In one curious passage Sir Thomas Urquhart amplifies the text of the author whom he translates, and supplies his readers with an astonishing list of onomatopœic words, many of which will probably be new to those who have not come across this passage before. Rabelais has nine of these words, but the translator[257] enlarges the list to seventy-one. Pantagruel is arguing against fasting and solitude as aids to a contemplative life, and quotes the authority of his father Gargantua.
"He [Gargantua] gave us also," he said, "the example of the philosopher, who, when he thought most seriously to have withdrawn himself unto a solitary privacy, far from the rusling clutterments of the tumultuous and confused world, the better to improve his theory, to contrive, comment, and ratiocinate, was, notwithstanding his uttermost endeavours to free himself from all untoward noises, surrounded and environ'd about so with the barking of currs [bawling of mastiffs, bleating of sheep, prating of parrets, tatling of jack-daws, grunting of swine, girning of boars, yelping of foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of mice, squeaking of weasils, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, kekling of hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering of jays, peeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of geese, chirping of swallows, clucking of moorfowls, cucking of cuckos, bumling of bees, rammage of hawks, chirming of linots, croaking of ravens, screeching of owls, whicking of pigs, gushing of hogs, curring of pigeons, grumbling of cushet-doves, howling of panthers, curkling of quails, chirping of sparrows, crackling of crows, nuzzing of camels, wheening of whelps, buzzing of dromedaries, mumbling of rabets, cricking of ferrets, humming of wasps, mioling of tygers, bruzzing of bears, sussing of kitnings, clamring of scarfes, whimpring of fullmarts, boing of buffaloes, warbling of nightingales, quavering of meavises, drintling of turkies, coniating of storks, frantling of peacocks, clattering of mag-pyes, murmuring of stock-doves, crouting of cormorants, cigling of locusts, charming of beagles, guarring of puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats, guerieting of apes, snuttering of monkies, pioling of pelicanes, quecking of ducks], yelling of wolves, roaring of lions, neighing of horses, crying of elephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much more troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of Fontenay or Niort."[258] In spite of the amplification of the original text of Rabelais, two of the sounds are omitted—"the braying of asses," and the noise made by grass-hoppers (sonnent les eigales), which we might have called "chirping," if the swallows and sparrows had not taken possession of that term.
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.
[233] For those who are not special students, adequate information concerning Rabelais and extracts from his works are to be got in Sir Walter Besant's luminous and charming volume in the series of Foreign Classics for English Readers (Blackwood), and in Morley's Universal Library (Routledge). In one of his poems Browning describes the steps taken by a reader to banish the memory of a dreary pedant, whose book he had been perusing. He says:
"Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;
Lay on the grass, and forgot the loaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais."
Some have turned over Rabelais and searched for the jolly chapter in vain, and have, perhaps, attributed their failure to the want of a bottle of Chablis.
[234] This is somewhat doubtful. The Sorbonne and the Parliaments might have been moved by ultra-orthodox opponents to prosecute Rabelais on this account. The true explanation seems to be that the form of his book was popular, and the popular French literature of the Middle Ages—fableaux, farces, and burlesque romances—can hardly be exceeded in the matter of coarseness (Ency. Brit., "Rabelais").
[235] This is surely an early allusion to the superior sensitiveness on some points of the "Nonconformist Conscience." The fact alluded to should inspire joy rather than call forth sneers, for when a conscience becomes sensitive on some points there are reasonable hopes of its becoming sensitive on others.