for Henry II., or Panurge for the Bishop of Valence, is as unnecessary to our appreciation of the work, as the knowledge whether Sir John Oldcastle was fat or lean, is to our appreciation of Falstaff. It is not required that we do more than believe that Rabelais lived in a stirring and stormy period-that he bore a part in some of the remarkable events of the time, and that he was endowed with the usual prerogative of genius which enabled him to look at passing events through a light of his own-that he moulded and employed these events as they suited his purpose or fell in with his scheme. With this in mind it is unnecessary to consider this great work with reference to the portraits of real personages which some have affected to discover in its pages, but rather with reference to its merits as a work of art, its execution, and its intention.

intellectual wonders which arose at the bid- to have been alluded to throughout the Roding of Shakspeare. It is different with the mance. Whether Pantagruel was intended great discoverers of the exact sciences. Their followers generally know more of their system than themselves, but in works of imagination the first of a class is most frequently the best. Perfection seems attained at a bound, all after-exertion diverging from the straight line, or following so closely as to suggest the idea of imitation. We have new adaptations and the same form shown under a light of a different color, but each repetition of the style or idea renders it fainter, less striking, and less powerful. Few authors have had a greater number of imitators than Rabelais, and none have afforded a richer mine for the depredations of those whose appreciation of humor is stronger than their ability to beget it. Swift has evidently made him his model, and followed him closely on many occasions. Sterne has not only made much of Rabelais his own, without acknowledgment, but it may safely be said, that, had Rabelais never existed, we should not have had Tristram Shandy. The love with which the work was regarded among the courtiers of Francis I., and his successor, Henry, was unbounded. Cardinal de Bellay called it emphatically "The Book ;" and he is said to have sent a gentleman from his table on one occasion as unworthy to share his hospitality, because he had not read it. Louis Barbier owed all his good fortune to his knowledge of Rabelais. His being able to repeat the whole of it by heart, so recommended him to the Duke of Orleans that he gave him an abbey, and continued to take charge of his fortunes till he became a Cardinal. Horace Walpole confessed that his love of Rabelais had increased with his years. Southey, one of the purest of our English authors, not only makes constant reference to the work, but expatiates on some of its episodes in the "Doctor; " while Coleridge, the highest critical authority that has yet appeared in England, boasts that he could write a treatise on Rabelais which would make the church stare, and the conventicle groan, and yet it would be truth, and nothing but the truth.

In our estimation of this great work, we may now throw away that host of fancies which the earlier editors of Rabelais indulged in, as to the real persons conjectured

The narrative is easily disposed of. It bears a family resemblance to those romances of love and chivalry it was partly intended to satirize. King Grangousier and his wife Gargunella have a son born unto them, whom they call Gargantua. This giant son of a giant father is educated at home under the care of his father until he outgrows the paternal rule, when he is sent to Paris to finish his education. While there, he astonishes the citizens by a succession of curious exploits, the course of which is interrupted by a message from his father, who calls him back to assist him against the king of Lerné, with whom he had fallen out. Gargantua leaves Paris, taking with him Friar John of the chopping knive, with whose assistance the invading enemy is cut to pieces, and Grangousier enjoys his realms in peace.

In the next book we are introduced to Pantagruel, the son of Gargantua, who has long ago succeeded to the kingdom in the room of his father Grangousier, deceased. Like his father before him, Pantagruel is sent to Paris to be educated. Here he falls in with Panurge, with whom he is associated to the end of the romance. How Pantagruel, Panurge, and Friar John, go to Gargantua's assistance when the kingdom is invaded by the Dipsodes and the Giants, and how, after conquering these invaders, Panurge is made Lord of Salamagundin,

gets into debt, and, as a necessary conse-ceeds it.

These three characters form toquence, resolves to marry-how he consulted gether "that piece of work called man," a all authorities, ancient and modern, theolo- compound of the intellectual, the evil, and gians, fools, physicians, lawyers, witches, the sensual, mingling in the commonest and philosophers, with the view of obtaining a most momentous affairs of life. Immersed complete assurance whether the intended the one moment in high and holy thoughts, marriage was to be happy or the reverse, and the next in grossness, sensuality and forms the subject of the next two books. buffoonery, yet never outstepping themBooks fourth and fifth-the latter published selves, or swerving from the mission which after the death of Rabelais-give an ac- Rabelais designed they should accomplish, .ount of the voyage of Pantagruel, Pan- as exponents of that theory of life which arge, and Friar John, to consult the oracle forms the keystone of his peculiar philosophy. of the Holy Bottle. The various countries they pass through-the surprising adventures they encounter, and the multitude of char--its resistless, pouring, never-ceasing play acters they meet, form sufficient variety to keep the curiosity and attention of the reader stretched to the utmost till the farfamed oracle of the Bottle is reached, and the story abruptly closes.

