grammar-schoolboys

Updated: May 3, 2025

For that time was darksome, obscured with clouds of ignorance, and savouring a little of the infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had, wherever they set footing, destroyed all good literature, which in my age hath by the divine goodness been restored unto its former light and dignity, and that with such amendment and increase of the knowledge, that now hardly should I be admitted unto the first form of the little grammar-schoolboys I say, I, who in my youthful days was, and that justly, reputed the most learned of that age.

François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 2