hristian traditions were blended, whilst taking
an altered form, with the Italian resuscitation of Greek and Roman
antiquity. Italian artists, such as Rosso of Florence, Primatice of
Bologna, Niccolo dell' Abbate of Modena, and Benvenuto Cellini of
Florence, came and settled in France, and there inspired and carried out
the king's projects and works. Leonardo da Vinci, full of years and
discontented with his Italian patrons, accompanied Francis I. to France,
and died in his arms at the castle of Clou, near Amboise, where he had
fixed his residence. Some great French artists, such as the painter John
Cousin and the sculptor John Goujon, strove ably to uphold the original
character and merits of French art; but they could not keep themselves
entirely aloof from the influence of this brilliant Italian art, for
which Francis I.'s successors, even more than he, showed a zealous and
refined attachment, but of which he was, in France, the first patron.

We will not quit the first half of the sixteenth century and the literary
and philosophical Renaissance which characterizes that period, without
assigning a place therein at its proper date and in his proper rank to
the name, the life, and the works of the man who was not only its most
original and most eminent writer, but its truest and most vivid
representative, Rabelais.

[Illustration: Rabelais----171]

Francis Rabelais, who was born at Chinon in 1495, and died at Paris in
1553, wandered during those fifty-eight years about France and Europe
from town to town, from profession to profession, from good to bad and
from bad to good estate; first a monk of the Cordeliers; then, with Pope
Clement VII.'s authority, a Benedictine; then putting off the monk's
habit and assuming that of a secular priest in order to roam the world,
"incurring," as he himself says, "in this vagabond life, the double
stigma of suspension from orders and apostasy;" then studying medicine at
Montpellier; then medical officer of the great hospital at Lyons, but,
before long, superseded in that office "for having been twice absent
without leave;" then staying at Lyons as a corrector of proofs, a
compiler of almanacs, an editor of divers books for learned patrons, and
commencing the publication of his _Vie tres-horrifique du grand
Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel_ (Most horrifying life of the great
Gargantua, father of Pantagruel), which was immediately proceeded against
by the Sorbonne "as an obscene tale