The first feature which strikes us in the execution of this great work, is its abandon

of fancy, and exuberance of language by which that fancy is conveyed. Another feature is the immense study, learning, and research it evinces. Scarce an author who wrote previous to that age but he parodies. Panurge salutes his companion in twelve different languages. It is difficult, now that the best authors have been placed within the reach of the humblest, to appreciate the labor which this show of learning must have cost its possessor. Yet every source seems alike open to him. The historians and dramatists of Greece, the poets of Rome, the monkish chronicles, the unwieldy volumes which discussed the church question of the period, -all, from the broadside which dangled from the edge of the pedlar's basket, to that volume which forms the exponent and guide to our highest aspirations, seem to have been rifled to beget occasion for his wit, or form a subject of satire for his pages. The cumbrous lore of the civilians-the catalogues of royal libraries-the disputations of the theologians, are stript of their coverings-the latent bombast which inhabits them is taken from its kernel and set up to "make wild laughter."

It is in the portraits of the principal characters and the wonderful variety of incident, embracing almost every event and situation common to humanity, that the exuberant fancy and piercing observation of Rabelais are most apparent. Pantagruel is a beautiful creation, humane, gentle, learned, contemplative, affectionate, a perfect prince, a kind of giant Hamlet, with ten times the vitality of that wonderful creation, always modest, earnestly decisive, though prone to speculation, sometimes sad, and evermore possessed of and governed by a rare combination of energy and common sense, looking at all things in the light all things should be looked at. Panurge, on the other hand, is a perfect Puck, a Mephistopheles, an embodiment of the sensual and baser passions common to mankind. Half á coward, prone to do evil, loath to do good, evermore goaded on by the animal impulses, and evermore suffering accordingly. Pantagruel is the embodiment of the intellectual, while The all-pervading quality which distinPanurge is a personation of the principle of guishes Rabelais from every other writer is evil, so far as evil is inherent in humanity- his humor-if such a term can be said to the two together forming a strong conception apply to a broad, masculine, never-ceasing of those opposing powers which meet in power of exciting laughter, not in simpers man, and whose conflicts are fought foot to and smiles, but in irrepressible hearty foot on the tablet of the conscience. To guffaws. He is continually presenting a make this ideal man-this picture of mass of ludicrously grotesque imagery, humanity complete-we have Friar John, glittering in a thousand hues, capable of the eater and drinker, the embodiment of being looked at in a thousand ways. Yet rude health and physical power, the fighter nothing is so disguised that its prototype is and slayer, fond of battling for the bustle it lost sight of. It is mankind in masks, but creates, and fond of that ease which suc- yet mankind. Sometimes a group fills the

picture, sometimes an individual-the search- Still, Rabelais is not a book for the parlor. ing sunlight of wit shines equally over all. The grossness of the descriptions might be What is great and good, he looks at, sets it explained and excused by the soundness of gently aside, as unsuitable for laughter; and the philosophy which requires them. Unin its place he seizes the bombastic, the fortunately, however, while the former is foolish, the mean, the cowardly, and the evident and apt, the latter has to be sought vile, whether they shelter under the canopy for, and those who are most liable to be of a throne, or hold on by the horns of the caught by the weeds on the surface are least altar. He finds them everywhere, strips likely to dig deep enough to find the antidote. off the tinsel which surrounds them, and We shall not attempt to excuse Rabelais in lays them bare to the world. The result is this respect, as some have attempted to do, laughter. Amid the most recondite learn- on the ground of the license peculiar to his ing you have the most grotesque imagery. age. The time at which he wrote was proThe most odd and irreconcilable pictures are ductive of much chaster composition than set to form the most profound allegory. the two centuries which followed it. We The most stupendous grossness, the broadest believe the true explanation to be, that this profanity-the deepest sensibility, mingling, grossness was necessary to his system, and, mixing, twisting, turning, like the colors in consequently, he hesitated not a moment rea kaleidoscope, or the figures in a drunk- garding it, but boldly spoke of plain things in such words as best suited his purpose.

ard's dream.

