CHAPTER X.

Comic Romance.-Works of Rabelais.-Vita di Bertoldo.-Don Quixote.-Gusman d'Alfarache.-Roman Comique, &c.-Political Romance.-Utopia.—Argenis, &c.

ALL men have, more or less, a propensity to sa tire and ridicule. This tendency has its origin in self-love, which naturally leads us to indulge in a belief of our own superiority over the rest of our species. It is in satire and ridicule that this feeling receives its most frequent gratification; and, spite of the objections of Beattie, nothing can, in most instances, be more just than the reflection of Addison on the well-known theory of Hobbes, that when a man laughs he is not very merry, but very proud.

But, besides the gratification they afford, works of satire and ridicule are useful, as they frequently exhibit mankind in their true light and just pro

portions, with all their passions and follies. They remove from their conduct that varnish with which men so ingeniously cover those actions which are frequently the offspring of pride, private views, or voluntary self-delusion.

In nothing is the superiority of the moderns over the ancients more apparent than in the higher excellence of their ludicrous compositions. Modern ridicule, as has been shown by Dr Beattie, is at once more copious, and more refined, than the ancient. Many sources of wit and humour, formerly unknown, are now open and obvious, and those which are common to all ages have been refined by improvement in courtesy and taste.

RABELAIS,

whom Sir William Temple has styled the Father of Ridicule, is certainly the first modern author who obtained much celebrity by the comic or satirical romance. At the time when he appeared, extravagant tales were in the height of their po pularity. As he had determined to ridicule the most distinguished persons, and every thing that the rest of mankind regarded as venerable or important, he clothed his satire somewhat in the form

of the lying stories of the age, that under this veil he might be sheltered from the resentment of those whom he intended to deride. By this means he probably conceived that his work would, at the same time, obtain a favourable reception from others, who, though they should not discover his secret meaning, might be entertained with the fantastic stories which bore some resemblance to those to which they were accustomed.

With this view, Rabelais availed himself of the writings of those who had preceded him in satirical romance, and imitated in particular the True History of Lucian. His stories he borrowed from previous facetiae and novellettes. Thus the story of Hans Carvel's ring, of which Fontaine believed him the inventor, is the 133d of the Facetiae of Poggio, and entitled Visio Francesci Philelphi. With a view of adding to the diversion of the reader, he has given a mixture of burlesque and barbarous words from the Greek and Latin, a notion which was perhaps suggested by the Liber Macaronicorum of Teofilo Folengi, published under the name of Merlinus Coccaius, about twenty years before the appearance of the work of Rabelais. An infinite number of puns and quibbles have also been introduced amongst the more ingenious conceptions of the author. In short, his romance

may be considered as a mixture, or olio, of all the merry, satirical, and comic modes of writing that had been employed previous to the age of the author.

There are four things which Rabelais seems principally to have proposed to himself to ridicule in his work: 1. The refined and crooked politics of the period in which he lived. 2. The vices of the clergy, the Romish superstitions, and the religious controversies at that time agitated. 3. The lying and extravagant tales then in vogue. 4. The pedantry and philosophical jargon of the age.

But although it be understood that these in general were the objects of the author, the application of a great part of the satire is unknown. Works of wit and humour, unless they allude to permanent follies, in which case their relish may remain unimpaired, are more subject to the ravages of time, and more liable to become obscure, than any other literary compositions, because the propriety of allusion cannot be estimated when the customs and incidents referred to are forgotten. We must be acquainted with the likeness before we can relish the caricature. "Those modifications of life," says Dr Johnson," and peculiarities of practice, which are the progeny of error and perverseness, or at best of some accidental influ VOL. III.

E

ence, or transient impression, must perish with their parents." To us who are unacquainted with the follies and impieties of the Greek sophists, nothing can appear more wretched than the ridicule with which these pretended philosophers were persecuted by Aristophanes, yet it is said to have acted with wonderful effect among a people distinguished for wit and refinement of taste. The humour, which in Hudibras transported the age which gave it birth with merriment, is lost, in a great degree, to a posterity unaccustomed to puritanical moroseness.

No satirical writings have suffered more by lapse of time than those of Rabelais : for, besides being in a great measure confined to temporary and local subjects, he was obliged to write with ambiguity, on account of the delicate matters of which he treated, the arbitrary and persecuting spirit of the age and country in which he resided, and the multitude of enemies by whom he was surrounded. Accordingly, even to those who are most minutely acquainted with the political transactions and ecclesiastical history of the sixteenth century, there will be many things from which no meaning can be deciphered, and to most readers the works of Rabelais must appear a mass of unintelligible extravagance. Even the outline of the story which he has chosen as the frame of his satire, has fur