Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/48

 32 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Ronsard, as I have said, was rancorous, and in his epitaph represents him as simply a glutton and a drunkard, as if mere drinking and guzzling could have gathered together his immensity of manifold learning, could have written " Pantagruel," could have secured the friendship of such men as the Du Bellay brothers. Eleven years after his death, in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, was published, neither printer's name nor place being given, "The Fifth and last Book of the Heroic Deeds and Words of the Good Pantagruel." He is reported to have left other works in manuscript which never got printed. Although the Council of Trent had prohibited the whole work, and it had been placed upon the Index Expurga- iorius, no practical measures seem to have been taken to stop its circulation, and its popularity was prodigious. This fifth book was in some respects the most daring of any, particularly in its intensely contemptuous attacks on the great Pope-hawk with all his host of cardinal-hawks, bishop-hawks, priest- hawks; and also upon the Furred Law-Cats of all kinds. Yet the Faculty of Theology did not censure it, nor the Parliament of Paris arrest its sale. This book conducts Pantagruel and his companions to the great Oracle of the Holy Bottle, whence they receive the ultimate word of all wisdom, the luminous con- densation of the whole Pantagruelian philosophy, in the sublime word Drink.