Chapter XIX (2)

Such is the history of Gargantua, which was afterwards formed by Rabelais into the first book of his great comic romance. It was published anonymously, the author merely describing himself as "l'abstracteur de quinte essence;" but he afterwards adopted the pseudonyme of Alcofribas Nasier, which is merely an anagram of his own name, François Rabelais. A very improbable story has been handed down to us relating to this book. It is pretended that, having published a book of medical science which had no sale, and the publisher complaining that he had lost money by it, Rabelais promised to make amends for his loss, and immediately wrote the history of Gargantua, by which the same book-seller made his fortune. There can be no doubt that this remarkable satire had a deeper origin than any casual accident like this; but it was exactly suited to the taste and temper of the age. It was quite original in its form and style, and it met with immediate and great success. Numerous editions followed each other rapidly, and its author, encouraged by its popularity, very soon afterwards produced a second romance, in continuation, to which he gave the title of Pantagruel. The caricature in this second romance is bolder even than in the first, the humour broader, and the satire more pungent. Grandgousier has disappeared from the scene, and his son, Gargantua, is king, and has a son named Pantagruel, whose kingdom is that of the Dipsodes. The first part of this new romance is occupied chiefly with Pantagruel's youth and education, and is a satire on the university and on the lawyers, in which the parodies on their style of pleading as then practised is admirable. In the latter part, Pantagruel, like his father Gargantua, is engaged in great wars. It was perhaps the continued success of this new production of his pen which led Rabelais to go on with it, and form the design of making these two books part only of a more extensive romance. During his studies in Paris, Pantagruel has made the acquaintance of a singular individual named Panurge, who becomes his attached friend and constant companion, holding somewhat the position of brother Jean in the first book, but far more crafty and versatile. The whole subject of the third book arises out of Pantagreul's desire to marry, and its various amusing episodes describe the different expedients which, at the suggestion of Panurge, he adopts to arrive at a solution of the question whether his marriage would be fortunate or not.

In publishing his fourth book, Rabelais complains that his writings had raised him enemies, and that he was accused of having at least written heresy. In fact, he had bitterly provoked both the monks and the university and parliament; and, as the increasing reaction of Romanism in France gave more power of persecution to the two latter, he was not writing without some degree of danger, yet the satire of each successive book became bolder and more direct. The fifth, which was left unfinished at his death, and which was published posthumously, was the most severe of them all. The character of Gargantua, indeed, was almost forgotten in that of Pantagruel, and Pantagruelism became an accepted name for the sort of gay, reckless satire of which he was looked upon as the model. He described it himself as a _certaine gaieté d'esprit confite en mépris des choses fortuites_, in fact, neither Romanism nor Protestantism, but simply a jovial kind of Epicurianism. All the gay wits of the time aspired to be Pantagruelists, and the remainder of the sixteenth century abounded in wretched imitations of the style of Rabelais, which are now consigned as mere rarities to the shelves of the bibliophilist.

Among the dangers which began to threaten them in France in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, liberal opinions found an asylum at the court of a princess who was equally distinguished by her beauty, by her talents and noble sentiments, and by her accomplishments. Marguerite d'Angoulême, queen of Navarre, was the only sister of François I., who was her junior by two years, and was affectionately attached to her. She was born on the 11th of April, 1492. She had married, first, that unfortunate duke d'Alençon, whose misconduct at Pavia was the cause of the disastrous defeat of the French, and the captivity of their king. The duke died, it was said of grief at his misfortune, in 1525; and two years afterwards, on the 24th of January, 1527, she married Henri d'Albret, king of Navarre. Their daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, carried this petty royalty to the house of Bourbon, and was the mother of Henri IV.

