idenote: Panurge.]

Many doubtful things have been said about this most remarkable
personage. He has been fathered upon the Cingar of Folengo, which is too
much of a compliment to that creation of the great Macaronic, and
Falstaff has been fathered upon him, which is distinctly unfair to
Falstaff. Sir John has absolutely nothing of the ill-nature which
characterises both Cingar and Panurge; and Panurge is an actual and
contemptible coward, while many good wits have doubted whether Falstaff
is, in the true sense, a coward at all. But Panurge is certainly one
thing--the first distinct and striking _character_ in prose fiction.
Morally, of course, there is little to be said for him, except that,
when he has no temptations to the contrary, he is a "good fellow"
enough. As a human example of _mimesis_ in the true Greek sense, not of
"imitation" but of "fictitious creation," he is, once more, the first
real character in prose fiction--the ancestor, in the literary sense, of
the mighty company in which he has been followed by the similar
creations of the masters from Cervantes to Thackeray. The fantastic
colouring, and more than colouring, of the whole book affects him, of
course, more than superficially. One could probably give some not quite
absurd guesses why Rabelais shaped him as he did--presented him as a
very naughty but intensely clever child, with the monkey element in
humanity thrown into utmost prominence. But it is better not to do so.
Panurge has some Yahooish characteristics, but he is not a Yahoo--in
fact, there is no misanthropy in Rabelais.[104] He is not merely impish
(as in his vengeance on the lady of Paris), but something worse than
impish (as in that on Dindenault); and yet one cannot call him diabolic,
because he is so intensely human. It is customary, and fairly correct,
to describe his ethos as that of understanding and wit wholly divorced
from morality, chivalry, or religion; yet he is never Mephistophelian.
If one of the hundred touches which make him a masterpiece is to be
singled out, it might perhaps be the series of rapturous invitations to
his wedding which he gives to his advisers while he thinks their advice
favourable, and the limitations of enforced politeness which he appends
when the unpleasant side of their opinions turns up. And it may perhaps
be added that one of the chief reasons for believing heartily in the
last Book is the delectable and unimprovable contrast which La Quinte
and her