st of Rabelais' books was entitled "_Lives of the great
Giant Garagantua and his Son Pantagruel"_. To it he owes a great deal of
his reputation and popularity. It created a vast deal of talk, and was
both highly praised and bitterly attacked. The champions of the church
criticised his book with great severity. Calvin the reformer also wrote
against it with much earnestness. The Sorbonne attacked it for teaching
heresy and atheism, and it was condemned by the court of parliament.

The subjects held up for ridicule were the vices of the popes, the
avarice of the prelates, and the universal debaucheries of the monastic
orders. It was a wonderful book for the times, and it required great
courage in Rabelais to venture upon its publication. He would have lost
position, and perhaps his liberty, had it not been for the monarch
Francis I., who sent for the volume, read it, and declared it to be
innocent and good reading, and protected the author. The sentence
against the book amounted to nothing after this, and it was everywhere
read and admired. Rabelais was set down as the first wit and scholar of
his age.

The character of the book we have noticed cannot be defended. Its
irreverent use of scripture quotations, and loose wit, are not to be
overlooked, but there was no advocacy of atheism in it. Indeed we must
look upon Rabelais as acting the part of a reformer. If he had sought
simply popularity and the favor of the court and church, he would
certainly not have written a book which is a scathing attack upon pope,
prelate, and monk. The book is full of dirty expressions--but the age
was a very impure one, and we should not judge him too severely. He was
a Frenchman, and French wit in all ages has taken great liberties with
decency.

Among the other books which Rabelais wrote, we may mention "_Several
Almanacs_," "_The Powers of Chevalier de Longery_," "_Letters from
Italy_," "_The Philosophical Cream_," etc. etc. His greatest book, which
we have mentioned, went through a great number of editions and had a
tremendous sale. It was republished in several foreign states.

Rabelais was a scholar, for he knew well fourteen languages, and wrote
with facility Greek, Latin, and Italian. He was a good physician, an
accomplished naturalist, a correct mathematician, an astronomer, an
architect, a painter, a musician, and last of all, a wit and
philosopher. He was a good pastor over the parishioners of Meudon, and
acted as physician to