Marguerite held her court in true princely manner in the castle of Pau or at Nérac, and she loved to surround herself with a circle of men remarkable for their character and talents, and ladies distinguished by beauty and accomplishments, which made it rival in brilliance even that of her brother François. She placed nearest to her person, under the character of her _valets-de-chambre_, the principal poets and _beaux-esprits_ of her time, such as Clement Marot, Bonaventure des Periers, Claude Gruget, Antoine du Moulin, and Jean de la Haye, and admitted them to such a tender familiarity of intercourse, as to excite the jealousy of the king her husband, from whose ill-treatment she was only protected by her brother's interference. The poets called her chamber a "veritable Parnassus." Hers was certainly a great mind, greedy of knowledge, dissatisfied with what was, and eager for novelties, and therefore she encouraged all who sought for them. It was in this spirit, combined with her earnest love for letters, that she threw her protection over both the sceptics and the religious reformers. At the beginning of the persecutions, as early as 1523, she openly declared herself the advocate of the Protestants. When Clement Marot was arrested by order of the Sorbonne and the Inquisitor on the charge of having eaten bacon in Lent, Marguerite caused him to be liberated from prison, in defiance of his persecutors. Some of the purest and ablest of the early French reformers, such as Roussel and Le Fèvre d'Etaples, and Calvin himself, found a safe asylum from danger in her dominions. As might be supposed, the bigoted party were bitterly incensed against the queen of Navarre, and were not backward in taking advantage of an opportunity for showing it. A moral treatise, entitled "Le Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse," of which Marguerite was the author, was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1533, but the king compelled the university, in the person of its rector, Nicolas Cop, to disavow publicly the censure. This was followed by a still greater act of insolence, for, at the instigation of some of the more bigoted papists, the scholars of the college of Navarre, in concert with their regents, performed a farce in which Marguerite was transformed into a fury of hell. François I., greatly indignant, sent his archers to arrest the offenders, who further provoked his anger by resistance, and only obtained their pardon through the generous intercession of the princess whom they had so grossly insulted.

Marguerite was herself a poetess, and she loved above all things those gay, and seldom very delicate, stories, the telling of which was at that time one of the favourite amusements of the evening, and one in which she was known to excel. Her poetical writings were collected and printed, under her own authority, in 1547, by her then _valet-de-chambre_, Jean de la Haye, who dedicated the volume to her daughter. They are all graceful, and some of them worthy of the best poets of her time. The title of this collection was, punning upon her name, which means a pearl, "Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses, très illustre reyne de Navarre." Marguerite's stories (_nouvelles_) were more celebrated than her verses, and are said to have been committed to writing under her own dictation. All the ladies of her court possessed copies of them in writing. It is understood to have been her intention to form them into ten days' tales, of ten in each day, so as to resemble the "Decameron" of Boccaccio, but only eight days were finished at the time of her death, and the imperfect work was published posthumously by her _valet-de-chambre_, Claude Gruget, under the title of "L'Heptameron, ou Histoire des Amants Fortunés." It is by far the best collection of stories of the sixteenth century. They are told charmingly, in language which is a perfect model of French composition of that age, but they are all tales of gallantry such as could only be repeated in polite society in an age which was essentially licentious. Queen Marguerite died on the 21st of December, 1549, and was buried in the cathedral of Pau. Her death was a subject of regret to all that was good and all that was poetic, not only in France, but in Europe, which had been accustomed to look upon her as the tenth Muse and the fourth Grace:--

_Musarum decima et Charitum quarta, inclyta regum
Et soror et conjux, Marguaris illa jacet._

