Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/26

 lO BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES the marvellous deeds of arms he wrought for King Arthur, as you will see in the sequel ; newly printed." Three hundred years elapsed before this book was definitively recognised for the first draft of the " Gar- gantua," as it appears in his works. The author called himself Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of Francois Rabelais, Abstracter of Quintessence ; a pseudonym still preserved in the heading of the first and second books. Like " Don Quixote," his great work was begun simply as an extravagant burlesque of the romances of chivalry, very popular under Francis I., and, as with the masterpiece of Cervantes, the scope and intention of the book continually widened as it proceeded. This first part became at once immensely popular ; as he tells us himself in the prologue to Book ii., more copies had been sold in a couple of months than would be bought of the Bible in nine years. As to the manner in which it was written, he says : " In the composition of this lordly book I never wasted or employed any more or any other time than that allotted to my bodily refection, that is, to my drinking and eating." Early in 1533 appeared the first edition (also unknown to bibliographers until 1834) of what is now the second book, under the title of " Pantagruel : the horrible and terrific deeds and prowesses of the most renowned Pantagruel, King of Dipsodes, son of the great giant Gargantua. Newly composed by Master Alcofribas Nasier." At least three editions of this were published at Lyons in the same year, to one of which he added the " Pantagrueline prognostication, certain, verit- able, and infallible, for the year 1533," burlesqueing the judicial astrology which had then multitudes of