le for whimsical disregard of even his own whimseys. Voltaire
put the matter with his usual felicity,--Swift is Rabelais in his
senses.

One of the most celebrated--justly celebrated--of Rabelais's
imaginations is that of the Abbey of Theleme [Thelema]. This constitutes
a kind of Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released monk to give
his Utopian dream the form of an abbey, but an abbey in which the
opposite should obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own
monastic experience. A humorously impossible place and state was the
Abbey of Theleme,--a kind of sportive Brook Farm set far away in a world
unrealized. How those Thelemites enjoyed life, to be sure! It was like
endless plum pudding--for everybody to eat, and nobody to prepare:--

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of
their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor,
sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None
did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor
to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all
their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this
one clause to be observed,--

DO WHAT THOU WILT.

...By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to
do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants
or ladies should say, Let us drink, they would all drink. If any
one of them said, Let us play, they all played. If one said, Let us
go a walking into the fields, they went all.... There was neither
he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon
several musical instruments, speak five or six several languages,
and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose.
Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so
dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk and
lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of
weapons than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and
handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with
their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action
belonging to that sex, than were there. For this reason, when the
time came, that any man of the said abbey, either at the request of
his paren