Before Marguerite's death, her literary circle had been broken up by the hatred of religious persecutors. Already, in 1536, the imprudent boldness of Marot had rendered it impossible to protect him any longer, and he had been obliged to retire to a place of concealment, from whence he sometimes paid a stealthy visit to her court. His place of _valet-de-chambre_ was given to a man of talents, even more remarkable, and who shared equally the personal esteem of the queen of Navarre, Bonaventure des Periers. Marot's successor paid a graceful compliment to him in a short poem entitled "L'Apologie de Marot absent," published in 1537. The earlier part of the year following witnessed the publication of the most remarkable work of Bonaventure des Periers, the "Cymbalum Mundi," concerning the real character of which writers are still divided in opinion. In it Des Periers introduced a new form of satire, imitated from the dialogues of Lucian. The book consists of four dialogues, written in language which forms a model of French composition, the personages introduced in them intended evidently to represent living characters, whose names are concealed in anagrams and other devices, among whom was Clement Marot. It was the boldest declaration of scepticism which had yet issued from the Epicurean school represented by Rabelais. The author sneers at the Romish church as an imposture, ridicules the Protestants as seekers after the philosopher's stone, and shows disrespect to Christianity itself. Such a book could hardly be published in Paris with impunity, yet it was printed there, secretly, it is said, by a well-known bookseller, Jean Morin, in the Rue St. Jacques, and therefore in the immediate vicinity of the persecuting Sorbonne. Private information had been given of the character of this work, possibly by the printer himself or by one of his men, and on the 6th of March, 1538, when it was on the eve of publication, the whole impression was seized at the printer's, and Morin himself was arrested and thrown into prison. He was treated rigorously, and is understood to have escaped only by disavowing all knowledge of the character of the book, and giving up the name of the author. The first edition of the "Cymbalum Mundi" was burnt, and Bonaventure des Periers, alarmed by the personal dangers in which he was thus involved, retired from the court of the queen of Navarre, and took refuge in the city of Lyons, where liberal opinions at that time found a greater degree of tolerance than elsewhere. There he printed a second edition of the "Cymbalum Mundi," which also was burnt, and copies of either edition are now excessively rare.[98] Bonaventure des Periers felt so much the weight of the persecution in which he had now involved himself, that, in the year 1539, as far as can be ascertained, he put an end to his own existence. This event cast a gloom over the court of the queen of Navarre, from which it seems never to have entirely recovered. The school of scepticism to which Des Periers belonged had now fallen into equal discredit with Catholics and Protestants, and the latter looked upon Marguerite herself, who had latterly conformed outwardly with Romanism, as an apostate from their cause. Henri Estienne, in his "Apologie pour Herodote," speaks of the "Cymbalum Mundi" as an infamous book.

[98] A cheap and convenient edition of the "Cymbalum Mundi," edited
by the Bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix), was published in Paris
in 1841. I may here state that similar editions of the principal
French satirists of the sixteenth century have been printed
during the last twenty-five years.

Bonaventure des Periers left behind him another work more amusing to us at the present day, and more characteristic of the literary tastes of the court of Marguerite of Navarre. This is a collection of facetious stories, which was published several years after the death of its author, under the title of "Les Contes, ou Les Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis de Bonaventure des Periers." They have some resemblance in style to the stories of the Heptameron, but are shorter, and rather more facetious, and are characterised by their bitter spirit of satire against the monks and popish clergy. Some of these stories remind us, in their peculiar character and tone, of the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," as, for an example, the following, which is given as an anecdote of the curé de Brou:--

"This curé had a way of his own to chant the different offices
of the church, and above all he disliked the way of saying the
Passion in the manner it was ordinarily said in churches, and he
chanted it quite differently. For when our Lord said anything to
the Jews, or to Pilate, he made him talk high and loud, so that
everybody could hear him, and when it was the Jews or somebody
else who spoke, he spoke so low that he could hardly be heard
at all. It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her
way to Châteaudun, to keep there the festival of Easter, passed
through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o'clock in the morning,
and, wishing to hear service, she went to the church where the
curé was officiating. When it came to the Passion, he said it
in his own manner, and made the whole church ring again when
he said _Quem quæritis_? But when it came to the reply, _Jesum
Nazarenum_, he spoke as low as he possibly could. And in this
manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout,
and, for a woman, well informed in the holy scriptures, and
attentive to the ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised
at this mode of chanting, and wished she had never entered the
church. She had a mind to speak to the curé, and tell him what
she thought of it; and for this purpose sent for him to come to
her after the service. When he came, she said to him, 'Monsieur
le Curé, I don't know where you learnt to officiate on a day like
this, when the people ought to be all humility; but to hear you
perform the service, is enough to drive away anybody's devotion.'
'How so, madame?' said the curé. 'How so?' said she, 'you have
said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord
speaks, you cry as if you were in the town-hall; and when it is a
Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young
bride. Is this becoming in one like you? are you fit to be a curé?
If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your
benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault!' When the
curé had very attentively listened to her, he said, 'Is this what
you had to say to me, madame? By my soul! it is very true, what
they say; and the truth is, that there are many people who talk of
things which they do not understand. Madame, I believe that I know
my office as well as another, and I beg all the world to know that
God is as well served in this parish according to its condition,
as in any place within a hundred leagues of it. I know very well
that the other curés chant the Passion quite differently; I could
easily chant it like them if I would; but they do not understand
their business at all. I should like to know if it becomes those
rogues of Jews to speak as loud as our Lord! No, no, madame; rest
assured that in my parish it is my will that God be the master,
and He shall be as long as I live; and let the others do in their
parishes according to their understanding.'"

