RABELAIS, Dr. Francis, immortalized by his Romance of Gargantua and Pantagruel, was born at Chinon, a little town of Touraine, in 1483. His father, Thomas Rabelais, is generally understood to have been an apothecary of that town, and proprietor of the farm of La Devi-nière in the neighbourhood, where, it is said, a great part of the romance was written. According to some biographers, however, he was a vintner in Chinon, and kept a cabaret there at the sign of the Lamprey. The probability is, that he combined both occupations, dealing in drugs and spices, “and other things of great price ;” and also disposing of the wine produced upon his own property, a traffic very different in its nature from that suggested by the modern ideas of an apothecary and keeper of a cabaret. He was unquestionably a man of substance, and able to procure for his son an education of as high a character as was then to be obtained. He sent him to be educated by the monks of Seville, an abbey not far from Chinon, but the boy’s progress under their care was so unpromising, as to occasion his removal to the University of Angers, where he studied for some time at tile convent of La Baumette, but apparently with no greater proficiency than before. It was at this esta[7:19:2]blishment that he made the acquaintance of the brothers Du Bellay, one of them afterwards the celebrated Cardinal, a connexion which lasted through life, and ultimately proved of the greatest service to him. After passing through the usual preparatory studies, Rabelais was admitted into the order of Cordeliers at the convent of Fontenay-le-Compte in Poitou, where he assumed the religious habit. Here he prosecuted his studies with such zeal, as to retrieve any loss of time which indifference or injudicious tutors might previously have occasioned. Striking out of the usual routine of scholastic study, which then held undivided sway in the monastic houses, he applied himself, with unusual industry and research, to the cultivation of the sciences It was his aim, says Niceron, to become a grammarian, poet, philosopher, physician, jurisconsult, and astronomer, and his works bear ample testimony to his success. He possessed a peculiar aptitude for the acquisition of the languages; an aptitude which afterwards showed itself in his command of Italian, Spanish, German, English, Hebrew, and Arabic. At this period, in fact, he was a perfect master of the Latin and Greek tongues, the latter of which had for some time been engaging the attention of the most enlightened spirits of the age. Within the walls of Fontenay-le-Compte, however, a Greek book was looked upon as no better than a work of magic, and the man who commanded the key to its secrets passed for a trafficker in “the arts inhibited ;” and it appears, by a letter from Budaeus to a friend, that Rabelais’ attachment to the Greek writers drew upon him the hatred and persecution of his fellow monks. His independence of spirit, and generous ardour in the pursuit of learning, which could not but be felt as a reproach to their own resolute ignorance, pedantry, and sloth, was continually furnishing fresh incentives to their rancour, and they omitted no opportunity of subjecting him to annoyance. Worn out by repeated aggressions, he followed the advice of his friends, and resolved to quit a society where he found so little that was congenial to his own disposition. It has been alleged, that the true cause of this step was his own profligacy; but this is only the first of the many groundless charges against him, engendered either by the malice of his enemies, or originating in a misapprehension of his character as seen in his writings, namely, that of a man whose whole life was a noisy jest, a soulless round of sensual indulgences. Had such really been his character, as has been pertinently remarked by Père

Niceron, “these were not the days, when, for such a cause, he needed to have left his monastery; he might have given free rein to his propensities there, and yet not have been going out of the ordinary course.” The authority of a churchman on such a point is conclusive.

