PantagrueW was published Michel de Mon |
algne was born, just half a century after |
he birth OF Rabelais, and Montague is the |
ecOnd figure in the portrait gallery at |
Which am tempted to inger. Very differ
Mt was he in his training and experience. |
9 well as in the quality of his mind, from |
.abelais. He was in earnest in one thing,
is seltishness; no, let me add another-and |
hat to his honor-his friendship. He loved
"a boetle with love passing the love OF |
'omen, and the noblest ESSAY that he ever
'rote is that on Friendship" Montague
as the descendant of long line of coun.
y gentlemen, and he tasted none Of the
,ruggles with adverse fate which infused
lelr bitterness in the lives and works of
lost OF the French humorists. His first
reat grief was the death of La Boetie in
'63. when he, Montaigne. was thirty wears
ID.
From that time he seems never to have
nown any emotion more intense than the
fervOr Of his own self-lOve.
o married three years later, and his wife
pred HIM. They say men of genius are
ten bored by their wives. Marriage"
SAID, lis like cage-those birds that
e inside desire to get out, and those that
e out want to get in" In 1868 he sue
eded to the chateau and property of Mon
lgne, on the death OF his father, and then
commenced the collection and publica-
On OF La Beetles remains. How MANY
visits to Paris this task entailed
u can easily guess. No doubt he left
adame at home-women belong at home,
least women who are married to men of
mus. Montaigne's was another of those
|
sht before he began to write his ESSAYS,
1ey were, OF course, about himself his
SITES, his pursuits, his life. And that is
nat makes them 80 charming. They were
nest 10 the last degree; and we all find
rselves in them some where.
montague was an awful coward, and this
As natural. He was infinitely precious to
mself; and so it behooved him to take care
THIS precious self-ts SILVER and shut
nseli up during the civil war, and to run
ray from the plague. He had terrible
cad OF death, and this-which crops out
natural enough, too He
d not much faith, and he found himself |
ppy and weil-placed in this world Life
Us sweet and death was only the "Per
ps" OF Rabelais. But at last death found !
n. and he made haste to send for the
est, and die good Catholic. Madam.
wife, had thirty-six years of peace after
=. when, let us hope, no one found fault
ID her temper. | have not spoken of
me de Gournay, the adopted daughter of
'ntalgne, because she does not seem to me .
have been much to speak of. Her hold
him was through his susceptible vanity
! her feeling for him was mawkish sen, !
lentality with which our. hard headed
eteenth century common sense has no ,
hence: But she poured herself out at his
IN ftattery, which the essayist believed .
and accepted. No doubt he thought her :
rshlp but natural, since the object of her :
latry was the same with his own. .
go on thirty years before come to the
It portrait from before which ! would
" the curtain. La Fontaine Was born !
OIL; Just thirty years after Montaig .
Ter the mlnlstratiOns of the com PLEASANT | I
nch priest-went home to glory. His
Ter was q we'll to do man, q forest ran. =
, post which he reei pnad IN III. 49, | y