Another story, equally worthy of Ulric von Hutten, is satirical enough on priestly pedantry:--

"There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be,
because he had seen a little more than his Cato; for he had read
_De Syntaxi_, and his _Fauste precor gelida_ [the first eclogue
of Baptista Mantuanus]. And this made him set up his feathers,
and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth, in order
to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession, he
made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he
was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked, 'Here, now,
my friend, tell me, art thou ambitious?' The poor man said 'No,'
thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost
repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had
already heard that he was such a great clerk, and that he spoke
so grandly, that nobody understood him, which he now knew by this
word _ambitious_; for although he might have heard it somewhere,
yet he did not know at all what it was. The priest went on to
ask 'Art thou not a fornicator?' 'No,' said the labourer, who
understood as little as before. 'Art thou not a gourmand?' said
the priest. 'No.' 'Art thou not superbe [_proud_]?' 'No.' 'Art
thou not iracund?' 'No.' The priest seeing the man answer always
'No,' was somewhat surprised. 'Art thou not concupiscent?' 'No.'
'And what art thou, then?' said the priest. 'I am,' said he, 'a
mason; here is my trowel!'"

At this time "Pantagruelism" had mixed itself more or less largely in all the satirical literature of France. It is very apparent in the writings of Bonaventure des Periers, and in a considerable number of satirical publications which now issued, many of them anonymously, or under the then fashionable form of anagrams, from the press in France. Among these writers were a few who, though far inferior to Rabelais, may be considered as not unequal to Des Periers himself. One of the most remarkable of these was a gentleman of Britany, Noel du Fail, lord of La Hérissaye, who was, like so many of these satirists, a lawyer, and who died, apparently at an advanced age, at the end of 1585, or beginning of 1586. In his publications, according to the fashion of that age, he concealed his name under an anagram, and called himself Leon Ladulfil (doubling the _l_ in the name Fail). Noel du Fail has been called the ape of Rabelais, though the mere imitation is not very apparent. He published (as far as has been ascertained), in 1548, his "Discours d'aucuns propos ruftiques facétieux, et de singulière récréation." This was followed immediately by a work entitled "Baliverneries, ou Contes Nouveaux d'Eutrapel;" but his last, and most celebrated book, the "Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel," was not printed until 1586, after the death of its author. The writings of Noel du Fail are full of charming pictures of rural life in the sixteenth century, and, though sufficiently free, they present less than most similar books of that period of the coarseness of Rabelais. I cannot say the same of a book which is much more celebrated than either of these, and the history of which is still enveloped in obscurity. I mean the "Moyen de Parvenir." This book, which is full of wit and humour, but the licentiousness of which is carried to a degree which renders it unreadable at the present day, is now ascribed by bibliographers, in its present form, to Béroalde de Verville, a gentleman of a Protestant family who had embraced Catholicism, and obtained advancements in the church, and it was not printed until 1610, but it is supposed that in its present form it is only a revision of an earlier composition, perhaps even an unacknowledged work of Rabelais himself, which had been preserved in manuscript in Beroald's family.

Pantagruelism, or, if you like, Rabelaism, did not, during the sixteenth century, make much progress beyond the limits of France. In the Teutonic countries of Europe, and in England, the sceptical sentiment was small in comparison with the religious feeling, and the only satirical work at all resembling those we have been describing, was the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, a work comparatively spiritless, and which produced a very slight sensation. In Spain, the state of social feeling was still less favourable to the writings of Rabelais, yet he had there a worthy and true representative in the author of Don Quixote. It was only in the seventeenth century that the works of Rabelais were translated into English; but we must not forget that our satirists of the last century, such as Swift and Sterne, derived their inspiration chiefly from Rabelais, and from the Pantagruelistic writers of the latter half of the sixteenth century. These latter were most of them poor imitators of their original, and, like all poor imitators, pursued to exaggeration his least worthy characteristics. There is still some humour in the writings of Tabourot, the sieur des Accords, especially in his "Bigarrures," but the later productions, which appeared under such names as Bruscambille and Tabarin, sink into mere dull ribaldry.

