as a diversion to the more painful knowledge of the world around him:  they only made him laugh, while men and women made him angry.  His feverish impatience made him view the infirmities of that great baby the world, with the same scrutinizing glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failings of its offspring; but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account been supposed to have more affection for other people’s children than their own.  In other respects, and except from the sparkling effervescence of his gall, Swift’s brain was as “dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.”  He hated absurdity—­ Rabelais loved it, exaggerated it with supreme satisfaction, luxuriated in its endless varieties, rioted in nonsense, “reigned there and revelled.”  He dwelt on the absurd and ludicrous for the pleasure they gave him, not for the pain.  He lived upon laughter, and died laughing.  He indulged his vein, and took his full swing of folly.  He did not baulk his fancy or his readers.  His wit was to him “as riches fineless”; he saw no end of his wealth in that way, and set no limits to his extravagance:  he was communicative, prodigal, boundless, and inexhaustible.  His were the Saturnalia of wit, the riches and the royalty, the health and long life.  He is intoxicated with gaiety, mad with folly.  His animal spirits drown him in a flood of mirth:  his blood courses up and down his veins like wine.  His thirst of enjoyment is as great as his thirst of drink:  his appetite for good things of all sorts is unsatisfied, and there is a never-ending supply. Discourse is dry; so they moisten their words in their cups, and relish their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats’ tongues.  It is like Camacho’s wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho ladled out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles at a pull.  The flagons are setting a running, their tongues wag at the same time, and their mirth flows as a river.  How Friar John roars and lays about him in the vineyard!  How Panurge whines in the storm, and how dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep overboard!  How much Pantagruel behaves like a wise king!  How Gargantua mewls, and pules [sic], and slabbers his nurse, and demeans himself most like a royal infant! what provinces he devours! what seas he drinks up!  How he eats, drinks, and sleeps—­sleeps, eats, and drinks!  The style of Rabelais is no less prodigious than his matter.  His words are of marrow, unctuous, dropping fatness.  He was a mad wag, the king of good fellows, and prince of practical philosophers!

Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old school—­Voltaire of the new.  The wit of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment—­of the other, from an excess of indifference, real or assumed.  Voltaire had no enthusiasm for one thing or another:  he made light of every thing.  In his hands all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights were changed by the hands