It must be evident that the great end and aim of Rabelais was to portray humanity, divested of those adventitious ornaments with which prudence, custom, and society have invested them-to show the mind as taking its cue from the material fabric which enshrines it. Riotous in the enjoyment and exhibition of strong animal impulses-tri

The humor of Rabelais is only equalled by his grossness. It is a painful truth, that no writer we know of, either ancient or modern, equals him in the exhibition of absolute obscenity. This is not a point upon which we can expatiate with much safety; but we hold an opinion which has gained strength with every successive perusal of the work, that this obscenity, grossness, filthumphing over the less powerful aspirations call it by what name you will—was not introduced for its own sake. That it forms a part of that deep purpose, that peculiar theory of life, of which Rabelais is the exponent, and that the work would not be complete without it. We leave the pursuit of the hint thus thrown out to those who choose to follow it, confident that it will repay the labor spent in that direction. It must be evident, however, to all that the licentiousness of Rabelais is not the emanation of a desire after the enjoyment of secret sensuality. His images are never of that seductive kind which lure to destruction-he brings in no beauties to influence desire.

which sometimes intrude themselves, or are begot among them-a scheme of human life which boldly proclaims that "laughter holding both his sides" is the chief end, and jollity the touchstone of existence-that all study is a weariness of the flesh-that the nearest, the most obtainable, and the most richly rewarded enjoyment consists in the enjoyment of the senses-that all our longings after the infinite must come to earth again. Vanitas vanitatum, saith the preacher, after he had trod the circle of the sciences, and put a girdle round the bounds of knowledge. Instead of regretting a life spent in the search of the unfathomable, Rabelais boldly sets "Rigwoodie hags wad spain a foal," out by proclaiming its inutility-cries out are shown in all their deformity. He con"cui bono "-rejects the spiritual, and exalts founds us with no metaphysical modulations the physical, as the be-all and the end-all of sin, to make fervid the fancy with dreams here. Full of meat and drink, he goes forth of unhallowed enjoyment. He treads "no to laugh at the follies and frailties of humanprimrose path of dalliance," but shows ity, and to proclaim aloud in the streets that licentiousness stript of those colors with the true wisdom is "a spirit of jollity, pickled which some have invested it, and thus in the scorn of fortune."

pro

vides us with the only charm which is all- It may be urged that this is a low aim. powerful against it-an ability to laugh at It contents itself with almost setting aside the higher hopes of our existence. But,

it.

rightly looked at, Pantagruelism gets quit of ever-changing desires. He looks on these the inflictions of existence. The cutting things through a light which magnifies the sorrow and sad reflection, which ever accom- whims, the caprices, the gayeties, the gravities, panies the accumulations of experience, are which are inseparable from humanity. Like escaped. The dreams of ambition, the small a face seen in one of those powerful glasses schemes of politics, are laughed at, and life which shows the smoothest skin full of resolves itself into one irrepressible guffaw. blotches, and the fairest complexion clouded There is something in this contempt of all with freckles, the truth is magnified to beyond mere physical enjoyments almost sub-grotesqueness, and the first emotion which lime in its simplicity. It presents an economy strikes the spectator is laughter. Deeper reof human life which mankind have been long flection follows, and thoughts which "make endeavoring to reach, and yet to which they mad the guilty and appal the free" succeed. have only to stretch forth their hand and be Both are to be found in the pages of Pantasatisfied. While Epictetus inculcated that gruel, although many do not penetrate beyond the highest effort of philosophy is to regard the former. He is most to be envied who the world with indifference, Rabelais shows finds both, for in their union lies the deep us a more excellent way. In looking at the theory of life which forms the Philosophy of world he finds that the great whole is but a Rabelais. compound of grossness-a phantasmagoria of

labors in his tanning and currying shop. Only when his last purchases had been mastered did he seek for their fittest successors. In short, his affections seemed equally divided between his tan-pits, his nicely-bound but solid books, and his fellow wayfarers.

THOMAS DOWSE.-The pressure of politics pre- | These books were of the best editions and vented our noticing the death, on election day, finest bindings; they were, moreover, thoroughly of Thomas Dowse, the Cambridgeport leather-read by their owner in the intervals of his daily dresser, aged 84. His tasteful sign, a carved sheep upon a fine Grecian pillar, was for many years a familiar half-way landmark on the road from Boston to Old Cambridge Mr. Dowse carried on, for a whole generation, the dressing of sheepskins, so well doing his work that Little & Brown recently attributed a large part of their success as standard publishers of law-books to the fact that they used Dowse's skins for binding, there being nothing equal to them.

At the same place was bachelor Dowse's house and garden; the latter finely laid out and open to all orderly people, who could enjoy it as freely as its owner. Among other interesting points of this garden was a range of bee-hives, kept for their good example-their kind owner never taking their hard-earned honey from them, but finding an ample reward in watching the labors of

"The singing masons building roofs of gold." The house, also, was free to all decorous people to enjoy its fine original paintings, foreign drawings, &c.; but the great feature was the library of 5,000 volumes, costing above $40,000, and which was declared, by no less a scholar than Edward Everett, to be the most complete English library of its size within his knowledge.

