his 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 days, was a gallant young gentleman and scholar,
holding a place in the court of Francis I., who had translated into
French the works of Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon, and had asserted
that it was heretical to invoke the Virgin Mary instead of the Holy
Spirit, or to call her our Hope and our Life, which titles--Berquin
averred--belonged alone to God. Twice had the doctors of the Sorbonne,
with that terrible persecutor, Noel Beda, at their head, seized poor
Berquin, and tried to burn his books and him; twice had that angel in
human form, Marguerite d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I., saved him from
their clutches; but when Francis--taken prisoner at the battle of
Pavia--at last returned from his captivity in Spain, the suppression of
heresy and the burning of heretics seemed to h