CHAPTER X. COMIC ROMANCE.-WORKS TOLDO. OF RABELAIS.-VITA DI BER DON QUIXOTE. GUSMAN D'ALFARACHE. MARCOS DE OBREGON. ROMAN COMIQUE, ETC. POLITICAL ROMANCE. UTOPIA. ARGENIS.- SETHOS, ETC. ALL men have, more or less, a propensity to satire and ridicule. This tendency has its origin in self-love, which naturally leads us to indulge in a belief of our own superiority over the rest of our species. It is in satire and ridicule that this feeling receives its most frequent gratification; and, spite of the objections of Beattie, nothing can, in many instances, be more just than the reflection of Addison on the well-known theory of Hobbes, that when a man laughs he is not very merry, but very proud. But, besides the gratification they afford, works of satire and ridicule are useful, as they frequently exhibit mankind in their true light and just proportions, with all their pas sions and follies. They remove from their conduct that varnish with which men so ingeniously cover those actions which are frequently the offspring of pride, private views, or voluntary self-delusion. In nothing is the superiority of the moderns over the ancients more apparent than in the higher excellence of their ludicrous compositions. Modern ridicule, as has been shown by Dr. Beattie, is at once more copious, and more refined, than the ancient. Many sources of wit and humour, formerly unknown, are now open and obvious, and those which are common to all ages have been purified by improvement in courtesy and taste. romance. RABELAIS, whom Sir William Temple' has styled the Father of Ridicule, and Bacon, the Great Jester, is certainly the first modern author who obtained much celebrity by the comic or satirical At the time when he appeared, extravagant tales were in the height of their popularity. As he had determined to ridicule the most distinguished persons, and everything that the rest of mankind regarded as venerable or important, he clothed his satire somewhat in the form of the lying stories of the age,' that under this veil he might be 1 Essay on Poetry in his Miscellanea. Pt. ii. Works, Lond. 1720, vol. i. p. 246. 2 It was only at the beginning of the present century that the opinion arose that Gargantua was not a pure creation of Rabelais' imagination, but a literary investiture of a figure already widely diffused in popular tradition, and referred by J. Grimm (in his Deutsche Mythologie, 2nd ed. 1873) to the Celtic era. Eloi Johanneau, in a note to a legend popular in the Pays de Retz, recorded by Thomas de St. Mars, first expressed the opinion that Gargantua was the Hercules Pantophagus of the Gauls, and subsequently remarks in the preface to the Variorum edition of Rabelais that Rabelais is not the inventor of the mythological figure of Gargantua, who was well known in certain districts of France long before Rabelais found in him the prototype of his romance. The story of many of his exploits is still popular in France, etc. (tom. i. p. 37). Subsequent researches, which have found concise embodiment in M. Paul Sébillot's " Gargantua dans les Traditions Populaires," Maisonneuve, Paris, 1883, to which the reader is referred, in some degree support the above assertion. M. Gaston Paris opposes the view, in the Revue Critique, 1868, pp. 326, etc., but by at least most writers on the subject it is considered impossible that all the extant traditions, local associations, names of rocks, mounds, etc., should have been derived from a literary source, i.e., Rabelais' romance. See especially on this subject Bourquelot's remarks, quoted by M. Sébillot, Introduction, pp. iii.-x. "Certain figures there are," he truly observes, "which the imagination even of genius is inadequate to create. There are types which a writer discovers, perpetuates, but cannot invent. Such a type is Rabelais' Gargantua in our opinion. As we read, we are sensible of an archaic something underlying the chronicques, and of the artless working of popular imagination in the prodigious character of the story." On the other hand, M. Gaston Paris (Revue Critique, 1868, p. 326, etc.) throws doubts upon Mr. Gaidoz's views, e.g., the latter claims that the Gargantua myth is Celtic, being found only in Great Britain and France, a pretension which cannot be maintained. See Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, iii. p. 542. sheltered from the resentment of those whom he intended to deride. By this means he probably conceived that his work would, at the same time, obtain a favourable reception from the vulgar, who, though they should not discover his secret meaning, might be entertained with fantastic stories which bore some resemblance to those to which they were accustomed. With this view, Rabelais availed himself of the writings of those who had preceded him in satirical romance, and imitated in particular the True History of Lucian. His stories he borrowed chiefly from previous facetiae and novellettes: Thus the story of Hans Carvel's ring, of which Fontaine believed him the inventor, is one of the Facetiae of Poggio Bracciolini, and entitled Annulus, or Visio Francesci Philelphi. With an intention of adding to the diversion of the reader, he has given a mixture of burlesque and barbarous words from the Greek and Latin, a notion which was perhaps suggested by the Liber Macaronicorum of Teofilo Folengi, published under name of Merlinus Coccaius, about twenty years before the appearance of the work of Rabelais. An infinite number of puns and quibbles have also been introduced amongst the more ingenious conceptions of the author. In short, his romance may be considered as a mixture, or olio, of all the merry, satirical, and comic modes of writing that had been employed previous to the age in which he wrote. There are four things which Rabelais seems principally to have proposed to ridicule in his work: 1. The refined and crooked politics of the period in which he lived. 