a very small part
of France, and allegorical or fantastic descriptions of a multitude of
Utopias. And yet, once more, it _is_ a whole story. As you read it you
almost forget what lies behind, you quite forget the breaches of
continuity, and press on to what is before, almost as eagerly, if not
quite in the same fashion, as if the incidents and the figures were not
less exciting than those of _Vingt Ans Apres_. Let us hope it may not be
excessive to expend a few pages on a sketch of this strange story that
is no story, with, it may be, some fragments of translation or
paraphrase (for, as even his greatest translator, Urquhart, found, a
certain amount of his own _Fay ce que voudras_ is necessary with
Rabelais) here and there.

[Sidenote: _Gargantua._]

Master Francis does not exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he
spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical
Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally
necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate
verse _amphigouri_ of the _Fanfreluches Antidotees_, and on the mock
scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy.
Without these, however, he will not come to the stupendous banquet of
tripe (properly washed down, and followed by pleasant revel on the
"echoing green") which determined the advent of Gargantua into the
world, which enabled Grandgousier, more fortunate than his son on a
future occasion, to display his amiability as a husband and a father
unchecked by any great sorrow, and which was, as it were, crowned and
sealed by that son's first utterance--no miserable and ordinary infant's
wail, but the stentorian barytone "_A boire!_" which rings through the
book till it passes in the sharper, but not less delectable treble of
"_Trinq!_" And then comes a brief piece, not narrative, but as
characteristic perhaps of what we may call the ironical _moral_ of the
narrative as any--a grave remonstrance with those who will not believe
in _ceste estrange nativite_.

[Sidenote: The birth and education.]

I doubt me ye believe not this strange birth assuredly. If
ye disbelieve, I care not; but a respectable man--a man of
good sense--_always_ believes what people tell him and what
he finds written. Does not Solomon say (Prov. xiv.), "The
innocent [simple] believeth every word" etc.? And St. Paul
(1 Cor. xiii.), "Charity believeth all things"? Why