In 1523, a brief was obtained from Pope Clement VII., allowing him to pass from the order of St. Francis into that of St. Benedict, and leaving this “pack of capuchins, monks, who forbade the use of beans, that is, Pantagrueline books,” to borrow a phrase from the prologue to the fifth book of his Romance, he entered the monastery of Maillezais in Poitou, where he remained during several years. But he appears to have found himself little better off in his present situation, than in that which he had left. It did not present him, it is said, with such resources as he desired for extending the limits of his knowledge, more especially as regarded medical science. His motives for this step were doubtless of a mingled nature, of which it is but reasonable to suppose the chief was a disgust at the torpor and profitless seclusion of a monastic life, by escaping from which he could alone hope to find opportunities for exercising his stirring and strongly practical intellect in a field of action, observation, and experience, sufficiently ample for its desires. However this may be, he laid down the regular habit for that of a secular priest, and quitted Maillezais without the sanction of his superior, a breach of ecclesiastical discipline which exposed him to its severest censures. After rambling about for some time in the diligent pursuit of medical knowledge, as he says himself in his petition to Pope' Paul III. praying for absolution from the penalties incurred by his unauthorised retirement from Maillezais, he settled at Montpellier, after taking his physician’s degree at its university, and practised the medical profession there with credit and success. It appears by the dedication to Godefroy D’Estissac, bishop of Maillezais, of an edition of Hippocrates’s Aphorisms, and the Ars Parva of Galen, published by Rabelais in 1532, at Lyons, and highly esteemed by the medical and literary men of the time, that his lectures on physic at the university of that place had attracted considerable attention. Such, indeed, was the distinction he attained, that he was selected by tile university as their deputy to procure a restitution of the privileges of which one of its colleges had been denuded by the chancellor Du Prat. The means employed by Rabelais for obtaining access to the chancellor have formed the subject of a story to be found in all his biographies; but it is too obviously a fabrication from an incident in his own Romance, (the introduction of Panurge to Pantagruel, book ii. c. ix.) to be worth a place here. He succeeded in the object of his mission, and his services to the university were perpetuated in a custom, still, according to the Biographie Universelle, in existence, by which every candidate is required to put on Rabelais’ gown upon receiving his physician’s degree.

In 1533, we find him established at Lyons, where he was hospital physician, and taught and practised for several years. At the commencement of the year 1534, his old schoolfellow and friend, Jean du Bellay, then bishop of Paris, having
occcasion
to pass through Lyons on his way to the papal court, regarding the divorce of Henry VIII. of England, took Rabelais along with him in the capacity of his physician; thus enabling him to realise, what had long been his passionate wish, a personal acquaintance with Italy and the Eternal City. For, to use the words of his dedication to Du Bellay of an edition of Marliani’s Typographia Antiquae Romoe, published, under Rabelais’ superintendence, by Gryphius, at Lyons, in 1534, “from the first moment that I was able to appreciate the worth of polite learning, it was amongst the foremost of my desires to travel throughout Italy, and visit the capital of the Roman world.” The opportunity for gratifying the popular conceptions of his character, afforded by this visit of the great satirist of the abuses of the Romish church to the court of its supreme head, has not been let slip by the anecdote-mongers; and several absurd stories of his conduct have accordingly been handed down from biographer to biographer, till they seem almost to have acquired the authority of undoubted truths. One specimen of these will be sufficient. When the Cardinal Du Bellay was presented to the Pope, he, as ambassador of Francis I., went through the usual ceremony of kissing his holiness’s slipper. His suite followed his example, all except Rabelais, who remained leaning against a pillar, and exclaimed loud enough to be heard, That if his master, who was a great lord in France, were unworthy to kiss the pope’s feet, his holiness might untruss, and possibly, after reasonable abstersion, a part might be found, where an humble follower like himself might presume to apply his lips. The improbability, that Rabelais should have expressed himself in these terms, filling the situation which he did, and when, too, he was on the eve of supplicating a release from this very pope from the ecclesiastical penalties he had incurred by his unauthorised desertion of the monastery of Maillezais, speaks sufficiently for the worthlessness of this story. But its real source is obvious enough, and may be found in book iv. c. 48. of his Romance. It needed but a poor invention to construct such a tale out of the extravagant devotion of the worthies that greeted Pantagruel and his band, on their arrival at the Island of Papimany. That, however, which, as told by Rabelais himself, is a stroke of the most caustic satire,
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makes but a sorry jest in the hands of those who first built up a theory of his character according to an idea of their own, and then fabricated anecdotes to support and illustrate it. Rabelais’ judgment, it is certain, was quite as powerful as his wit; and he knew too well when to discharge his bolt with effect, ever to let it fly where detriment to the archer himself could alone be the result. The veil of extravagance, which he has thrown over his great satirical work, is the best possible proof how unlikely he was to be guilty of any such piece of superfluous imprudence. At the same time, it is to be remarked further, in confutation of this particular Story, that it was to Clement VII. and not to Paul III., that Du Bellay must have been introduced in the capacity of ambassador on the occasion alluded to; but, as invention and historical truth are two distinct things, this discrepancy in fact is not greatly to be wondered at.

