Gargantua and Pantagruel
faggots, and fascines round about the castle, and when they had made the
heap of a competent height, to put them all in a fair fire; which was
thereupon incontinently done. The fire put amidst the faggots was so great
and so high that it covered the whole castle, that they might well imagine
the tower would thereby be altogether burnt to dust, and demolished.
Nevertheless, contrary to all their hopes and expectations, when the flame
ceased, and that the faggots were quite burnt and consumed, the tower
appeared as whole, sound, and entire as ever. Caesar, after a serious
consideration had thereof, commanded a compass to be taken without the
distance of a stone cast from the castle round about it there, with ditches
and entrenchments to form a blockade; which when the Larignans understood,
they rendered themselves upon terms. And then by a relation from them it
was that Caesar learned the admirable nature and virtue of this wood, which
of itself produceth neither fire, flame, nor coal, and would, therefore, in
regard of that rare quality of incombustibility, have been admitted into
this rank and degree of a true Pantagruelional plant; and that so much the
rather, for that Pantagruel directed that all the gates, doors, angiports,
windows, gutters, fretticed and embowed ceilings, cans, (cants?) and other
whatsoever wooden furniture in the abbey of Theleme, should be all
materiated of this kind of timber. He likewise caused to cover therewith
the sterns, stems, cook-rooms or laps, hatches, decks, courses, bends, and
walls of his carricks, ships, galleons, galleys, brigantines, foists,
frigates, crears, barques, floats, pinks, pinnaces, hoys, ketches, capers,
and other vessels of his Thalassian arsenal; were it not that the wood or
timber of the larch-tree, being put within a large and ample furnace full
of huge vehemently flaming fire proceeding from the fuel of other sorts and
kinds of wood, cometh at last to be corrupted, consumed, dissipated, and
destroyed, as are stones in a lime-kiln. But this Pantagruelion Asbeston
is rather by the fire renewed and cleansed than by the flames thereof
consumed or changed. Therefore,
Arabians, Indians, Sabaeans,
Sing not, in hymns and Io Paeans,
Your incense, myrrh, or ebony.
Come here, a nobler plant to see,
And carry home, at any rate,
Some seed, that you may propagate.
If in your soil it takes, to heaven
A thousand thousand thanks be given;
And say with France, it goodly goes,
Where the Pantagruelion grows.
END OF BOOK III
BOOK IV.
THE FOURTH BOOK
The Translator’s Preface.
Reader,--I don’t know what kind of a preface I must write to find thee
courteous, an epithet too often bestowed without a cause. The author of
this work has been as sparing of what we call good nature, as most readers
are nowadays. So I am afraid his translator and commentator is not to
expect much more than has been showed them. What’s worse, there are but
two sorts of taking prefaces, as there are but two kinds of prologues to
plays; for Mr. Bays was doubtless in the right when he said that if thunder
and lightning could not fright an audience into complaisance, the sight of
the poet with a rope about his neck might work them into pity. Some,
indeed, have bullied many of you into applause, and railed at your faults
that you might think them without any; and others, more safely, have spoken
kindly of you, that you might think, or at least speak, as favourably of
them, and be flattered into patience. Now, I fancy, there’s nothing less
difficult to attempt than the first method; for, in this blessed age, ‘tis
as easy to find a bully without courage, as a whore without beauty, or a
writer without wit; though those qualifications are so necessary in their
respective professions. The mischief is, that you seldom allow any to rail
besides yourselves, and cannot bear a pride which shocks your own. As for
wheedling you into a liking of a work, I must confess it seems the safest
way; but though flattery pleases you well when it is particular, you hate
it, as little concerning you, when it is general. Then we knights of the
quill are a stiff-necked generation, who as seldom care to seem to doubt
the worth of our writings, and their being liked, as we love to flatter
more than one at a time; and had rather draw our pens, and stand up for the
beauty of our works (as some arrant fools use to do for that of their
mistresses) to the last drop of our ink. And truly this submission, which
sometimes wheedles you into pity, as seldom decoys you into love, as the
awkward cringing of an antiquated fop, as moneyless as he is ugly, affects
an experienced fair one. Now we as little value your pity as a lover his
mistress’s, well satisfied that it is only a less uncivil way of dismissing
us. But what if neither of these two ways will work upon you, of which
doleful truth some of our playwrights stand so many living monuments? Why,
then, truly I think on no other way at present but blending the two into
one; and, from this marriage of huffing and cringing, there will result a
new kind of careless medley, which, perhaps, will work upon both sorts of
readers, those who are to be hectored, and those whom we must creep to. At
least, it is like to please by its novelty; and it will not be the first
monster that has pleased you when regular nature could not do it.