There had arisen, however, by the side of this satire which smelt somewhat too much of the tavern, another satire, more serious, which still contained a little of the style of Rabelais. The French Protestants at first looked upon Rabelais as one of their towers of strength, and embraced with gratitude the powerful protection they received from the graceful queen of Navarre; but their gratitude failed them, when Marguerite, though she never ceased to give them her protection, conformed outwardly, from attachment to her brother, to the forms of the Catholic faith, and they rejected the school of Rabelais as a mere school of Atheists. Among them arose another school of satire, a sort of branch from the other, which was represented in its infancy by the celebrated scholar and printer, Henri Estienne, better known among us as Henry Stephens.

The remarkable book called an "Apologie pour Herodote," arose out of an attack upon its writer by the Romanists. Henri Estienne, who was known as a staunch Protestant, published, at great expense, an edition of Herodotus in Greek and Latin, and the zealous Catholics, out of spite to the editor, decried his author, and spoke of Herodotus as a mere collector of monstrous and incredible tales. Estienne, in revenge, published what, under the form of an apology for Herodotus, was really a violent attack on the Romish church. His argument is that all historians must relate transactions which appear to many incredible, and that the events of modern times were much more incredible, if they were not known to be true, than anything which is recorded by the historian of antiquity. After an introductory dissertation on the light in which we ought to regard the fable of the Golden Age, and on the moral character of the ancient peoples, he goes on to show that their depravity was much less than that of the middle ages and of his own time, indeed of all periods during which people were governed by the Church of Rome. Not only did this dissoluteness of morals pervade lay society, but the clergy were more vicious even than the people, to whom they ought to serve as an example. A large part of the book is filled with anecdotes of the immoral lives of the popish clergy of the sixteenth century, and of their ignorance and bigotry; and he describes in detail the methods employed by the Romish church to keep the mass of the people in ignorance, and to repress all attempts at inquiry. Out of all this, he says, had risen a school of atheists and scoffers, represented by Rabelais and Bonaventure des Periers, both of whom he mentions by name.

As we approach the end of the sixteenth century, the struggle of parties became more political than religious, but not less bitter than before. The literature of the age of that celebrated "Ligue," which seemed at one time destined to overthrow the ancient royalty of France, consisted chiefly of libellous and abusive pamphlets, but in the midst of them there appeared a work far superior to any purely political satire which had yet been seen, and the fame of which has never passed away. Its object was to turn to ridicule the meeting of the Estates of France, convoked by the duke of Mayenne, as leader of the Ligue, and held at Paris on the 10th of February, 1503. The grand object of this meeting was to exclude Henri IV. from the throne; and the Spanish party proposed to abolish the Salic law, and proclaim the infanta of Spain queen of France. The French ligueurs proposed plans hardly less unpatriotic, and the duke of Mayenne, indignant at the small account made of his own personal pretensions, prorogued the meeting, and persuaded the two parties to hold what proved a fruitless conference at Suresne. It was the meeting of the Estates in Paris which gave rise to that celebrated _Satyre Ménippée_, of which it was said, that it served the cause of Henri IV. as much as the battle of Ivry itself.