Rabelais seems to have gone back to Lyons for a time, as his Epistle Dedicatory to Du Bellay of his edition of Marhanfs Antiquitates Romoe Antiquoe is dated from that city on the 3lst of August 1534. He returned shortly afterwards to Rome, and rejoined Du Bellay, who had been created Cardinal on the 21st of May 1535. His letters to Godefroy D’Estissac, whose favour he had won during his residence at his Abbey of Maillezais, and continued ever afterwards to retain, are dated from Rome during the two following years. Availing himself of the opportunity which his presence on the spot afforded, he petitioned Pope Paul III. to be absolved from the penalties incurred by the abandonment of his order. Rabelais’ merits had secured him the esteem of Cardinals de Genutiis and Simonetta, and they combined with Du Bellay and the Bishop of Mascon, in forwarding his petition. By their exertions a bull in his favour was obtained gratis, contrary to the usual practice. It was granted on the 17th of January 1536, in terms of his request, allowing him to return into any house of the Benedictine order that would receive him, and to practise physic upon condition of his doing so without hope of fee or reward. This release from the ecclesiastical disabilities consequent upon his transgression of the church’s rules enabled the Cardinal Du Bellay to assign him a place in his Abbey of St. Maur des Fossez, near Paris. Here he remained until the year 1542, when he was appointed by the same friend to the cure of Meu-don; and he continued in the zealous discharge of the duties of this station down to the time of his death. “Ever mindful,” says Niceron, “to instruct his people, he made it part of his care to give their children a knowledge of church music, of which he was himself a thorough master. His house was ever open to the poor and wretched, whom he assisted to the utmost of his means; and he was in the habit of drawing men of learning and science about him, to discourse with them upon their several pursuits. Against women, however, his gates were barred, and his reputation on this score is wholly without blemish. This,” he adds, “is the uniform testimony of contemporary biographers; and Antony Le Roi, who wrote a life of him in 1649, avers that such was then the prevailing tradition at Meudon. His knowledge of medicine rendered him doubly useful to his parishioners, who invariably found him ready to minister to their wants both corporal and spiritual.” He died in Paris, in 1553, in the Rue des Jardins, parish of St. Paul, and was buried in the cemetery of that church.

His death-bed has not escaped profanation by the caterers for the jest-books; and there are few stories more common, than his calling for his domino, when he felt his end approaching, with the words, “Beati qui in Domino moriuntur.” Another anecdote, even more detrimental to his character, is in every-day circulation, by which he is reported to have replied to a page sent by Du Bellay to inquire after his health, “Tell your master the state you find me in; I am going in quest of a Great Perhaps. He is up in the jay’s nest· Bid him keep where he is; and for you, you will never be anything but a fool. Draw the curtain; the farce is ended.” Those who have read Rabelais’ spirit aright need no confutation of this slanderous fabrication of monkish malice, the miserable patchwork from some half-dozen threadbare facetiae. The simple fact recorded by Du Verdier, is worth a thousand such tales; and it determines, if, indeed, such evidence were necessary, Rabelais’ opinion as to the momentous doctrine which he is here represented to have viewed as no more than “a great perhaps." In a copy of Galen, annotated throughout in the handwriting of Rabelais, that had come into the Bishop of Evreux’s possession, opposite a passage in which Galen argues for the mortality of the soul, Rabelais had written, “Hic vero Galenus se plumbeum ostendit.” Du Vertlier also states, whilst at the same time he retracts what he had formerly been led, in accordance with the popular voice, to say against Rabelais in his Bibliothèque Française, that “the manner of his death compels us to form a judgment of him totally at variance with that which is currently received.” The particular circumstances of this event are not now known, but they were doubtless such as became a pious and eminently thoughtful man.

