As already stated, the first two books were all that were published in the lifetime of Sir Thomas Urquhart. They appeared as separate volumes in 1653. The unsold stock of each was reissued in 1664, in one volume, an additional title-page, an extra preface, and a life of Rabelais being prefixed to them. The volume became very scarce, and in 1693-94 Pierre Antoine Motteux, a Frenchman, who was master of exceedingly racy and idiomatic English, published an edition containing the third book. This was extremely inaccurate, so far as typography was concerned, and gave the public the version of Sir Thomas Urquhart with certain unspecified changes made by the editor in order to impart to it additional "smartness." In 1708 Motteux published a complete translation of Rabelais, the version of the fourth and fifth books being supplied by himself,[259] as supplementary to Urquhart's work. After the death of Motteux, a somewhat pretentious editor named Ozell[260] brought out the combined versions, with notes principally taken from the French of Duchat, and this has been reprinted time after time since its first appearance in 1737.
At least seventeen editions of Urquhart's work, either by itself or with Motteux's supplementary matter, have been issued since his day, and there is no sign of its fame waxing dim through the lapse of time; and therefore the immortality after which he longed has in a measure been won by him. And so, once more before we take our leave of him, we look again into the twilight of the past, and see his striking figure--the soldier, the scholar, and the author--crowned with the wreath which his own hands have placed upon his brows, but which succeeding generations declare him worthy to bear.
[232] The title-page of the first book does not contain Sir Thomas Urquhart's name, but on it is his motto ("Mean, speak, and do well"). It runs as follows:--"The first Book of the Works of MR. FRANCIS RABELAIS, Doctor in Physick: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of GARGANTUA and his Sonne PANTAGRUEL. Together with the Pantagrueline Prognostication, the Oracle of the divine Bacbuc, and response of the bottle. Hereunto are annexed the Navigations unto the sounding Isle and the Isle of the Apedefts: as likewise the Philosophical cream with a Limosin Epistle. All done by Mr. Francis Rabelais, in the French Tongue, and now faithfully translated into English. ευνοει εὑλογε καἱ εὑπραττε. London, Printed for Richard Baddeley, within the Middle Templegate. 1653." On the title-page of the second book are the translator's initials, S, T. V. C. (Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie). While on that of the third book we have his name in full: "Now faithfully translated into English by the unimitable pen of Sir Thomas Urwhart, Kt. and Bar. The Translator of the Two First Books. Never before Printed. London: Printed for Richard Baldwin, near the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, 1693." Copies of the first and second books of the above date are in the British Museum, but erroneously catalogued--not under Urquhart, but only under C., S. T. V. A second edition of them both seems from the Bodleian Catalogue to have been published in 1664. Both are very rare, it is said, owing to the destruction caused by the fire of London in 1666.