Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/32

l6 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES occupy a benefice which Cardinal du Bellay had assigned him in the Abbey de St. Maur des Fosses, to MontpelUer to take his degree of Doctor of Medi- cine. Sixteen letters, written by him during this sojourn to the Bishop of Maillezais, are extant, and appear in the English edition of his works (Bohn's ; the translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Motteux), having been first published a hundred years after his death. He went direct to Montpellier, where he took his degree in May, being fifty-four years old, and gave public lectures on anatomy, &c., for about a year, although he was not a professor. L. Jacob, Bibliophile (Paul Lacroix), to whose very full Memoir, prefixed to his edition of Rabelais, I am much in- debted, says, on the authority of Kuhnholtz : " The faculty, nevertheless, placed his portrait among those of the professors, and this original portrait, which was painted about this time, represents Rabelais with a bearing noble and majestic, regular features, fresh and ruddy complexion, fine beard of a pale gold, intelligent {spirituelle) expression, eyes full of both fire and sweetness, air gracious though grave and thoughtful." Rabelais seems to have then gone to Paris, where he practised medicine, but did not fulfil the other conditions of the Papal brief which gave him security, not renouncing the secular habit nor submitting to conventual discipline. The Cardinal du Bellay had returned to France, and obtained a well-deserved pre- ponderance in the Royal Council, and he enjoined Rabelais to enter upon the functions of the canonry, in the convent of St. Maur des Fosses, to which he had been appointed. The other canons opposed his