One cannot help regretting, with Coleridge, “that no friend of Rabelais, and surely friend he must have had, has left an account of him.” Had any such account existed, it would unquestionably have conveyed an impression of his personal character very different from that which the current anecdotes of him are calculated to produce. It is the peculiar misfortune of distinguished humourists to have the paternity of such jests as are tossing unclaimed about the world laid to their charge. They become a sort of Foundling Hospitals for Wit; and Rabelais has had more than his share of this abandoned progeny thrust upon him. His reputation as a man has suffered accordingly, and this for an obvious reason; for just in the degree that a great man’s mind is marked by features, which puzzle the finest sagacity to discriminate and reconcile, are people disposed to pronounce an authoritative judgment regarding him. In all such cases, a lively anecdote, or sparkling witticism, is too cheap and pleasant a method of settling a doubtful character, not to be generally adopted. They commonly fall in with the conclusion that lies nearest the surface, and, being thus most easily come at, they are eagerly caught up and borne along from mouth to mouth, till their mere repetition sanctifies the delusion out of which they sprung. One common character runs throughout all the anecdotes of which Rabelais is the hero. They show a mind without gravity or depth, giving head to its most wayward sallies, neglectful of self-respect, and reckless of present circumstances, or of possible results. Such is just the character which a superficial observer is likely to form of him from his own romance. The rhodomantade, the coarseness, the downright nonsense, the reckless exuberance of humour, are easily noted; whilst the vein of deep and earnest thought that ever and anon shows itself amid the surrounding extravagance, the infinite good sense, the high-toned and enlightened philanthropy, and the great moral purpose which the author had in view, escape the careless and unpenetrating eye. The vices, which he has laid bare with such masterly tact, have been set down as his own, and he is charged with having been a profligate, a debauchee, and a buffoon, destitute alike of self-respect, and reverence for whatsoever is sacred or noble. But every thing that is known of his life, as well as what may be inferred from a study of his works, goes to discountenance such a conclusion, He was beloved and respected by many of the most illustrious and virtuous prelates of his time, admitted into their most private councils, and charged with the most important trusts. All his works, except his romance, which, being a reflection of the time, must needs carry its grossness and licentiousness upon its front, are conceived in a uniformly grave and learned spirit; and in [7:19:4]his letters, where certainly a light or ribald mind was most likely to have shown itself, there is nothing to be found unworthy of the scholar and the churchman. These facts are utterly inconsistent with the charges of buffoonery, immorality, and irreligion, which are usually coupled with his name; and who can doubt, that, had his life given any warrant for such charges, there were jealous enemies enough to have placed the fact beyond the uncertainty of mere assertion?

In common with the other great assailants of religious abuses, Rabelais was branded with the names of heretic and atheist, and the Dedication of the Fourth Book of his Romance makes an indignant allusion to the circumstance. Epithets like these, however, he could well afford to share with such men as Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon. Had he escaped them, indeed, there would have heen some cause for wonder; for, assuredly, the severest blow ever levelled against the Roman Catholic church was the publication of the Chronicle of the Wondrous Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The popularity of its form secured it attention, where a formal censure would have been disregarded; and it was read on every hand with unexampled avidity. Calvin spoke of part of it with asperity, but others of the reformers, penetrating its real spirit, gave it their warmest approval, and Beza’s well-known epigram has long graced every edition of the book.
Qui sic nugatur, tractantem ut seria vincat,
Cum seria faciet dic, rogo, quantus erit?
If be, wbo in bis frolic mood
Outdoes the lore of toilsome sages,
Should don grave wisdom’s reverend hood,
What might be looked for from his pages?

