1826.] Memoirs and Writings of Rabelais. 521 
learned age... But the fact,.we think, may’ be thus accounted for. 
Rabelais’ wit is the primary characteristic. of his writings: his fancy, 
though splendid, rather serves to encumber than set it off; and it is well 
known, by those who have ever attended to the philosophy of the human 
mind, that..an age of imagination is never one that can appreciate, 
encourage, and put forward writers of wit. The two qualities are 
diametrically opposed to each other. Wit requires a readiness—a tact— 
a concentration of mind ;—imagination, a roving, dreamy, metaphysical 
sort of intellect. If we scrutinize the writings of those who were 
distinguished for the splendour of their fancy, we shall scarcely find a 
particle of wit throughout them. Demosthenes, Cicero, Lucretius, 
Xenophon, among the ancients; Burke, Milton, Spenser, and a hun- 
dred, others among the moderns, whose names do not at present occur 
to us, were any thing but wits, and indeed seldom or never attempted 
it.» To ascend in the scale of argument from men to times: we shall 
perceive that the wittiest age in England was the age of Pope, Swift, 
Congreve, Prior, Farquhar, Arbuthnot, Steele, Gay, Addison, and the 
other writers who formed what is called the Augustan age ; but then it 
was also the most unimaginative one; when poetry itself was mecha- 
nical, and nature and genius were trammelled by the shackles of criticism. 
The spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy lay heavy on the eighteenth 
century; and beneath its dull, benumbing weight, fancy faded and 
became extinct. The French revolution, by giving an awakening impulse 
to the energies of the human mind, shook off this oppressive load; but 
then again, as imagination resumed her influence, she rose like night 
' on the ruins of day. With the decay of wit decayed also the popularity 
of those whose works had contributed to keep it alive in the public 
mind; and. hence Rabelais, an idol in the eighteenth, is but an unin- 
spired mortal in| the nineteenth century. 
We. have discussed generally the leading features of Rabelais’ 
writings ; it remains to. say a few words concerning their more minute 
peculiarities. His characters in particular demand our attention, as in 
point of vividness and reality they are drawn with astonishing effect. 
Panurge, the old lascivious, skinny, witty,-ingenious debauchee, is the 
one most,to,our, mind, The account that. this anomaly, this Falstaff fallen 
away, gives to Pantagruel on their first meeting, of his recent escape 
from the Turks; how they had spitted and placed him down to roast 
before a huge fire, how his flesh was delicately browned and made crisp 
for their repast; when suddenly, as he lay stretched in horizontal 
ardour in front of the furnace, a thought struck him of seizing a log, of 
putting out the, cook’s eyes with it, as he stood over him moistening his 
flesh with apple-sauce, and then burning the whole house in which he had 
met with this disaster. How, moreover, the house caught the street —the 
street the town; and how, by the light of the conflagration he found his 
way, half-baked, to a distant country, whence he sailed, and finally arrived 
safe in the dominions of Pantagruel :—all this, we say, (and Rabelais, in 
addition to many better points, is replete with similar extravagancies, )is to 
the full as rich as Falstaff’s men in buckram, his account of the Thames 
ablution, or even of Bardolph’s nose. Indeed we hazard a bold con- 
jecture when. we put forth our firm conviction, that Panurge is the 
original from which Shakspeare drew Falstaff. The two characters 
have\.so. much in common—such peculiar ingenuity in lying, such 
endless jokes on their own deformity, such humour drawn from. their 
M.M. New Sertes.—Vov.Il. No.11. 3 X 
