Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/29

RABELAIS 13 II Rabelais soon returned to Lyons, which he called the seat of his studies. Here, in 1534, he issued an edition of Marliani's " Topography of Ancient Rome," abandoning his own projected work on the subject. It was his last publication of simple and serious scholarship; thenceforward he devoted his pen al- together to the sublime mysteries of Pantagruelism. He was appointed physician to the Grand Hopital, and pursued his studies in astronomy and anatomy, on one occasion dissecting and lecturing upon the corpse of a criminal before a large number of persons. In 1535 he brought out another satirical "Almanack and Pantagruelian Prognostication," and, of far more importance, the third and definite redaction of " Gar- gantua," in which he retained nothing of the first except the names, some few events, and a score of comic phrases or ideas. It was now entitled, " The inestimable Life of the great Gargantua, father of Pantagruel, composed of yore by the Abstracter of Quintessence; book full of Pantagruelism." What Pantagruelism is he tells us in the New Prologue to Book iv. : " Cest certaine gayete (Tesperit conficte en mepris des choses fortuites" which the English version renders : " a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune." It has been thought that Rabelais founded a secret society of Pantagruelists, with the twofold object of spreading the Reformation among the common people, and Epicureanism among the higher classes ; while an eminent French scholar thinks that he was