“Beyond a doubt,” says Coleridge, “he was among the deepest as well as boldest thinkers of his age. His buffoonery was not merely Brutus’ rough stick, which contained a rod of gold; it was necessary as an amulet against the monks and bigots. Never was there a more plausible, and seldom, I am persuaded, a less appropriate line, than the thousand times quoted
Rabelais laughing in bis easy cbair

of Mr. Pope. The caricature of his filth and zanyism proves how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood. I could write a treatise in praise of the moral elevation of Rabelais’ work, which would make the church stare, and the conventicle groan, and yet would be the truth, and nothing but the truth. I class Rabelais with the great creative minds of the world, [Homer,] Shakspeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c.” The prevalent coarseness, though this even is not always without its meaning, of Rabelais’ great work, makes it repulsive to the mass of readers; and this it is, probably, which has enabled modern writers to appropriate its thoughts and witticisms with impunity. But the richness of invention, the dramatic force of the characters, the originality and vigour of thought, the wit, the learning, the satire, poignant yet without cynicism, the wise philosophy, and the atmosphere of triumphant joyousness that invests the whole, justify the praises of Coleridge, and will secure its fame, as long as vice remains to be lashed, and folly to be ridiculed, or the love of genial humour, and far-sighted wisdom is not utterly extinct.

It is impossible not to admire the robust and healthy nature of the mind of Rabelais, which, at a time when earnestness was constantly running into extravagant excesses in the persons of the other great reformers of the period, maintained its equipoise, without losing any of its intensity in seizing and grappling with the predominant abuses. Nor is its moral culture less conspicuous, which, in an age when the face of society presented so much to impress a conviction of the farce and hollowness of the world, preserved him, in despite of his acute sense of the absurd, the false, and the contemptible, as well as of his strong satirical bias, from becoming a morbid and misanthropical reviler of mankind. “I ask not,” says Coleridge, “the genius of a Machiavel, a Tacitus, ora Swift; it needs only a worldly experience, and an observing mind, to convince a man of forty, that there is no medium between the creed of misanthropy and that of the gospel.” Which of these, then, was Rabelais? Most certainly the latter. He hates cant in all its shapes, hypocrisy under all its disguises; tyranny, intolerance, villainy, selfishness, and all its brood of tyrant vices, are hisabhorrence; mere folly he makes his sport, and he dallies with absurdity with a very wantonness. But he never forgets, that he, the satirist, is himself come of the stock of Adam, or libels heaven, by flying in the face of that nature, which, good or bad, is all that himself and his fellow-men have got to struggle through the world with. He takes life as.it is; he would fain see it better, and lends a helping hand to make it so. Like his great countryman Beranger.
De l’univers observant la machine,
Il y voit du mal, et n’aime que le bien.

He detests the evil that is in the world, but he never abandons his faith in the good. His satire is not the angry yelping of a currish nature, the overflow of sour secretions and accumulated bile. Where it is grave, it is the commanding voice of honest indignation; where jovial, there is a kindliness of tone with it, that makes you like the man, whilst you admire his genius. He is essentially good-natured even in his severest moods; and this is apparent in the very form of his satire. Its most caustic strokes are given with a merry voice and laughing eye; and yet, whilst apparently revelling in the most unrestrained ebullitions of mere animal spirits, and licentious fancy, he is covertly stripping sensualism of its enticements, and enforcing the strongest lessons of humility. He possessed, in short, the wisdom of love, which is “the creed of the gospel,” and this his book testifies in a hundred places. At the same time, its defects are great and manifold, and these cannot be better summed up than in the words of La Bruyère. “Rabelais is inexcusable in having scattered mere filth throughout his writings. His book is a chimera. It is the face of a beautiful woman with the tail of a serpent, or of some other still more unsightly monster. It is a monstrous jumble of a fine and delicately wrought moral, and of the most offensive grossness. Where it is bad, it is as bad as can be,— the very scum of the world might batten on it; where it is good, nothing can be more choice or excellent; it can furnish most dainty fare.”

For bibliographical details as to the works of Rabelais, see Biographie Universelle, tome xxxvi. A careful memoir of him will be found in Niceron’s Mémoires des Hommes Illustres, and also in Chauffepié’s Supplement to Bayle. Rabelais has been naturalised amongst ourselves, more successfully, perhaps, than any Other foreign writer, by Sir T. Urqu-hart and Motteux’s admirable version of his romance. (B. F.)