Francis Rabelais, who was born at Chinon in 1495, and died at Paris in 1553, wandered during those fifty-eight years about France and Europe from town to town, from profession to profession, from good to bad and from bad to good estate; first a monk of the Cordeliers; then, with Pope Clement VII.’s authority, a Benedictine; then putting off the monk’s habit and assuming that of a secular priest in order to roam the world, “incurring,” as he himself says, “in this vagabond life, the double stigma of suspension from orders and apostasy;” then studying medicine at Montpellier; then medical officer of the great hospital at Lyons, but, before long, superseded in that office “for having been twice absent without leave;” then staying at Lyons as a corrector of proofs, a compiler of almanacs, an editor of divers books for learned patrons, and commencing the publication of his _Vie tres-horrifique du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel_ (Most horrifying life of the great Gargantua, father of Pantagruel), which was immediately proceeded against by the Sorbonne “as an obscene tale.” On grounds of prudence or necessity Rabelais then quitted Lyons and set out for Rome as physician attached to the household of Cardinal John Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris and envoy from France to the Holy See; the which bishop “having relished the profound learning and competence of Rabelais, and having, besides, discovered in him fine humor and a conversation capable of diverting the blackest melancholy, retained him near his person in the capacity of physician in ordinary to himself and all his family, and held him ever afterwards in high esteem.” After two years passed at Rome, and after rendering all sorts of service in his patron’s household, Rabelais, “feeling that the uproarious life he was leading and his licentious deeds were unworthy of a man of religion and a priest,” asked Pope Paul III. for absolution, and at the same time permission to resume the habit of St. Benedict, and to practise “for piety’s sake, without hope of gain and in any and every place,” the art of medicine, wherein he had taken, he said, the degrees of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor. A brief of Pope Paul III.’s, dated January 17, 1536, granted his request. Seventeen months afterwards, on the 22d of May, 1537, Rabelais reappears at Montpellier, and there receives, it is said, the degree of doctor, which he had already taken upon himself to assume. He pursues his life of mingled science and adventure, gives lessons, and gads about so much that “his doctor’s gown and cap are preserved at Montpellier, according to tradition, all dirty and torn, but objects of respectful reminiscence.” In 1538 Rabelais leaves Montpellier, and goes to practise medicine at Narbonne, Castres, and Lyons. In 1540 he tires of it, resumes, as he had authority to do, the habit of a canon of St. Maur, and settles in that residence, “a paradise,” as he himself says, “of salubrity, amenity,