ts, or for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it,
he carried along with him one of the ladies, namely her who had
before that accepted him as her lover, and they were married
together.

The foregoing is one of the most purely sweet imaginative passages in
Rabelais's works. The representation, as a whole, sheathes, of course, a
keen satire on the religious houses. Real religion, Rabelais nowhere
attacks.

The same colossal Gargantua who had that eating adventure with the six
pilgrims, is made, in Rabelais's second book, to write his youthful son
Pantagruel--also a giant, but destined to be, when mature, a model of
all princely virtues--a letter on education, in which the most pious
paternal exhortation occurs. The whole letter reads like some learned
Puritan divine's composition. Here are a few specimen sentences:--

Fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian,
and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists;
and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that
other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the
hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy
Scriptures: first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles
of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief,
let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge....

...It behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to
cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and, by faith formed in
charity, to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be separated
from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy
heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory; but the Word of the
Lord endureth forever.

"Friar John" is a mighty man of valor, who figures equivocally in the
story of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The Abbey of Theleme is given him in
reward of his services. Some have identified this fighting monk with
Martin Luther. The representation is, on the whole, so conducted as to
leave the reader's sympathies at least half enlisted in favor of the
fellow, rough and roistering as he is.

Panurge is the hero of the romance of Pantagruel,--almost more than
Pantagruel himself. It would be unpardonable to dismiss Rabelais
without first making our readers know Panurge by, at least, a few traits
of his character and conduct. Panurge was a shifty but unscrupulous