me
lively presentment of the actual manners of the time in Antoine de la
Salle, it is accidental only, and of its thoughts on any but the stock
subjects we have nothing. There was thus room for a vast improvement,
or rather for a complete revolution, in this particular class of work,
and this revolution was at a comparatively early period of the new
century effected by the greatest man and the greatest book of the French
Renaissance.

[Sidenote: Rabelais.]

Francois Rabelais[179] was born at Chinon about 1495 (the alternative
date of 1483 which used to be given is improbable if not impossible),
and at an early age was destined to the cloister. He not only became a
full monk, but also took priest's orders. Before he was thirty he
acquired the reputation of a good classical scholar, and this seems to
have brought him into trouble with his brethren the Cordeliers or
Franciscans, who were at this time among the least cultivated of the
monastic orders. With the consent of the Pope he migrated to a
Benedictine convent, and became canon at Maillezais. This migration,
however, did not satisfy him, and before long he quitted his new convent
without permission and took to the life of a wandering scholar. The
tolerance of the first period of the Renaissance however still existed
in France, and he suffered no inconvenience from this breach of rule.
After studying medicine and natural science under the protection of
Geoffrey d'Estissac, Bishop of Maillezais, he went to Montpellier to
continue these studies, and in the early years of the fourth decade of
the century practised regularly at Lyons. He was attached to the suite
of Cardinal du Bellay in two embassies to Rome, returned to Montpellier,
took his doctor's degree, and again practised in several cities of the
South. Towards 1539 Du Bellay again established him in a convent,
probably as a safeguard against the persecution which was then
threatening. But the conventual life as then practised was too repugnant
to Rabelais to be long endured, and he once more set out on his travels,
this time in Savoy and Italy, the personal protection of the king
guaranteeing him from danger. He then returned to France, taking however
the precaution to soften some expressions in his books. At the death of
Francis he retired first to Metz, and then to Rome, still with Du
Bellay. The Cardinal de Chatillon, soon after gave him the living of
Meudon, which he held with another in Maine for a year or