which the printers had corrupted and perverted in many passages, to the great displeasure and detriment of the author, and to the prejudice of readers.”  The work made a great noise; the Sorbonne resolved to attack it, in spite of the king’s approbation; but Francis I. died on the 31st of March, 1547.  Rabelais relapsed into his life of embarrassment and vagabondage; on leaving France he had recourse, first at Metz and afterwards in Italy, to the assistance of his old and ever well-disposed patron, Cardinal John Du Bellay.  On returning to France he obtained from the new king, Henry II., a fresh faculty for the printing of his books “in Greek, Latin, and Tuscan;” and, almost at the same time, on the 18th of January, 1551, Cardinal Du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, conferred upon him the cure of St. Martin at Meudon, “which he discharged,” says his biographer Colletet, “with all the sincerity, all the uprightness, and all the charity that can be expected of a man who wishes to do his duty, and to the satisfaction of his flock.”  Nevertheless, when the new holder of the cure at Meudon, shortly after his installation, made up his mind to publish the fourth book of the Faits et Dicts heroiques du bon Pantagruel, the work was censured by the Sorbonne and interdicted by decree of Parliament, and authority to offer it for sale was not granted until, on the 9th of February, 1552, Rabelais had given in his resignation of his cure at Meudon, and of another cure which he possessed, under the title of benefice, in the diocese of Le Mans.  He retired in bad health to Paris, where he died shortly afterwards, in 1553, “in Rue des Jardins, parish of St. Paul, in the cemetery whereof he was interred,” says Colletet, “close to a large tree which was still to be seen a few years ago.”

Such a life, this constant change of position, profession, career, taste, patron, and residence, bore a strong resemblance to what we should nowadays call a Bohemian life; and everything shows that Rabelais’ habits, without being scandalous, were not more regular or more dignified than his condition in the world.  Had we no precise and personal information about him in this respect, still his literary work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, would not leave us in any doubt:  there is no printed book, sketch, conversation, or story, which is more coarse and cynical, and which testifies, whether as regards the author or the public for whom the work is intended, to a more complete and habitual dissoluteness in thought, morals, and language.  There is certainly no ground for wondering that the Sorbonne, in proceeding against the Vie tres-horrifique du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel, should have described it as “an obscene tale;” and the whole part of Panurge, the brilliant talker of the tale,

     “Take him for all in all the best boy in the world,”