re the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch
where he did not itch, shoe the grasshopper, tickle himself to make
himself laugh, know flies in milk, scrape paper, blur parchment, then
run away, pull at the kid's leather, reckon without his host, beat the
bushes without catching the birds, and thought that bladders were
lanterns. He always looked a gift-horse in the mouth, hoped to catch
larks if ever the heavens should fall, and made a virtue of necessity.
Every morning his father's puppies ate out of the dish with him, and
he with them. He would bite their ears, and they would scratch his
nose. The good man Grangousier said to Gargantua's governesses:

[Footnote 12: From Book I, Chapter XI, of "The Inestimable Life of the
Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel." The basis of all English
translations of Rabelais is the work begun by Sir Thomas Urquhart and
completed by Peter A. Motteux. Urquhart was a Scotchman, who was born
in 1611 and died in 1660. Motteux was a Frenchman, who settled in
England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and was the
author of several plays. This translation has been called "one of the
most perfect that ever man accomplished." Other and later versions
have usually been based on Urquhart and Motteux, but have been
expurgated, as is the case with the passages given here. An earlier
version of "Pantagruel," published in London in 1620, was ascribed to
"Democritus Pseudomantio."

Rabelais, by common, consent, has a place among the greatest prose
writers of the world. In his knowledge of human nature and his
literary excellence, he is often ranked as inferior only to
Shakespeare. As an exponent of the sentiments and atmosphere of his
own time, we find in him what is found only in a few of the world's
greatest writers. That he has not been more widely read in modern
times, is attributed chiefly to the extraordinary coarseness of
language which he constantly introduces into his pages. This
coarseness is, in fact, so pervasive that expurgation is made
extremely difficult to any one who would preserve some fair remnant of
the original.]

"Philip, King of Macedon, knew the wit of his son Alexander, by his
skilful managing of a horse;[13] for the said horse was so fierce and
unruly that none durst adventure to ride him, because he gave a fall
to all his riders, breaking the neck of this man, the leg of that, the
brain of one, and the jawbone of another. This by Alexander being
consider