What characters! The three great royal giants, Graugousier, Gargantua and Pantagruel--have there ever been such kings? And the noble servants of such noble masters! The whole atmosphere is so large, so genial, so courteous, so sweet-tempered, so entirely what the life of man upon earth should be.
Even the military exploits of Friar John, even the knavish tricks of Panurge, cannot spoil our tenderness for these dear bully-boys, these mellow and magnanimous rogues! Certain paragraphs in Rabelais recur to one's mind daily. That laudation of Socrates at the beginning, and the description of the "little boxes called _Silent"_ that outside have so grotesque an adornment, but within are full of ambergris and myrrh and all manner of precious odours.
And the picture of the banquet "when they fell to the chat of the afternoon's collation and began great goblets to ring, great bowls to ting, great gammons to trot; pour me out the fair Greek wine, the extravagant wine, the good wine, Lacrima Christi, supernaculum!" And, above all, the most holy Abbey of Thelema, over the gate of which was written the words that are never far from the hearts of wise Utopian Christians, the profound words, the philosophical words, the most shrewd Cabalistic words, and the words that "lovers" alone can understand--"Fay que ce Vouldray!" Do as Thou Wilt!
Little they know of Rabelais who call him a lewd buffoon--the profanest of mountebanks. He was one of those rare spirits that redeem humanity. To open his book--though the steam of the grossness of it rises to Heaven--is to touch the divine fingers--the fingers that heal the world.
How that "style" of his, that great oceanic avalanche of learning and piety and obscenity and gigantic merriment, smells of the honest earth!
How, with all his huge scholarship, he loves to depend for his richest, most human effects, upon his own peasant-people of Touraine! The proverbs of the country-side, the wisdom of tavern-wit, the shrewdness and fantasy of old wives tales, the sly earthly humors of farmers and vine-tenders and goat-herds and goose-girls--these are things out of which he distils his vision, his oracles, his courage.
There is also--who could help observing it?--a certain large and patriarchal homeliness--a kind of royal domesticity--about much that he writes. Those touches, as when Gargantua, his little dog in advance, enters the dining hall, when they are discussing Panurge's marriage, and they all rise to do him honor; as when Gargantua bids Pantagruel farewell and gives him a benediction so wise and tender; remain in the mind like certain passages in the Bible. These are the things that aesthetic fools "with varnished faces" easily overlook and misunderstand; but good simple fellows--"honest cods" as Rabelais would say--are struck to the heart by them. How proud the man might be, who in the turmoil of this troublesome world and beneath the mystery of "le grand Peut-être" could answer to the ultimate question, "I am a Christian of the faith of Rabelais!"