elephants,[99]
which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital.
There is, indeed, an unpleasant Echephron[100] who points the old moral
of Cineas to Pyrrhus himself. But Picrochole rebuffs him with the
invaluable _Passons oultre_, and closes the discussion by anticipating
Henri Quatre (who, no doubt, learnt the phrase from him), crying, "_Qui
m'aime, si me suive!_" and ordering all haste in the war.

It is possible that, here or earlier, the
not-quite-so-gentle-as-he-is-traditionally-called reader may ejaculate,
"This is all true enough; but it is all very well known, and does not
need recapitulation." Is this quite so certain? No doubt at one time
Englishmen did know their Rabelais well. Southey did, for instance, and
so, according to the historian of Barsetshire, did, in the next
generation, Archdeacon Grantly. More recently my late friend Sir Walter
Besant spent a great deal of pains on Master Francis, and mainly owing
to his efforts there existed for some years a Rabelais Club (already
referred to), which left some pleasant memories. But _is_ it quite so
certain that the average educated Englishman can at once distinguish
Eudemon from Epistemon, give a correct list of the various answers to
Panurge's enquiries as to the probable results of his marriage, relate
what happened when (as glanced at above and returned to later) _nous
passasmes oultre_, and say what the adorable Quintessence admitted to
her dainty lips besides second intentions? I doubt it very much. Even
special students of the Great Book, as in other cases, have too often
allowed themselves to be distracted from the pure enjoyment of it by
idle questions of the kinds above mentioned and others--questions of
dates and names and places, of origins and borrowings and
imitations--questions the sole justification of which, from the genuine
Pantagruelian point of view, is that their utter dryness inevitably
suggests the cries--the Morning Hymn and the Evening Voluntary of the
book itself--_A boire!_ and _Trinq_.

But, even were this not so, a person who has undertaken, wisely or
unwisely, to write the history of the French Novel is surely entitled to
lay some stress on what seems to him the importance of this its first
eminent example. At any rate he proposes _not_ to _passer oultre_, but
to stick to the line struck out, and exhibit, in reasonable detail, the
varieties of novel-matter and manner contained in the book.

[Sidenote: The