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It was in the old French of Rabelais's time, and for aught I know might have been wrote by him: it was moreover in a Gothic letter, and that so faded and gone off by damps and length of time, it cost me infinite trouble to make anything of it.
In "The Hall of Fantasy," we catch some glimpses of Hawthorne's favorite authors: "The grand old countenance of Homer, the shrunken and decrepit form, but vivid face, of Asop, the dark presence of Dante, the wild Ariosto, Rabelais's smile of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes, the all glorious Shakespeare, Spenser, meet guest for an allegoric structure, the severe divinity of Milton and Bunyan, molded of the homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial fire were those that chiefly attracted my eye.
The laugh is more delicate, but no less hearty than Rabelais's. How could one take the Moria too seriously, when even More's Utopia, which is a true companion-piece to it and makes such a grave impression on us, is treated by its author and Erasmus as a mere jest?
I must act with as much common sense as I can; and, when one takes no part, one must temper one's conduct; and, when the world is too young for one, not shock it, nor contradict it, nor affix a peculiar character, but trust to its indifference for not drawing notice, when one does not desire to be noticed. Rabelais's "Fais ce que tu voudras" is not very difficult when one wishes to do nothing.
I had been invited to the Rabelais Club, as I have before mentioned, by a cable message. This is a club of which the late Lord Houghton was president, and of which I am a member, as are several other Americans. I was afraid that the gentlemen who met, "To laugh and shake in Rabelais's easy chair,"
But however these tricks may have pleased in days when such tricks were new, they much more often weary than divert us now; and I suspect that many a man whose delight in the Corporal and his master, in Bridget and her mistress, is as fresh as ever, declines to accompany their creator in those perpetual digressions into nonsense or semi-nonsense the fashion of which Sterne borrowed from Rabelais, without Rabelais's excuse for adopting it.
It is astonishing that a thing so simple and so fitting should not have been done before, and the result is that this absolutely exact fidelity has restored a lucidity which was not wanting in Rabelais's time, but which had since been obscured. All who have come after Jannet have followed in his path, and there is no reason for straying from it. To the Honoured, Noble Translator of Rabelais.
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