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a single one of which any other man could scarcely attain with the utmost exertion, flow from him without effort; and that stream of language, than which nothing is more pleasing to the ear, carries with it the appearance of the happiest facility. It was not without justice, therefore, that he was said by his contemporaries "to reign supreme in the courts;" and he has gained such esteem among his posterity, that Cicero is now less the name of a man than that of eloquence itself. To him, therefore, let us look; let him be kept in view as our great example; and let that student know that he has made some progress, to whom Cicero has become an object of admiration.

WHEN A GOOD MAN MAY DEFEND A BAD CAUSE.

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IT cannot be doubted, if the wicked can be reclaimed and brought to a better course of life as it is granted they sometimes may that it would be more to the advantage of the commonwealth to have them saved than punished. If, therefore, the orator is convinced that the delinquent will approve himself for the future a man of integrity, will he not use his best endeavors to save him from the rigor of the law; and still come within our definition, that "an Orator is an honest man, skilled in the art of speaking?"

It is not less necessary to teach and to be informed how things difficult to be proved ought to be treated, as frequently the best causes resemble bad ones, and a man may be accused unjustly, though all appearances are against him. In a case of this sort, the defence is to be conducted as if there were no real guilt. There are also many things common to good and bad. causes, as witnesses, letters, suspicions, prejudices; and probabilities are corroborated and refuted in much the same way as truth. Therefore, everything may be made to tend in the pleading to the good of the cause, and so far as it will be able to bear; yet always with a reserve to the purity of intention.

FRANÇOIS RABELAIS.

RABELAIS, FRANÇOIS, a French ecclesiastic and satirist; born at Chinon, Touraine, about 1490; died at Paris, April 9, 1553. He was educated at monastic schools, and was ordained as priest in 1511. In 1524 he received papal permission to enter a Benedictine monastery; six years afterward he abandoned the monastic life, studied medicine, and entered upon practice at Lyons. In 1536 his former school-fellow, Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, and afterward a Cardinal, was made French Ambassador at Rome. He engaged Rabelais as his physician, and obtained for him from the Pope a remission of the ecclesiastical penalties which he had incurred by abandoning his orders. Subsequently he became a member of the Abbey of St. Maur des Fosses at Paris, and later received the comfortable living of Meudon. He faithfully performed his ecclesiastical duties, but devoted all his leisure to the enlargement of his most notable work, "Les Faits et Dicts du Géant Gargantua et de son Fils Pantagruel," some portions of which had appeared as early as 1533.

THE EDUCATION OF GARGANTUA.

PONOCRATES appointed that for the beginning, he should do as he had been accustomed; to the end he might understand by what means, for so long a time, his old masters had made him so foolish, simple, and ignorant. He disposed, therefore, of his time in such fashion that ordinarily he did awake between eight and nine o'clock, whether it was day or not; for so had his ancient governors ordained, alleging that which David saith, Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere. Then did he tumble and wallow in the bed some time, the better to stir up his vital spirits, and apparelled himself according to the season; but willingly he would wear a great long gown of thick frieze, lined with fox fur. Afterwards he combed his head with the German comb, which is the four fingers and the thumb; for his preceptors said that to comb himself otherwise, to wash and make himself neat, was to lose time in this world. Then

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to suppress the dew and bad air, he breakfasted on fair fried tripe, fair grilled meats, fair hams, fair hashed capon, and store of sippet brewis. Ponocrates showed him that he ought not to eat so soon after rising out of his bed, unless he had performed some exercise beforehand. Gargantua answered: "What! have not I sufficiently well exercised myself? I rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed before I rose. Is not that enough? Pope Alexander did so, by the advice of a Jew, his physician; and lived till his dying day in despite of the envious. My first masters have used me to it, saying that breakfast makes a good memory; wherefore they drank first. I am very well after it, and dine but the better. And Maître Tubal, who was the first licentiate at Paris, told me that it is not everything to run a pace, but to set forth well betimes: so doth not the total welfare of our humanity depend upon perpetual drinking atas, atas, like ducks, but on drinking well in the morning; whence the verse

"To rise betimes is no good hour,

To drink betimes is better sure.""

After he had thoroughly broken his fast, he went to church; and they carried for him, in a great basket, a huge breviary. There he heard six-and-twenty or thirty masses. This while, to the same place came his sayer of hours, lapped up about the chin like a tufted whoop, and his breath perfumed with good store of syrup. With him he mumbled all his kyriels, which he so curiously picked that there fell not so much as one grain to the ground. As he went from the church, they brought him, upon a dray drawn by oxen, a heap of paternosters of Sanct Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a hat-block; and thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he said more in turning them over than sixteen hermits would have done. Then did he study for some paltry half-hour with his eyes fixed upon his book; but as the comic saith, his mind was in the kitchen. Then he sat down at table; and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he began his meal with some dozens of hams, dried neats' tongues, mullet's roe, chitterlings, and such other forerunners of wine. In the meanwhile, four of his folks did cast into his mouth, one after another continually, mustard by whole shovelfuls. Immediately after that he drank a horrific draught of white wine for the ease of his kidneys. When that was done, he ate

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