And yet the Reader must not hastily conclude that I think Pantagruelism a better thing than Poetry, because it is rarer; that were imputing to me the common error of estimating things by their rarity rather than their worth, an error more vulgar than any which Sir Thomas Brown has refuted. But I do hold this, that all the greatest Poets have had a spice of Pantagruelism in their composition, which I verily believe was essential to their greatness. What the world lost in losing the Margites of Homer we know not, we only know that Homer had there proved himself a Pantagruelist. Shakespear was a Pantagruelist; so was Cervantes; and till the world shall have produced two other men in whom that humour has been wanting equal to these, I hold my point established. Some one objects Milton. I thank him for the exception; it is just such an exception as proves the rule; for look only at Milton's Limbo and you will see what a glorious Pantagruelist he might have been,—if the Puritans had not spoilt him for Pantagruelism. CHAPTER XVIII. P. I. ALL'S WELL THAN ENDS WELL. Τὰ δ᾿ἄν ἐπιμνησϑῶ,—ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἐξαναγκαζὀμενος ἐπιμνησϑῄσομαι. HERODOTUS. If William Dove had been installed in office with cap and bells and bauble, he would have been a Professor of Pantagruelism, and might have figured in Flógel's History of such Professors with Tyll Eulenspiegel, Piovano Arlotto, and Peter the Lion; and in Douce's Illustrations of Shakespear with Muckle John, Rees Pengelding and Robin Rush. The humour lay latent till the boy his nephew hit the spring by reading to him some of those chapters in Rabelais which in their literal grotesqueness were level to the capacity of both. These readings led to a piece of practical Pantagruelism, for which William would have been whipt if he had worn a Fool's coat. One unlucky day, Dan was reading to him that chapter wherein young Gargantua relates the course of experiments which he had made with a velvet mask, a leaf of vervain, his mother's glove, a lappet worked with gold thread, a bunch of nettles, and other things more or less unfit for the purpose to which they were applied. To those who are acquainted with the history of Grandgousier's royal family, I need not explain what that purpose was; nor must I to those who are not, (for reasons that require no explanation) farther than to say, it was the same purpose for which that wild enigma (the semi-composition of the Sphinx's Ghost) was designed,—that enigma of all enigmas the wildest, “On which was written Ρῆγμάρωλ.” William had frequently interrupted him with bursts of laughter; but when they came to that crowning experiment in which Gargantua thought he had found the _beau ideal_ of what he was seeking, William clapt his hands, and with an expression of glee in his countenance worthy of Eulenspiegel himself exclaimed, “thou shalt try the Goose, Dan! thou shalt try the Goose!”