Recently, feeling the departure of his vigor and the failure of his faculties, he made his will, kindly remembering his few relatives, to whom he gave some $30,000, about half his estate, leaving the rest in the hands of two gentlemen of Cambridge, to be used, as they might see fit, for charitable or Iterary purposes. His cherished books, however, he would not trust to any posthumous disposal, but made a direct gift of them to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which body received possession of its rich prize on the 30th day of last August.

Mr. Dowse, who had prepared his tomb at Mount Auburn, in the shade of a monument he had erected to his former friend and master, the great Franklin himself, had now his house set in order, and calmly awaited the dispensations of that Providence that for more than the allotted threescore years and ten had enabled him to bestow so much innocent happiness on himself and his neighbors.-Lowell Citizen, Dec. 6.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 663.-7 FEBRUARY, 1857.

From The New Monthly Magazine.

west passage. By the sacrifice of their lives they have secured to us, their countrymen, an honor that, perhaps, might otherwise never have been won; for it was in seeking for them that Captain M'Clure and his gallant officers and crew succeeded, for the first time in the annals of the world, in passing from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. In the eloquent words of Lord Stanley and Sir Edward Parry, when addressing Captain Cresswell, who first brought the intelligence to England, in 1853, "it was a triumph that would not be valued the less highly because

which was not embittered by any single painful or melancholy reminiscence-a triumph, not over man, but over nature-a triumph which inflicts no injury, and which humiliates no enemy-a triumph, not for this age alone, but for posterity-not for England only, but for mankind."

ADVENTURE IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.* THE discovery of the northwest passage is the final solution of a problem sought through many an arduous struggle during the course of three hundred years, and the successful realization of a project cherished in Great Britain ever since the time when Nuñez de Balboa waded into the sea at Panama, and striking it with his sword, claimed the broad Pacific as the property of Spain (A.D. 1513). The northwest passage, Commander Sherard Osborn justly remarks, would never have been discovered but for the devotion of Frank- it was not stained by bloodshed—a triumph lin, his officers, and men; they each volunteered for that duty, and fell in the performance of it. The party from the Erebus and Terror, which perished, it appears, on the Great Fish River, must have fallen at the very moment that they had added the link that was wanting to connect the known coasts of the Parry Archipelago with that of the American continent. They did not, like the Investigator, achieve the passage by actually passing from ocean to ocean; but it is perfectly possible-and it causes an involuntary shudder to think of such a possibilitythat at the very moment when Captain M'Clure stood on the northern coast of Banks Land, and assured himself of a water communication between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, some lonely survivors of Franklin's expedition may have been watching from King William's Land-that known highway to Behring's Strait, which Dease and Simpson had traversed many years before-a pathway upon whose entrance they yielded up their gallant spirits. Captain M'Clure and his followers can well afford to surrender cheerfully to the illustrious dead that share of the honor reaped which is their due.

Franklin and his hundred and thirty-eight followers were the forlorn hope of the north

The Discovery of the Northwest Passage by H.M.S. Investigator, Captain R. M'Clure, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854. Edited by Commander Sherard Osborn. Longman and Co.

Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, 1854, 1855. By Elisha Kent Kane, M.D., U.S.N. Childs and Peterson. Philadelphia.

DCLXIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XVI. 21

The Enterprise and Investigator, it will be remembered, had failed in their attempt to get to the westward of Leopold Island in 1849, and only escaped from that inhospitable region to be beset in the drifting, pack-ice of Barrow's Strait, and swept with it out of Lancaster Sound into Baffin's Bay, so that they could but just secure their retreat to England before the Arctic Seas became generally sealed for the season. When it was determined by government to resume the search, the very same winter, after Sir John Franklin's missing ships, by the way of Behring's Strait, tempest-tossed and ice-worn though they were, a little dock-yard work soon put the two good ships into proper condition for once more resuming their contest with floe and iceberg, and Captain Richard Collinson, C.B., was appointed to the one, and Commander, now Captain, Sir Robert le Mesurier M'Clure, to the other.

The little squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 20th of January, 1850, and doubling Cape Horn, crossed the Arctic Circle on the 24th of July, in the same year, after a long and tedious navigation. The first to greet them was the Plover depôt ship, then commanded by Commander Moore, and on the 31st they fell in with the Herald, Captain