learning but their degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness.  They had better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world.  Laughing is of all professions; the miser may hoard, the spendthrift squander, the politician plot, the lawyer wrangle, and the gamester cheat; still their main design is to be able to laugh at one another; and here they may do it at a cheap and easy rate.  After all, should this work fail to please the greater number of readers, I am sure it cannot miss being liked by those who are for witty mirth and a chirping bottle; though not by those solid sots who seem to have drudged all their youth long only that they might enjoy the sweet blessing of getting drunk every night in their old age.  But those men of sense and honour who love truth and the good of mankind in general above all other things will undoubtedly countenance this work.  I will not gravely insist upon its usefulness, having said enough of it in the preface (Motteux’ Preface to vol.  I of Rabelais, ed. 1694.) to the first part.  I will only add, that as Homer in his Odyssey makes his hero wander ten years through most parts of the then known world, so Rabelais, in a three months’ voyage, makes Pantagruel take a view of almost all sorts of people and professions; with this difference, however, between the ancient mythologist and the modern, that while the Odyssey has been compared to a setting sun in respect to the Iliads, Rabelais’ last work, which is this Voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle (by which he means truth) is justly thought his masterpiece, being wrote with more spirit, salt, and flame, than the first part of his works.  At near seventy years of age, his genius, far from being drained, seemed to have acquired fresh vigour and new graces the more it exerted itself; like those rivers which grow more deep, large, majestic, and useful by their course.  Those who accuse the French of being as sparing of their wit as lavish of their words will find an Englishman in our author.  I must confess indeed that my countrymen and other southern nations temper the one with the other in a manner as they do their wine with water, often just dashing the latter with a little of the first.  Now here men love to drink their wine pure; nay, sometimes it will not satisfy unless in its very quintessence, as in brandies; though an excess of this betrays want of sobriety, as much as an excess of wit betrays a want of judgment.  But I must conclude, lest I be justly taxed with wanting both.  I will only add, that as every language has its peculiar graces, seldom or never to be acquired by a foreigner, I cannot think I have given my author those of the English in every place; but as none compelled me to write, I fear to ask a pardon which yet the generous temper of this nation makes me hope to obtain.  Albinus, a Roman, who had written in Greek, desired in his preface to be forgiven his faults of language; but Cato asked him in derision whether any had forced him to write in