The works of Rabelais / faithfully translated from the French with variorum notes and numerous illustrations by Gustave Doré.
- François Rabelais
- Date:
- 1871
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The works of Rabelais / faithfully translated from the French with variorum notes and numerous illustrations by Gustave Doré. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![Ciur. IX.] His folly and want of wit, in that he thought that, without any other demonstration or sufficient argument, the world would be pleased to make his blockish and ridiculous impositions the rule of their devices. In effect, according to the Proverb, To shitlen tails, turd never fails; he hath found (it seems) some simple ninny in those rude times of old, when high bonnets were in fashion, who gave some trust to his writings, according to which they shaped their apophthegms and mottos, trapped and caparisoned their mules and sumpter-horses, apparelled their pages, quartered their breeches, bordered their gloves, fringed the curtains and valance of their beils, painted their ensigns, composed songs, and, Avhich is worse, placed many deceitful jugglings, and unworthy base tricks clandestinely, amongst the chastest matrons. In the like darkness and mist of ignorance, are wrapped up these vain-glorious courtiers, and name-transposers, who going about in their im- prests, to signify espoir, have pourtrayed a spliere: birds' pens for pins: L'Ancholie for melancholy: A horned moon, or crescent, to shew the increasing of one's fortune : A bench broken, to signify bankrupt: Non, and a corslet for, non dur habet, otherwise non du- rabit, it shall not last: Un lit sans del, for Un licentw ; which are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a fox's tail should be pinned at his back, and a fool's cap be given to every one that should henceforth offer, after the restitution of learning, to make use of any such fopperies in France. By the same reasons (if reasons I should call them, and not ravings rather) might I cause paint apainer, to signify that I am in pain: a pot of mustard, that my heart is much tardy ; one pis- sing upwards for a bishop; the bottom of a pair of breeches for a vessel full of farthings (fart-hings), a codpiece (as the English bears it) for the tail of a cod-fish ; and a clog's turd, for the dainty turret, wherein lies the love of my sweetheart For otherwise did heretofore the sages of Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hyeroglyphics, which none un- derstood who were not skilled in the virtue, property, and nature of the things represented by them : of which Orus Apollo hath in Greek composed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more. In France you have a taste of them, in the device or impress of my Lord Admiral, which was carried before that time by Octavian Augustus. But my little skiff, amongst these unpleasant gulfs and shoals, wdl sail no further, therefore must I return to the port from whence I came ; yet do I hope one day to write more at large of these things, and to shew, both by philoso- phical arguments and authorities, received and approved of, by and from all antiquity, what, and how many colours, there are in nature, and what may be signified by every one of them, if God save the mould of my cap, which is my best wine-pot, as my grandam used to say.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24750207_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
