Project Gutenberg's Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book IV., by Francois Rabelais

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Title: Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book IV.
Five Books Of The Lives, Heroic Deeds And Sayings Of Gargantua And
His Son Pantagruel

Author: Francois Rabelais

Release Date: August 8, 2004 [EBook #8169]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL, BOOK IV. ***

Produced by Sue Asscher and David Widger

MASTER FRANCIS RABELAIS

FIVE BOOKS OF THE LIVES, HEROIC DEEDS AND SAYINGS OF

GARGANTUA AND HIS SON PANTAGRUEL

Book IV.

Translated into English by

Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty

and

Peter Antony Motteux

The text of the first Two Books of Rabelais has been reprinted from the
first edition (1653) of Urquhart's translation. Footnotes initialled 'M.'
are drawn from the Maitland Club edition (1838); other footnotes are by the
translator. Urquhart's translation of Book III. appeared posthumously in
1693, with a new edition of Books I. and II., under Motteux's editorship.
Motteux's rendering of Books IV. and V. followed in 1708. Occasionally (as
the footnotes indicate) passages omitted by Motteux have been restored from
the 1738 copy edited by Ozell.

THE FOURTH BOOK

The Translator's Preface.

Reader,--I don't know what kind of a preface I must write to find thee
courteous, an epithet too often bestowed without a cause. The author of
this work has been as sparing of what we call good nature, as most readers
are nowadays. So I am afraid his translator and commentator is not to
expect much more than has been showed them. What's worse, there are but
two sorts of taking prefaces, as there are but two kinds of prologues to
plays; for Mr. Bays was doubtless in the right when he said that if thunder
and lightning could not fright an audience into complaisance, the sight of
the poet with a rope about his neck might work them into pity. Some,
indeed, have bullied many of you into applause, and railed at your faults
that you might think them without any; and others, more safely, have spoken
kindly of you, that you might think, or at least speak, as