la saigement dit, Ceux dont la fantaisie
Sera religieuse et devote envers Dieu
Tousjours acheveront quelque grand poesie,
Et dessus leur renom la Parque n'aura lieu._

THE EPITAPH ON RABELAIS.

Seven years after Rabelais died, Ronsard wrote this off-hand. I give it,
not for its value, but because it connects these two great names. The
man who wrote it had seen that large and honorable mouth worshipping
wine: he had reverenced that head of laughter which has corrected all
our philosophy. It would be a shame to pass such a name as Ronsard's
signed to an epitaph on such a work as that of Rabelais, poetry or no
poetry.

Ronsard also from a tower at Meudon used to creep out at night and drink
with that fellow-priest, vicar of the Parish, Rabelais: a greater man
than he.

By a memory separate from the rest of his verse, Ronsard was moved to
write this Rabelaisian thing. For he had seen him "full length upon the
grass and singing so."

There is no need of notes, for these great names of Gargantua, Panurge
and Friar John are household to every honest man.

_THE EPITAPH ON RABELAIS._

_Si d'un mort qui pourri repose
Nature engendre quelque chose,
Et si la generation
Se faict de la corruption,
Une vigne prendra naissance
Du bon Rabelais qui boivoit
Tousjours ce pendant qu'il vivoit;_

_Demi me se troussoit les bras
Et se couchoit tout plat a bas
Sur la jonchee entre les tasses
Et parmy les escuelles grasses_

_Il chantait la grande massue
Et la jument de Gargantue,
Le grand Panurge et le jais
Des papimanes ebahis,
Leurs loix, leurs facons et demeures
Et Frere Jean des Antonneures.
Et d'Espisteme les combas.
Mais la Mort qui ne boivoit pas
Tira le beuveur de ce monde
Et ores le fait boire de l'onde
Du large fleuve d'Acheron._

"MIGNONNE ALLONS VOIR SI LA ROSE."
(_The 17th Ode of the First Book._)

"In these eighteen lines," says very modernly a principal critic, "lies
Ronsard's fame more surely than in all the remaining mass of his works."
He condemns by implication Ronsard's wide waste of power; but the few
other poems that I have here had room to print, should make the reader
careful of such judgements. It is true that in the great hoard which
Ronsard left his people there are separate and p