Eminent literary and scientific men of France.

Date:
1838-1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eminent literary and scientific men of France. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    until, in process of time, it reached only to the hips, and a new garment was substituted. Rabelais, having left Montpelier, appears next at Lyons, where he practised as a physician, and published his editions of Hippocrates and Galen, with some minor pieces, including almanacks, which prove him conver- sant with the science of astronomy. One almanack bearing his name is pronounced spurious, on the ground of his being made to describe himself as “ physician and astrologer.” He treated the pretended science of astro- logy with derision. This would add nothing to his reputation in a later age; but, considering the number of his cotemporaries, otherwise enlightened, who were not proof against this weakness, it proves him to havt. been one of those superior spirits whose views are in advance of their generation. Cardinal du Bellay was sent ambassador by Francis I. to the court of Rome in 1534, and attached Rabelais as physician to his suite. He appears to have,made two visits to Italy with the cardinal at this period, but there are no traces by which they can be distinguished, nor is it very material. It is made a question in one of the most recent sketches of the life of Rabelais, whether he attended the ambassador as physician or buffoon. His letters, addressed from Rome, to his friend the bishop of Maillezieux, furnish decisive evidence of his being a a person treated with respect and confidence, independ- ently of the known friendship of the cardinal. They are the letters of a man of business, well informed of all that was passing, and trusted with state secrets. He alludes, in one letter, to the quarrels of Paul III. (now pope) and Henry VIII. It appears that the cardinal du Bellay and the bishop of Macon opposed and re- tarded, in the consistory, the bull of excommunication against Henry, as an invasion of the rights and interests of Francis I. Writing of the pope, and to a bishop, he treats him as a temporal prince, with the freedom of one man of sense and frankness writing to another, but without the least approach to levity.
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