ts. There are no mysteries below the surface,
and it is a waste of time to look for knots in a bulrush. All the
historical explanations are purely imaginary, utterly without proof, and
should the more emphatically be looked on as baseless and dismissed. They
are radically false, and therefore both worthless and harmful.

In 1840 there appeared in the Bibliotheque Charpentier the Rabelais in a
single duodecimo volume, begun by Charles Labiche, and, after his death,
completed by M. Paul Lacroix, whose share is the larger. The text is that
of L'Aulnaye; the short footnotes, with all their brevity, contain useful
explanations of difficult words. Amongst the editions of Rabelais this is
one of the most important, because it brought him many readers and
admirers. No other has made him so well and so widely known as this
portable volume, which has been constantly reprinted. No other has been so
widely circulated, and the sale still goes on. It was, and must still be
looked on as a most serviceable edition.

The edition published by Didot in 1857 has an altogether special character.
In the biographical notice M. Rathery for the first time treated as they
deserve the foolish prejudices which have made Rabelais misunderstood, and
M. Burgaud des Marets set the text on a quite new base. Having proved,
what of course is very evident, that in the original editions the spelling,
and the language too, were of the simplest and clearest, and were not
bristling with the nonsensical and superfluous consonants which have given
rise to the idea that Rabelais is difficult to read, he took the trouble
first of all to note the spelling of each word. Whenever in a single
instance he found it in accordance with modern spelling, he made it the
same throughout. The task was a hard one, and Rabelais certainly gained in
clearness, but over-zeal is often fatal to a reform. In respect to its
precision and the value of its notes, which are short and very judicious,
Burgaud des Marets' edition is valuable, and is amongst those which should
be known and taken into account.

Since Le Duchat all the editions have a common fault. They are not exactly
guilty of fabricating, but they set up an artificial text in the sense
that, in order to lose as little as possible, they have collected and
united what originally were variations--the revisions, in short, of the
original editions. Guided by the wise counsels given by Brunet in 1852 in
his Researc