If uncommon worth, lively wit, and deep learning, wove into wholesome
satire, a bold, good, and vast design admirably pursued, truth set out in
its true light, and a method how to arrive to its oracle, can recommend a
work, I am sure this has enough to please any reasonable man. The three
books published some time since, which are in a manner an entire work, were
kindly received; yet, in the French, they come far short of these two,
which are also entire pieces; for the satire is all general here, much more
obvious, and consequently more entertaining. Even my long explanatory
preface was not thought improper. Though I was so far from being allowed
time to make it methodical, that at first only a few pages were intended;
yet as fast as they were printed I wrote on, till it proved at last like
one of those towns built little at first, then enlarged, where you see
promiscuously an odd variety of all sorts of irregular buildings. I hope
the remarks I give now will not please less; for, as I have translated the
work which they explain, I had more time to make them, though as little to
write them. It would be needless to give here a large account of my
performance; for, after all, you readers care no more for this or that
apology, or pretence of Mr. Translator, if the version does not please you,
than we do for a blundering cook’s excuse after he has spoiled a good dish
in the dressing. Nor can the first pretend to much praise, besides that of
giving his author’s sense in its full extent, and copying his style, if it
is to be copied; since he has no share in the invention or disposition of
what he translates. Yet there was no small difficulty in doing Rabelais
justice in that double respect; the obsolete words and turns of phrase, and
dark subjects, often as darkly treated, make the sense hard to be
understood even by a Frenchman, and it cannot be easy to give it the free
easy air of an original; for even what seems most common talk in one
language, is what is often the most difficult to be made so in another; and
Horace’s thoughts of comedy may be well applied to this:
Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere
Sudoris minimum; sed habet commoedia tantum
Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus.
Far be it from me, for all this, to value myself upon hitting the words of
cant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words
have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy
in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in
my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal
said on another account, D’onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie? Where
the devil didst thou rake up all these fripperies?
It was not less difficult to come up to the author’s sublime expressions.
Nor would I have attempted such a task, but that I was ambitious of giving
a view of the most valuable work of the greatest genius of his age, to the
Mecaenas and best genius of this. For I am not overfond of so ungrateful a
task as translating, and would rejoice to see less versions and more
originals; so the latter were not as bad as many of the first are, through
want of encouragement. Some indeed have deservedly gained esteem by
translating; yet not many condescend to translate, but such as cannot
invent; though to do the first well requires often as much genius as to do
the latter.
I wish, reader, thou mayest be as willing to do my author justice, as I
have strove to do him right. Yet, if thou art a brother of the quill, it
is ten to one thou art too much in love with thy own dear productions to
admire those of one of thy trade. However, I know three or four who have
not such a mighty opinion of themselves; but I’ll not name them, lest I
should be obliged to place myself among them. If thou art one of those
who, though they never write, criticise everyone that does; avaunt!--Thou
art a professed enemy of mankind and of thyself, who wilt never be pleased
nor let anybody be so, and knowest no better way to fame than by striving
to lessen that of others; though wouldst thou write thou mightst be soon
known, even by the butterwomen, and fly through the world in bandboxes. If
thou art of the dissembling tribe, it is thy office to rail at those books
which thou huggest in a corner. If thou art one of those eavesdroppers,
who would have their moroseness be counted gravity, thou wilt condemn a
mirth which thou art past relishing; and I know no other way to quit the
score than by writing (as like enough I may) something as dull, or duller
than thyself, if possible. If thou art one of those critics in dressing,
those extempores of fortune, who, having lost a relation and got an estate,
in an instant set up for wit and every extravagance, thou’lt either praise
or discommend this book, according to the dictates of some less foolish
than thyself, perhaps of one of those who, being lodged at the sign of the
box and dice, will know better things than to recommend to thee a work
which bids thee beware of his tricks. This book might teach thee to leave
thy follies; but some will say it does not signify much to some fools
whether they are so or not; for when was there a fool that thought himself
one? If thou art one of those who would put themselves upon us for learned
men in Greek and Hebrew, yet are mere blockheads in English, and patch
together old pieces of the ancients to get themselves clothes out of them,
thou art too severely mauled in this work to like it. Who then will? some
will cry. Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in
the world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to
be dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not
be thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying
his book that his enemies might not bite it. Truly, though now the riddle
is expounded, I would advise those who read it not to reflect on the
author, lest he be thought to have been beforehand with them, and they be
ranked among those who have nothing to show for their honesty but their
money, nothing for their religion but their dissembling, or a fat benefice,
nothing for their wit but their dressing, for their nobility but their
title, for their gentility but their sword, for their courage but their
huffing, for their preferment but their assurance, for their learning but