(far as it has been known) general intelligence among the mass of the people; which has decidedly elevated the tone of morals, has imbued mankind with a gentler spirit, and has mitigated the horrors of war; that book which (besides doing all this) has furnished to our most admired writers, topics of unrivalled grandeur, and images of peculiar beauty, so that its annihilation would deface the largest and the fairest portion of our literature; that book may well awaken our admiration, ensure our respect, and commend itself to our closest attention, as the sun of true knowledge, the light and glory of our literature, a prize invaluable to human society, a boon of priceless worth to every young man.

And that book is the Bible, Heaven's best gift to man. It is the repository of noble thoughts, the originator of splendid imagery, the oracle of soundest wisdom. It is a counsellor to the young,-a solace to the aged. It is the grand textbook to the true student! It sparkles with brilliance, it blazes with beauty, and it breathes the spirit of liberty. It is em, phatically and pre-eminently, THE BOOK FOR THE PEOPLE!

"Most wondrous book! bright candle of the Lord!
Star of eternity! the only star

By which the bark of man could navigate
The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss
Securely;-only star which rose on Time,
And, on its dark and troubled billows, still,
As generation drifting swiftly by,

Succeeded generation,-threw a ray

Of heaven's own light,—and to the hills of God,
The everlasting hills,-pointed the sinner's eye.
This book, this glorious book, on every line
Mark'd with the seal of high divinity;
On every leaf bedew'd with drops of love
Divine,―and with the eternal heraldry
And signature of God Almighty stampt
From first to last,—this ray of sacred light,
This lamp, from off the everlasting throne,
Mercy took down, and, in the night of time
Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow;
And evermore beseeching men with tears
And earnest sighs, to read, believe, and live!"

POLLOCK, Bk. I.

ART. IV.-Œuvres de Rabelais. A Paris. Chez L'Edentu, Libraire-Editeur, Quai des Augustins. MDCCCXXXVII. Imp. 8vo., pp. viii., 677.

We think it was Edmund Burke, who very happily remarked of the great English Reformer of Intellectual Science, that his work was most truly a Lock(e) on the Human Understanding; for, though looked at by all, few possessed the key, or were willing to open it. This must invariably be the case, to a greater or less extent, with the recognized classics of every language, they are studied by a few, skimmed over by many, and spoken of by all. Their ordinary destiny, however, is to slumber undisturbed in the enjoyment of the dusty honors of the upper shelf. The loose and general reader finds that contemporary literature is always amply sufficient to engross those scanty remnants of his leisure hours, which he is willing to devote to books; and the ostentatious or superficial student deems he may safely venture to neglect the perusal of writers, of whom he is conscious that the great majority of those he meets in society know but very little. He can descant upon the hero and heroine of the last novel,-can discuss with the greatest unction the scenes and the characters depicted therein,-he can speak most critically of the simplicity of Hume, the breadth and majesty of Clarendon, and the point of Bolingbroke; but here he stops: his acquaintance with literature will carry him no further: he may edge in a stale and second-hand sarcasm from Voltaire, a bald fallacy from Rousseau, or a trite witticism from the Comedians of the Restoration, but even here he cautiously feels his ground, looks round upon his audience, and will not dare to swim without the saving help of corks or bladders. To him, little but the names and recorded characteristics of the great classics are known. Plato and Aristotle, Bacon and Newton, Leibnitz and Locke, are nothing more than current coin, which he may throw confidently upon the counter, and, as he represents a class, we can easily understand and account for the rarity of any actual acquaintance with the mighty works which have ennobled other times.

But, if these assertions be true of the ordinary authors of standard literature, in speaking of Rabelais, we must reduce materially even the trifling proportion of readers, which we

assign to other books of established excellence. Though he be, indeed, studied by very few, he is not known even by name to many; and few but those who have meandered through the thorny and devious labyrinths of his humour, would venture to make him the subject of their conversation or remarks. To those, who have merely heard of his great production, without having ever obtained initiation into the curious obscurities of the Pantagruelistic mysteries, his name remains as the unmeaning symbol of all that is most quaint and humorous in the wide field of satire and of wit, but with less definite or real significance than 'ducdamé,' or other 'Greek invocations to call fools into a circle.' The singular phraseology in which Rabelais delighted,—the peculiar, antiquated and fantastical language in which he wrote, obsolete, grotesque, and obscure, even in the day of its publication,*--(old French deliberately bequilted with bastardized Latin and latinized Patois,)-exhibit a strange and heterogeneous medley, requiring a special study as an independent tongue; thus deterring many from perusal, and excluding him from the library of the mere French scholar. Moreover, his fanciful conceits and mad vagaries render wholly inappreciable to the many, who might master his dialect, the cutting wit, pointed sarcasm, inexhaustible humour, profound reflection, and eternal philosophy, which are so curiously jumbled together in his pages. To this must be added the frequent and intentional obscurities of his expression, and the studied mystifications of his meaning, which continually recur, and render a large portion of his humour wholly unintelligible in the present day, when the petty and post-scenial transactions of his own times are buried in the most profound oblivion, or require to be ferretted out from the ponderous tomes of Thuanus, and when many of the characters whom he so unsparingly ridicules, were forgotten with the sound of the bell that tolled their funeral,t or have long since passed to the tomb of all the Capulets.' These causes would alone be sufficient to repel those, who cannot enjoy what is really comprehensible in the Gargantua and Pantagruel, while so much remains behind without possible significance for them.

