One must, it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though some people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further quality or property--the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This riddle-attraction--or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a very large plural--is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently obvious in _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, as there can have been in the scholastic among the dietary of La Quinte, or of any possible Chimaera buzzing at greatest intensity in the extremest vacuum. On the other hand, some of us are haunted by the consideration, "Was there ever any human being more likely than Francois Rabelais to echo (with the slightest change) the words ascribed to Divinity in that famous piece which is taken, on good external and ultra-internal evidence, to be Swift's? _I_ to such block-heads set my wit! _I_ [_pose_] such fools! Go, go--you're bit." And there is not wanting, amongst us sceptics, a further section who are quite certain that a not inconsiderable proportion of the book is not allegory at all, but sheer "bamming," while others again would transfer the hackneyed death-bed saying from author to book, and say that the whole Chronicle is "a great perhaps." [Sidenote: And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the book.] These things--or at least elaborate discussions of them--lie somewhat, though not so far as may at first seem, outside our proper business. It must, however, once more be evident, from the facts and very nature of the case, that the puzzles, the riddles, the allegories cannot constitute the main and, so to speak, "universal" part of the attraction of the book. They may be a seasoning to some, a solid cut-and-come-again to others, but certainly not to the majority. Even in _Gulliver_--the Great Book's almost, perhaps quite, as great descendant--these attractions, though more universal in appeal and less evasively presented, certainly do not hold any such position. The fact is that both Rabelais and Swift were consummate tellers of a story, and (especially if you take the _Polite Conversation_ into Swift's claim) consummate originators of the Novel or larger story, with more than "incidental" attraction itself. But we are not now busied with Swift. [Sidenote: Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest.]