his preceptor said that to
comb himself otherwise, to wash and make himself neat, was to lose time in
this world. Then he dunged, pissed, spewed, belched, cracked, yawned,
spitted, coughed, yexed, sneezed and snotted himself like an archdeacon,
and, to suppress the dew and bad air, went to breakfast, having some good
fried tripes, fair rashers on the coals, excellent gammons of bacon, store
of fine minced meat, and a great deal of sippet brewis, made up of the fat
of the beef-pot, laid upon bread, cheese, and chopped parsley strewed
together. Ponocrates showed him that he ought not to eat so soon after
rising out of his bed, unless he had performed some exercise beforehand.
Gargantua answered, What! have not I sufficiently well exercised myself? I
have wallowed and rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed before I rose.
Is not that enough? Pope Alexander did so, by the advice of a Jew his
physician, and lived till his dying day in despite of his enemies. My
first masters have used me to it, saying that to breakfast made a good
memory, and therefore they drank first. I am very well after it, and dine
but the better. And Master Tubal, who was the first licenciate at Paris,
told me that it was not enough to run apace, but to set forth betimes: so
doth not the total welfare of our humanity depend upon perpetual drinking
in a ribble rabble, like ducks, but on drinking early in the morning; unde
versus,

To rise betimes is no good hour,
To drink betimes is better sure.

After that he had thoroughly broke his fast, he went to church, and they
carried to him, in a great basket, a huge impantoufled or thick-covered
breviary, weighing, what in grease, clasps, parchment and cover, little
more or less than eleven hundred and six pounds. There he heard
six-and-twenty or thirty masses. This while, to the same place came his
orison-mutterer impaletocked, or lapped up about the chin like a tufted
whoop, and his breath pretty well antidoted with store of the
vine-tree-syrup. With him he mumbled all his kiriels and dunsical
breborions, which he so curiously thumbed and fingered, that there fell not
so much as one grain to the ground. As he went from the church, they
brought him, upon a dray drawn with oxen, a confused heap of paternosters
and aves of St. Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a
hat-block; and thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he
said more in turning them over than si