Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/57

RABELAIS 41 ledge of our peerless Pantagruelion ! It is a case doleful and disastrous as when, two who were meant to be lovers, two souls complemental to each other, are by some error or oversight of nature born in different ages ! His style is as multifarious, or rather omnifarious, as his knowledge. The beautiful, child-like Old French of the Romances was gone, the modern French was slowly forming and still in a half-chaotic state, every one doing with it that which was right in his own eyes. Rabelais' exuberance of mere words and phrases is overwhelming ; and he often pours them out one on top of another interminably, rioting in their exhaustless rush and flow. The vocabulary of his age is far too poor for him ; he presses into his service every patois, he invents the wildest quirks and the most extravagant compounds, he lays ancient and modern tongues under tribute, stamping their coins with French inflections. In this enormous wealth and prodigal volubility of language, he is again to be compared only to our Shakespeare. I remember reading somewhere of two Oxford or Cam- bridge professors discussing whether Shakespeare or Milton had the greater command of language, when one remarked conclusively : " Why, in half-an-hour Shakespeare would have slanged Milton into a ditch ! " I take it that Rabelais would have slanged Racine into a ditch in about five minutes. Despite his own chartered libertinism, Rabelais had a strong respect for the purity of his native tongue, as we see (ii. 6) by Pantagruel's treatment of the Limosin scholar who Pindarised or Latinised the plain honest French. And whenever he would be serious and