"I am grateful to Amyot above all things for having had the wit to select so worthy and so suitable a work to present his country. We ignorant folk had been lost, had not this lifted us out of the mire; thanks to it, we now dare speak and write, and ladies give lessons out of it to school-masters; 'tis our breviary." For English-speaking people its significance is greatly enhanced from the consideration that it was really Amyot's version which, in the English dress of Florio, became Shakespeare's Plutarch. Anyone who knows how closely Shakespeare followed his Plutarch will appreciate, then, what an important influence on world literature Amyot was destined to have.
This translation of Plutarch has come to be looked upon as probably one of the best translations ever made. It has sometimes been said that "to translate is to betray" and that the best translations are at most tapestries seen from the wrong side, but Amyot's "Plutarch" must be considered an exception to this rule. Erasmus said of Linacre's translation into Latin of Galen that it was better than the original Greek. Amyot's "Plutarch" has become a French classic, though the Greek author was by no means classic in the limited sense of the word in the original. Racine would read no other because he thought there was nothing to equal it in French. Amyot's works are a treasure house of the French language, and modern French critics often regret that many of his expressions have been allowed to sink into desuetude.
France glories in the possession of another of these striking characters of the Renaissance period, Rabelais, about the estimation of whose character and place in history, just as with regard to Machiavelli, the world has not quite made up its mind. There is no doubt at all as to his genius, nor his breadth of view and comprehensive grasp of the knowledge of his time, nor of his ability as a vigorous writer, though his crudities of style and frequent indulgence in vulgarity, have made him a writer largely for men, and even many of these have been deterred from the study of his writings because of the glaringness of these faults. His defects were largely those of his time, for they were accustomed to call a spade a spade in the Renaissance. It was not because of looseness of his own life that his crudities of style are so manifest. Careful investigations and research in our time have made it very clear that there are many misunderstandings with regard to his personal character which should be removed. Rabelais ran the whole gamut of life in his time. He was first a friar, then a monk, took his medical degrees at Montpellier, a physician who gained considerable prestige for his knowledge of medicine, a writer of books that were widely read, a scholar whose journeys to Rome gave him a breadth of knowledge unusual even in his time, and the intimate friend of some of the great and good churchmen and literary men of his time.
The old legend which represented him as a gluttonous and wine-bibbing buffoon, wandering in revels as an unfrocked priest, must now be abandoned. His transitions from friar to monk, to physician, were all accomplished with due ecclesiastical permission, and in spite of the freedom of speech and liberalizing tendencies to be found in his writings he never got into serious trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities. Evidently he was looked upon as a genius whose good will might be depended on to keep him from serious heretical divagations, though occasionally his superabundant vital spirit would lead him into expressions that were often indiscreet and sometimes needed correction. His relations with Guillaume and Jean du Bellay and with the bishops of Maillezais and Montpellier, as well as the distinguished jurist, Tiraqueau, furnish most convincing proof of the high regard in which he was held not [{473}] only by men of his own rank, but by those far above him in power and station--Princes of the Church and patrons of humanism.
In spite of their deterring vulgarity, his works have been much read ever since and are still often in the hands of scholars and those who want to appreciate one phase at least of the true inwardness and all-comprehensiveness of the spirit of the Renaissance. The number of Greek and Latin writers from whom he quotes is very large, and his reading must have been very wide. He seems also to have known some Hebrew. Very few of his contemporaries realized at all that in his writings he had made an enduring contribution not only to French, but to world literature. So good a critic, however, as Joachim du Bellay in the "Defence and Illustration of the French Tongue" alludes to him as the man "who has brought back Aristophanes to life and who imitates so well the satirical wit of Lucian."
The fact that his book should be published at this time without its author incurring serious censure, much less persecution, is a proof that the usual persuasion of many who write on the history of this time that heresy-baiting was a favorite occupation of the Churchmen is unfounded and shows how absurd is the impression entertained by not a few that the slightest imprudence might have even fatal consequences. Men like Étienne Dolet and Giordano Bruno lost their lives at this time on heretical charges, but that was because their writings seemed to the Church, and above all the civil authorities of the time, to undermine authority and to propagate anarchy. This has always been a dangerous suspicion for a philosophic writer to fall under at any time, and is not without its serious dangers, social rather than legal, even in our time. In other matters, however, as the example of Rabelais shows, there was, if not a modern liberty, at least a large tolerance of expression, provided the thoughts were tempered by humor and the character of the writer known to be such that genuine ill-will or anarchic tendencies towards civil and ecclesiastical authorities were not the manifest purpose of the writings.
The interest of our own generation in Rabelais is best [{474}] illustrated by the foundation in 1902 of the Société des Études Rabelaisiennes at Paris. The organ of the Society, the Revue des Études Rabelaisiennes, made its first appearance in January, 1903, and has already added much to our knowledge of Rabelais. It has now been thoroughly demonstrated that Gargantua was a popular and folk-lore character long before Rabelais' time, and that he assumed the character only in order to give popular vogue to his own ideas. In spite of the cruder side of his work he has so much to say that is valuable with regard to education, valuable even for our time, so much of correction of popular errors and emphatic restatement of the philosophy of life by which men may secure their happiness, not through selfishness, but love for their fellowmen, that whenever men think deeply for themselves and do not merely drift in the wake of other thinkers, Rabelais will always attract attention. It is always a good sign when Rabelais becomes popular in France, for men are usually thinking more deeply than before. Like Dante, he is a touchstone of sincerity and honesty of thought and purpose among his countrymen.
Rabelais is a most difficult man to sum up for those who are not French. Saintsbury in his "Earlier Renaissance" has perhaps furnished the best brief appreciation when he said:
"On the pure credit side his (Rabelais') assets are so great that one can only marvel at the undervaluation of them by any competent auditor. . . . You may say some things against him, and some of these some things truly. But three things will remain. He is (let the competent gainsay it if they dare) one of the greatest writers of the world; he is one of the great satirists of the world; and he is--as not all great writers and very few great satirists have been--one who sincerely and strenuously loved his fellowmen."