e scholars--a post which brought him in a small fee on
each matriculation--and that year he took a fee, among others, from one
of the most remarkable men of that or of any age, Francois Rabelais
himself.

And what shall I say of him?--who stands alone, like Shakespeare, in his
generation; possessed of colossal learning--of all science which could be
gathered in his days--of practical and statesmanlike wisdom--of knowledge
of languages, ancient and modern, beyond all his compeers--of eloquence,
which when he speaks of pure and noble things becomes heroic, and, as it
were, inspired--of scorn for meanness, hypocrisy, ignorance--of esteem,
genuine and earnest, for the Holy Scriptures, and for the more moderate
of the Reformers who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe,--and all
this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a
dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character
likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr, the man and
the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man
conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is
the ape, while the man himself sinks down in cynicism, sensuality,
practical jokes, foul talk. He returns to Paris, to live an idle,
luxurious life; to die--says the legend--saying, "I go to seek a great
perhaps," and to leave behind him little save a school of
Pantagruelists--careless young gentlemen, whose ideal was to laugh at
everything, to believe in nothing, and to gratify their five senses like
the brutes which perish. There are those who read his books to make them
laugh; the wise man, when he reads them, will be far more inclined to
weep. Let any young man who may see these words remember, that in him,
as in Rabelais, the ape and the man are struggling for the mastery. Let
him take warning by the fate of one who was to him as a giant to a pigmy;
and think of Tennyson's words:--

"Arise, and fly
The reeling faun, the sensual feast;
Strive upwards, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."

But to return. Down among them there at Montpellier, like a brilliant
meteor, flashed this wonderful Rabelais, in the year 1530. He had fled,
some say, for his life. Like Erasmus, he had no mind to be a martyr, and
he had been terrified at the execution of poor Louis de Berquin, his
friend, and the friend of Erasmus likewise. This Louis de Berquin, a man
well known in those d