Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/56

 40 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES knowledge, always ready to his want, of what I must call things in general — local customs, traditions, pro- verbs, rhymes, unwritten dialects, costumes, various trades and professions, with their implements and modes of working and technical terms, and so forth, and so forth ? Such instances as Rabelais and Shakespeare make us incline to Plato's theory that all knowledge is but reminiscence, that we have all got thoroughly acquainted with our world in previous existences, and are only ignorant in so far as our memories are asleep or inert; or they suggest that a few privileged minds are as mirrors, wherein, with- out any effort on their part, all objects that come before them spontaneously image themselves, and that these images remain for ever clear and well- ordered, still without any effort on the part of the mirroring mind. Speaking of Rabelais' knowledge of herbs, we cannot but deeply regret that, through no fault of his own, he had to die in ignorance of the noblest of all, the herb of herbs, which is tobacco. Had time and fortune but made him acquainted with it, we may be sure that tobacco, and not vile hemp, would have been recognised by him as the herb Panta- gruehon ; and the last four chapters of Book iii., which are now devoted to the glorification of this herb of the hangman, would have been devoted to a far more enthusiastic eulogy of tobacco. How he would have described and anatomised it, this learned physician and naturalist ! How he would have dilated on its countless cfiicacies and virtues, and on its marvellous affinities with good wine, this supreme philosopher, this royal reveller ! Alas ! that our peerless Pantagruelist was cut off from the know-