Born at Chinon, 1483-4.--Died 1553. One cannot help regretting that no friend of Rabelais, (and surely friends he must have had), has left an authentic account of him. His buffoonery was not merely Brutus' rough stick, which contained a rod of gold; it was necessary as an amulet against the monks and bigots. Beyond a doubt, he was among the deepest as well as boldest thinkers of his age. Never was a more plausible, and seldom, I am persuaded, a less appropriate line than the thousand times quoted, Rabelais laughing in his easy chair-- of Mr. Pope. The caricature of his filth and zanyism proves how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood. I could write a treatise in proof and praise of the morality and moral elevation of Rabelais' work which would make the church stare and the conventicle groan, and yet should be the truth and nothing but the truth. I class Rabelais with the creative minds of the world, Shakspeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c. All Rabelais' personages are phantasmagoric allegories, but Panurge above all. He is throughout the [Greek (transliterated): panourgia],--the wisdom, that is, the cunning of the human animal,--the understanding, as the faculty of means to purposes without ultimate ends, in the most comprehensive sense, and including art, sensuous fancy, and all the passions of the understanding. It is impossible to read Rabelais without an admiration mixed with wonder at the depth and extent of his learning, his multifarious knowledge, and original observation beyond what books could in that age have supplied him with. (B. III. c. 9.) How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel, whether he should marry, yea or no. Note this incomparable chapter. Pantagruel stands for the reason as contradistinguished from the understanding and choice, that is, from Panurge; and the humour consists in the latter asking advice of the former on a subject in which the reason can only give the inevitable conclusion, the syllogistic 'ergo', from the premisses provided by the understanding itself, which puts each case so as of necessity to predetermine the verdict thereon. This chapter, independently of the allegory, is an exquisite satire on the spirit in which people commonly ask advice. [Footnote 1: No note remains of that part of this Lecture which treated of Rabelais. This seems, therefore, a convenient place for the reception of some remarks written by Mr. C. in Mr. Gillman's copy of Rabelais, about the year 1825. See Table Talk, vol. i. p. 177. Ed.] SWIFT. [1] Born in Dublin, 1667.--Died 1745.