rs. The critics have therefore an undoubted right to maul
you; they find you in their province. But if any of them dare to come
into mine, I will order Gargantua to swallow them up, as he did the six
pilgrims, in the next salad he eats.

_Lucian_.--Have I not heard that you wrote a very good serious book on
the aphorisms of Hippocrates?

_Rabelais_.--Upon my faith I had forgot it. I am so used to my fool's
coat that I don't know myself in my solemn doctor's gown. But your
information was right; that book was indeed a very respectable work. Yet
nobody reads it; and if I had writ nothing else, I should have been
reckoned, at best, a lackey to Hippocrates, whereas the historian of
Panurge is an eminent writer. Plain good sense, like a dish of solid
beef or mutton, is proper only for peasants; but a ragout of folly, well
dressed with a sharp sauce of wit, is fit to be served up at an emperor's
table.

_Lucian_.--You are an admirable pleasant fellow. Let me embrace you. How
Apollo and the Muses may rank you on Parnassus I am not very certain;
but, if I were Master of the Ceremonies on Mount Olympus, you should be
placed, with a full bowl of nectar before you, at the right hand of
Momus.

_Rabelais_.--I wish you were; but I fear the inhabitants of those sublime
regions will like your company no better than mine. Indeed, how Momus
himself could get a seat at that table I can't well comprehend. It has
been usual, I confess, in some of our Courts upon earth, to have a
privileged jester, called the king's fool. But in the Court of Heaven
one should not have supposed such an officer as Jupiter's fool. Your
allegorical theology in this point is very abstruse.

_Lucian_.--I think our priests admitted Momus into our heaven, as the
Indians are said to worship the devil, through fear. They had a mind to
keep fair with him. For we may talk of the giants as much as we please,
but to our gods there is no enemy so formidable as he. Ridicule is the
terror of all false religion. Nothing but truth can stand its lash.

_Rabelais_.--Truth, advantageously set in a good and fair light, can
stand any attacks; but those of Ridicule are so teasing and so fallacious
that I have seen them put her ladyship very much out of humour.

_Lucian_.--Ay, friend Rabelais, and sometimes out of countenance too. But
Truth and Wit in confederacy will strike Momus dumb. United they are
invincible, and such a union is necessary upon certain o