This satire originated among a party of friends, of men distinguished by learning, wit, and talent, though most of their names are obscure, who used to meet in an evening in the hospitable house of one of them, Jacques Gillot, on the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris, and there talk satirically over the violence and insolence of the ligueurs. They all belonged either to the bar or to the university, or to the church. Gillot himself, a Burgundian, born about the year 1560, had been a dean in the church of Langres, and afterwards canon of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and was at this time conseiller-clerc to the parliament of Paris. In 1589 he was committed to the Bastille, but was soon afterwards liberated. Nicolas Rapin, one of his friends, was born in 1535, and was said to have been the son of a priest, and therefore illegitimate. He was a lawyer, a poet, and a soldier, for he fought bravely in the ranks of Henri IV. at Ivry, and his devotion to that prince was so well known, that he was banished from Paris by the ligueurs, but had returned thither before the meeting of the Estates in 1593. Jean Passerat, born in 1534, was also a poet, and a professor in the Collège Royal. Florent Chrestien, born at Orleans in 1540, had been the tutor of Henri IV., and was well known as a man of sound learning. The most learned of the party was Pierre Pithou, born at Troyes in 1539, who had abjured Calvinism to return to Romanism, and who held a distinguished position at the French bar. The last of this little party of men of letters was a canon of Rouen named Pierre le Roy, a patriotic ecclesiastic, who held the office of almoner to the cardinal de Bourbon. It was Le Roy who drew up the first sketch of the "Satyre Ménippée," each of the others executed his part in the composition, and Pithou finally revised it. For several years this remarkable satire circulated only secretly, and in manuscript, and it was not printed until Henri IV. was established on the throne.

The satire opens with an account of the virtues of the "Catholicon," or nostrum for curing all political diseases, or the _higuiero d'infierno_, which had been so effective in the hands of the Spaniards, who invented it. Some of these are extraordinary enough. If, we are told, the lieutenant of Don Philip "have some of this Catholicon on his flags, he will enter without a blow into an enemy's country, and they will meet him with crosses and banners, legates and primates; and though he ruin, ravage, usurp, massacre, and sack everything, and carry away, ravish, burn, and reduce everything to a desert, the people of the country will say, 'These are our friends, they are good Catholics; they do it for our peace, and for our mother holy church.'" "If an indolent king amuse himself with refining this drug in his escurial, let him write a word into Flanders to Father Ignatius, sealed with the Catholicon, he will find him a man who (_salva conscientia_) will assassinate his enemy whom he has not been able to conquer by arms in twenty years." This, of course, is an allusion to the murder of the prince of Orange. "If this king proposes to assure his estates to his children after his death, and to invade another's kingdom at little expense, let him write a word to Mendoza, his ambassador, or to Father Commelet (one of the most seditious orators of the Ligue), and if he write with the _higuiero del infierno_, at the bottom of his letter, the words _Yo el Rey_, they will furnish him with an apostate monk, who will go under a fair semblance, like a Judas, and assassinate in cold blood a great king of France, his brother-in-law, in the middle of his camp, without fear of God or men; they will do more, they will canonise the murderer, and place this Judas above St. Peter, and baptise this prodigious and horrible crime with the name of a providential event, of which the godfathers will be cardinals, legates, and primates." The allusion here is to the assassination of Henri III. by Jacques Clement. These are but a few of the marvellous properties of the political drug, after the enumeration of which the report of the meeting of the Estates is introduced by a burlesque description of the grand procession which preceded it. Then we are introduced to the hall of assembly, and different subjects pictured on the tapestries which cover its walls, all having reference to the politics of the Ligue, are described fully. Then we come to the report of the meeting, and to the speeches of the different speakers, each of which is a model of satire. It is not known which of the little club of satirists wrote the open speech of the duke of Mayenne, but that of the Roman legate is known to be the work of Gillot, and that of the cardinal de Pelvé, a masterpiece of Latin in the style of the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," was written by Florent Chrestien. Nicolas Rapin composed the "harangue" placed in the mouth of the archbishop of Lyons, as well as that of Rose, the rector of the university; and the long speech of Claude d'Aubray was by Pithou. Passerat composed most of the verses which are scattered through the book, and it is understood that Pithou finally revised the whole. This mock report of the meeting of the Estates closes with a description of a series of political pictures which are arranged on the wall of the staircase of the hall.

These pictures, as well as those on the tapestries of the hall of meeting, are simply so many caricatures, and the same may be said of another set of pictures, of which a description is given in one of the satirical pieces which followed the "Satyre Ménippée," on the same side, entitled, "Histoire des Singeries de la Ligue." It was amid the political turmoil of the sixteenth century in France that modern political caricature took its rise.