Master Francis Rabelais: Completely Translated Into English by Urquhart and Motteux, Volume 1

Front Cover
Privately printed for members of the Aldus Society, 1903 - 524 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 166 - ALL their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose .out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, ' labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it.
Page 79 - ... shop of sophisters, counsel the contrary. During that repast was continued the lesson read at dinner as long as they thought good ; the rest was spent in good discourse, learned and profitable. After that they had given thanks, he set himself to sing vocally, and play upon harmonious instruments, or otherwise passed his time at some pretty sports, made with cards or dice, or in practising the feats of legerdemain with cups and balls.
Page 75 - God in some fine cantiques, made in praise of the divine bounty and munificence. This done, they brought in cards, not to play, but to learn a thousand pretty tricks and new inventions, which were all grounded upon arithmetic. By this means he fell in love with that numerical science, and every day after dinner and supper he passed his time in it as pleasantly as he was wont to do at cards and dice...
Page 12 - What are the hopes of his labour? What doth he expect to reap thereby? Nothing but a little marrow. True it is, that this little is more savoury and delicious than the great quantities of other sorts of meat, because the marrow (as Galen testifieth, 5.
Page 167 - ... and they were married together. And if they had formerly in Theleme lived in good devotion and amity, they did continue therein and increase it to a greater height in their state of matrimony: and did entertain that mutual love till the very last day of their life, in no less vigour and fervency, than at the very day of their wedding.
Page 210 - Proceed further in them, and learn the remainder if thou canst. As for astronomy, study all the rules thereof. Let pass, nevertheless, the divining and judicial astrology, and the art of Lullius, as being nothing else but plain abuses and vanities. As for the civil law, of that I would have thee to know the texts by heart, and then to confer them with philosophy. Now, in matter of the knowledge of the works of nature, I would have thee to study that exactly...
Page 210 - I would have thee to study that exactly, and that so there be no sea, river, nor fountain, of which thou dost not know the fishes ; all the fowls of the air ; all the several kinds of shrubs and trees, whether in forests or orchards ; all sorts of herbs and flowers that grow upon the ground ; all the various metals that are hid within the bowels of the earth...
Page 69 - ... was like to crack for fulness. As for his drinking, he had in that neither end nor rule. For he was wont to say, That the limits and bounds of drinking were, when the cork of the shoes of him that drinketh swelleth up half a foot high.
Page 81 - Nor did they omit to visit the alchemists, money-coiners, upholsters, weavers, velvetworkers, watchmakers, looking-glass framers, printers, organists, and other such kind of artificers, and, everywhere giving them somewhat to drink, did learn and consider the industry and invention of the trades.
Page 81 - ... might by this means be corrected ; and that they might not receive any prejudice for want of their ordinary bodily exercise. Thus was Gargantua governed, and kept on in this course of education from day to day, profiting, as you...

Bibliographic information