too, of
the mighty Temple of the Novel.

[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted youth.]

What it was exactly that made Rabelais "double," as it were, on
_Gargantua_ in the early books of _Pantagruel_[101] it would probably be
idle to enquire. His deliberate mention in the Prologue of some of the
most famous romances (with certain others vainly to be sought now or at
any time) might of course most easily be a mere red herring. It may be,
that as _Gargantua_ was not entirely of his own creation, he determined
to "begin at the beginning" in his original composition. But it matters
little or nothing. We have, once more, a burlesque genealogy with known
persons--Nimrod, Goliath, Polyphemus, etc. etc.--entangled in a chain of
imaginaries, one of the latter, Hurtaly, forming the subject of a solemn
discussion of the question why he is not received among the crew of the
Ark. The unfortunate concomitants of the birth of Pantagruel--which is
fatal to his mother Badebec--contrast with the less chequered history of
Gargantua and Gargamelle, while the mixed sorrow and joy of Gargantua at
his wife's death and his son's birth completes this contrast.
Pantagruel, though quite as amiable as his father, if not more so, has
in infancy the natural awkwardnesses of a giant, and a hairy giant
too--devouring cows whole instead of merely milking them, and tearing to
pieces an unfortunate bear who only licked his infant chops. As was said
above, he has no wild-oats period of education like his father's, but
his company is less carefully chosen than that of Gargantua in the days
of his reformation, and gives his biographer opportunities for his
sharpest satire.

First we have (taken, as everybody is supposed now to know, from
Geoffrey Tory, but improved) the episode of the Limousin scholar with
his "pedantesque"[102] deformation of French and Latin at once, till the
giant takes him by the throat and he cries for mercy in the strongest
meridional brogue.[103] Then comes the famous catalogue of the Library
of Saint Victor, a fresh attack on scholastic and monastic degeneracy,
and a kind of joining hands (Ortuinus figures) with the German guerrilla
against the _Obscuri_, and then a long and admirable letter from
Gargantua, whence we learn that Grandgousier is dead, and that his son
is now the sagest of monarchs, who has taken to read Greek, and shows no
memory of his governesses or his earlier student days. And then again
comes Panurge.

[S