Page:The school of Pantagruel (1862).djvu/8

 THE SCHOOL OF PANTAGRUEL.

our modern literature is thoroughly purified from the taint of which I am about to speak, many of the older books infected by it still remain in our libraries, sheltering themselves under the indulgent title of "standard literature." In many cases, indeed, their state is one of passivity ('O respect his lordship's taste, and spare the golden bindings'); in most, the toleration they receive is mainly owing to ignorance or inconsideration of the evil with which they are charged. I believe an exposure of them might lead, in not a few quarters, to their banishment from the place of honour they now occupy in libraries; that it might bring us to consider their removal, at least from general reading, a thing to be desired.

I refer to the pollutions in literature that have arisen from a class of writers existing even in ancient times, but at a more recent date revived by Rabelais and Boccaccio, who may be considered as the founders of a distinct school, which in Italy and France, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, counted a very goodly array of disciples, and exercised an influence over the whole of European literature that it did not entirely lose until the Revolution of 1793. It may not inappropriately be called.