Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/50

34 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES is when quoted from memory), and on the face of it is imperfect; the real line, as we have it in the "Dunciad," i. 22, in the apostrophe to Swift, runs thus : — "Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy-chair." As if over-anxious to distinguish himself from the purblind vulgar, Coleridge not seldom appears re- solved to see more in a writer than the writer actually contains, reading himself into the book, in the manner marked by Gothe (First Epistle in the Poems) : "Yet each only reads himself out of the book, and if he is powerful he reads himself into the book;" but his authority as a most subtle critic is rightly so great that no one since has ventured to treat Rabelais as a mere jester and buffoon. Strangely enough, in the very beginning of the Prologue to the first book, which is nearly all simple nonsense and extravagance, Rabelais makes the same claim for himself which Coleridge makes for him : " Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's which is entided the ' Banquet,' setting forth the praises of his teacher, Socrates, beyond all question the prince of philosophers, said among other things that he resembled the sileni. Silent of old were little boxes, such as we now see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such pictures, caricatured at pleasure to excite people to laughter, as did Silenus himself, master of the god Bacchus ; but within they conserved fine drugs, as balm, ambergris, amomon.