Caligraphy and character.

Date:
[1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Caligraphy and character. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    jUt In ^ Rabelais. 515 constantly in the ‘ Gargantua.’ There is a patriotism for the whole world (if we may say so) in the Frenchman, to which the chagrined and narrow-minded Dean Swift was an utter stranger. He had, again, a follower in the wayward ‘ Tristram Shandy,’ but Rabelais had none of the heartlessness of Sterne; lie had none of his cold, licentiousness or still colder sentimentality. Amongst his own countrymen his influence has been un- bounded ; his one mind has almost formed the national cha- racter and literature of France. The germ of nearly everything mirthful and satirical in French letters may be found in his pages. Moliere, Lesage, Lafontaine, Voltaire, Paul Louis Cou- rier, have all belonged to his school, but which among them has ever obtained the moral dignity of Rabelais when he lays aside the mask and does condescend to be serious ? The world, however, is not likely to have another perfect Rabelais, and for this plain reason, that it is not likely to have the same need of one. As already hinted, if commentators would drop mystery and substitute common sense, the solution of their perplexities would be marvellously facilitated. The rampant wit and humourist was evidently in advance of his age, and like Fontenelle had mastered more truths than to which it was prudent to give naked utterance. Men must appear mad, or nearly so, sometimes for safety, for irresponsibility in their vagaries. It was the artifice of David before Saul, of the noble Dane, and of the melancholy Jaques. Mankind cannot always help being jealous, envious, and impatient of superiority, and nothing tends more to allay these nervous feelings and soothe their aristocratic morgue than a little semblance of sottisness or extravagance. It was the simulated guise of the eccentric Frenchman, who wore the ‘ motley’ aforethought, that he might exercise the fool’s privilege with impunity, of launching at ran- dom his rich burlesque, withering sarcasm, and convulsive ridi- cule. How else could he safely have vented his spleen, his contempt, and his hatred of a bigoted and deceiving age ? Perilous would have been his position—dire the vengeance of the Sorbonne, the Holy Church, and other exclusive supe- riorities—had he openly, and not from a masked battery, shot his missiles at monks, princes, and nobles. The humble and poverty-stricken physician of Montpelier was too wary rashly to confront these overwhelming hostilities, and wisely sheltered him- self under the immunities of the droll, whose sallies are received as pointed, not ill-meant or ill-natured. But these subterfuges of genius are less needed, and there is not the same necessity for discoursing in parables and similitudes. Society is healthier in structure, and can bear the truth on most topics, whether secular or spiritual, without much risk of disturbance. There is