2. The vices of the clergy, the popular superstitions, and the religious controversies at that time agitated. 3. The lying and extravagant tales then in vogue. 4. The pedantry and philosophical jargon of the age." But although it be understood that these in general were the objects of the author, the application of a great part of the satire is unknown. Works of wit and humour, 1 The historian De Thou writes: "Scriptum edidit ingeniosissimum, quo vitæ regnique cunctos ordines, quasi in scœnam sub fictis nominibus produxit et populo deridendos propinavit." unless they allude to permanent follies, in which case their relish may remain unimpaired, are more subject to the ravages of time, and more liable to become obscure, than any other literary compositions, because the propriety of allusion cannot be estimated when the customs and incidents referred to are forgotten: We must be acquainted with the likeness before we can relish the caricature. "Those modifications of life," says Dr. Johnson, “and peculiarities of practice, which are the progeny of error and perverseness, or at best of some accidental influence, or transient impression, must perish with their parents." To us who are unacquainted with the follies and impieties of the Greek sophists, nothing can appear more wretched than the ridicule with which these pretended philosophers were persecuted by Aristophanes, yet it is said to have acted with wonderful effect among a people distinguished for wit and refinement of taste. The humour, which in Hudibras transported the age which gave it birth with merriment, is lost, in a great degree, to a posterity unaccustomed to puritanical mo roseness. No satirical writings have suffered more by lapse of time than those of Rabelais; for, besides being in a great measure confined to temporary and local subjects, he was obliged to write with ambiguity, on account of the delicate matters of which he treated, the arbitrary and persecuting spirit of the age and country in which he lived, and the multitude of enemies by whom he was surrounded. Accordingly, even to those who are most minutely acquainted with the political transactions and ecclesiastical history of the sixteenth century, there will be many things from which no meaning can be deciphered, and to most readers the works of Rabelais must appear a mass of unintelligible extravagance. The advantages which he formerly derived from temporary opinions, personal allusions, and local customs, have long been lost, and every topic of merriment which the modes of artificial life afforded, now only "obscure the page which they once illumined." Even the outline of the story, with which Rabelais has chosen to surround his satire, has furnished matter of dispute, and commentators are not agreed what persons are in tended by the two chief characters, Gargantua1 and Pantagruel. Thus it has been said by some writers, that Gargantua is Francis I. and Pantagruel Henry II., while, in fact, there is not one circumstance in the lives, nor one feature in the characters, of these French princes, which appears to correspond with the actions or dispositions of the imaginary heroes of Rabelais. Other critics have supposed that Grangousier, the father of Gargantua, is John D'Albret, king of Navarre; Gargantua, Henry D'Albret, son and successor of John; Pantagruel, Anthony Bourbon, duke of Vendôme, who was father to Henry IV., and by his marriage with Jeanne D'Albret, the daughter of Henry D'Albret, succeeded his father-in-law in the throne of Navarre. Picrohole, according to this explication, is king of Spain, either Ferdinand. of Arragon, or Charles V. Panurge, the companion of Pantagruel, who is the secondary hero of the work, is said The earliest occurrence of the name Gargantua in literature is, it seems, of the date of 1526 (“Gargantua quia chepveux de plastre," Charles Bourdigné, Légende de Maistre Pierre Faifen). This alone is hardly sufficient reason for believing it anterior to Rabelais, for it is not absolutely ascertained that no edition of his work, or part of it, appeared prior to 1532, the date of the earliest extant copy. M. Henri Gaidoz (Revue Archéologique, Sept. 1868, p. 172, etc. (Gargantua, Essai de Mythologie Celtique, quoted by M. Sébillot) recognizes the name Gargantua in the Gurguntius filius nobilis illius Beleni [? the Apollo Belenus of the Gauls], who Giraldus Cambrensis (Topographia Hiberniæ, ii. No. 8), writing in the twelfth century, says reigned in Britain before the Roman invasion. M. Gaidoz holds that Gargantua is a formation from the suffix uas-atis and stem Gargant, an intensive reduplication of the root gar, to swallow or devour (cf. Lat. gurges, gurgitis, also the Spanish Garganta, throat, old English gargate, Breton gargaden, which have the same meaning, and to which, following M. Bourquelot, may be added Mediæv. Latin Gargatha, Gargathum, Ital. Gargatta, Gargantone, Spanish Garganta, and other similar words). The same root has furnished the Hindoo Mythology, according to M. Gaidoz, with the name of Garuda, the conqueror of the Nagas; and Gargantuas was originally an epithet (the Devourer) added to the name, now lost, of a divinity-a sort of Celtic Moloch, perhaps to whom at first human beings (César et Strabon, liv. iv. iv. 5), and subsequently animals, were offered, and who may be related to, or identic with, the Gayant of Douai, the Gargouille of Rouen, etc. The name of Gargantua is attached to a number of dolmens and druidical stones, etc. Of course the theory that Gargantua was originally a personification of the sun has been started. |