* In the very commencement of his book, Rabelais informs his readers of the wilful obscurities of his diction, and compares the labor requisite for their comprehension to a dog craunching a bone. Prol. liv. i.

+ La memoyre en expira avecques le son des cloches lesquelles quarilloua rent a son enterrement. Liv, iv. c. xii.

Under these circumstances, our own time will not be altogether thrown away, nor the patience of our readers unprofitably tired, while we sketch the life of Rabelais, and examine cursorily his Gargantua and Pantagruel, the two parts of an unfinished whole. To a large majority, the subject will have all the interest of entire novelty to recommend it, and the old lovers of Rabelais will not be displeased to be reminded of those passages of rich and exuberant humour, over which they have often lingered and laughed before.

As we have no disposition to enter into a critical investigation of the state of the French language, at the period when Rabelais wrote, nor to determine between the various readings of the text, nor yet to confirm or confute the farfetched and conjectural explications of incomprehensible allusions, we can dispense, for the present, with the century of different editions, which have been devoted to the promulgation and elucidation of Alcofribas Nasier, Abstracteur de Quinte Essence, etc., etc., etc.* Le Duchat and D'Alibon will not, therefore, inconvenience us by their absence, though we may regret the want of the able and elegant edition of 'Le Bibliophile Jacob: yet the one, (by De L'Aulnay?) whose title forms our text, will be amply sufficient for a hurried and desultory examination of an author, always enthusiastically admired by those familiar with his racy productions.

François Rabelais was born in 1483, at Chinon, a little village of Touraine, the garden of France,t-(now in the department of Indre-et-Loire,)-almost in the heart of the kingdom. He was the son of Thomas Rabelays, Sieur de la Devinière, according to some accounts a publican, according to others an apothecary. But whatever the origin of Francis may have been, his education was not neglected; and in the convent of La Bâmette, at Angers, where he was sent to school, he was thrown into close contact and intimacy with many persons, afterwards eminent in the Church, the State, and in Letters. Among these were the brothers Du Bellay, well known to the curious reader of history, one of whom, honored in time with the Cardinal's hat, remained to the end his firm friend and generous protector, and fre

* This is the nom-de-guerre, in which Rabelais delighted, and under which he wrote. Alcofribas Nasier is the anagram of François Rabelais; the 'Abstracteur de Quinte Essence, etc.' is his own addition.

† Rabelais somewhere applies this epithet to Touraine. De Vigny, in his Cinq Mars, does the same. It is a recognized distinction in France.

quently shielded him from that spiritual vengeance, which his erratic genius and wild humour at times so recklessly tempted. It seems probable, that, on more than one occasion, if he had not been sheltered beneath the wings of his friends in the hierarchy, he would have forfeited his life to ecclesiastical wrath, and expiated the sallies of his wit at the stake, and we cannot say that the provocation, which he gave, was slight.

Towards the commencement of the sixteenth century, Rabelais entered, at an early age, into the Order of the Cordeliers; and, at this time, he was no less remarkable for his industry and erudition, than for his buffoonery and humour. A characteristic anecdote is related of this period of his life: Rabelais indulged in one of those practical jokes, to which he was always much inclined, but on this occasion his freak was nearly attended with the most serious consequences, which might have silenced that full tide of overflowing humour, which afterwards delighted the world with the inimitable Hysteryes of Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Rabelais had taken the cowl in the monastery of Fontenay-le-Comte: and on a certain festival day, in honour of St. Francis, the patron of the Cordeliers, when the peasants of the surrounding country were flocking in to prostrate themselves before the shrine of the saint, he conceived the hardy design of removing from its place the image which was to be the object of their pious adoration, substituting himself as a living impersonation instead of the dead stone, and thus, in his borrowed character, appropriating to himself their reverential addresses. The conception and the execution went, with him, hand in hand. The sacrilegious jest at first succeeded; but his gravity, never superabundant, was soon so overpowered by his sense of the comic situation in which he had placed himself, that he could not sustain the mute character he had assumed. His half-smothered laughter betrayed him: the indignant friars tore him from the consecrated niche, and made him bitterly expiate, under the lashes of their cords, this profanely practical joke upon their pious mummeries. Nor did the punishment end here: the delinquent was put in pace, and condemned for the rest of his days to the unsavoury diet of bread and water, that he might be brought, by such lean fare, to a sincere repentance for his improper and ill-timed pleasantry. He was rescued, however, from this 'durance vile,' by the kindly