not he worked on a canvas greater than he could fill, or tried to patch together things too good for him, no doubt intended--attempts have been made to interpret the puzzle here also; but they are quite obviously vain. [Sidenote: A general theme possible.] [Sidenote: A reference--to be taken up later--to the last Book.] Such a sentence, however, cannot be pronounced in any such degree or measure on the similar attempts in the case of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_; for a reason which some readers may find unexpected. The unbroken vigour--unbroken even by the obstacles which it throws in its own way, like the Catalogue of the Library of Saint-Victor and the burlesque lists of adjectives, etc., which fill up whole chapters--with which the story or string of stories is carried on, may naturally suggest that there _is_ a story or at least a theme. It is a sort of quaint alteration or catachresis of _Possunt quia posse videntur_. There must be a general theme, because the writer is so obviously able to handle any theme he chooses. It may be wiser--it certainly seems so to the present writer--to disbelieve in anything but occasional sallies--episodes, as it were, or even digressions--of political, religious, moral, social and other satire. It is, on the other hand, a most important thing to admit the undoubted presence--now and then, and not unfrequently--of a deliberate dropping of the satiric and burlesque mask. This supplies the presentation of the serious, kindly, and human personality of the three princes (Grandgousier, Gargantua, and Pantagruel); this the schemes of education (giving so large a proportion of the small bulk of _not_-nonsense written on that matter). Above all, this permits, to one taste at least, the exquisite last Book, presentation of La Quinte and the fresh roses in her hand, the originality of which, not only in the whole book in one sense, but in the particular Book in the other, is, to that taste, and such argumentative powers as accompany it, an almost absolute proof of that Book's genuineness. For if it had been by another who, _un_like Rabelais, had a special tendency towards such graceful imagination, he could hardly have refrained from showing this elsewhere in this long book.[90] [Sidenote: Running survey of the whole.]