The works of F. Rabelais, M.D., or, The lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel with a large account of the life and works of the author, particularly an explanation of the most difficult passages in them never before publish'd in any language / done out of French by Sir Tho. Urchard, Kt., and others.

THE Author's Prologue.

MOst illustrious and thrice valorous Champions, Gentlemen and others, who willingly apply your Minds to the high flights and harmless sallies of Wit. You have not long ago seen, read and understood the great and inestimable Chronicles of the huge Giant Gargantua; and like true Men of Faith, have firmly believed all that is contained in them, and have very often past your Time amongst Honourable Ladies and Gentlewomen, telling them fair long Stories when you were out of all other Talk, for which you are worthy of great Praise and sempiternal Memory. And I do heartily wish that every Man would lay aside his own Business, meddle no more with his Profession nor Trade, and throw all Affairs concerning himself behind his Back, to attend this wholly, without distracting or troubling his Mind with any thing else, until he have learned all without Book; that if by chance the Art of Printing should cease, or in case that in time to come all Books should perish, every Man might truly teach them to his Children, and deliver them

over to his Successors and Survivors from hand to hand, as a religious Cabal: for there is in it more Profit, than a Rabble of great pocky Logger-heads are able to discern, who surely understand far less in these little Merriments, than Raclet did in the Institutes.

I have known great and mighty Lords, and of those not a few, who going a Deer-hunting, or a hawking after wild Ducks, when the Chase had not encountred with the Blinks, that were cast in her way to retard her Course, or that the Hawk did but plain and smoothly fly with∣out moving her Wings, perceiving the Prey by force of flight to have gained Bounds of her, have been much chafed and vexed, as you understand well enough; but the Comfort unto which they had Refuge, and that they might not take cold, who was to relate the inestimable Deeds of the said Gargantua. There are others in the World, (these are no flimflam Stories) who being much troubled with the Tooth-ache, after they had spent their Goods upon Physi∣cians, without receiving at all any ease of their Pain, have found no more ready Remedy than to put the said Chronicles betwixt two pieces of Linen Cloth made somewhat hot, and so apply them to the place that smarteth synapising them with a little Pouder of Projection, otherways called Doribus.

But what shall I say of those poor Men that are plagued with the Pox and the Gout? O how often have we seen them, even immediately

after they were anointed and throughly greased, till their Faces did glister like the Key-hole of a Powdering-Tub, their Teeth dance like the Iacks of a pair of little Organs or Virginals when they are play'd upon, and that they foamed from their very Throats like a Boar, which the Mongrel Mastiff-hounds have driven in, and overthrown amongst the Toils: What did they then? All their Consolation was to have some Page of the said jolly Book read unto them. And we have seen those who have given them∣selves to an hundred Punchions of old Devils, in case that they did not feel a manifest Ease and Asswagement of Pain, at the hearing of the said Book read, even when they were kept in a Purgatory of Torment; no more nor less than Women in Travail use to find their Sorrow abated, when the Life of St. Margarite is read unto them. Is this nothing? find me a Book in any Language, in any Faculty or Science whatsoever, that hath such Virtues, Properties and Prerogatives, and I will be content to pay you a Chapine of Tripes. No, my Masters, no, it is peerless, incomparable, and not to be matched, and this am I resolved for ever to maintain even unto the Fire exclusivè. And those that will pertinaciously hold the contrary Opinion, let them be accounted Abusers, Predesti∣nators, Impostors and Seducers of the People. It is very true, that there are found in some noble and famous Books, certain occult and hidden Properties, in the number of which are

reckoned Whippot, Orlando furioso, Robert the Devil, Fierabras, William without fear, Huon of Bourdeaux, Monteville, and Mata∣brune: but they are not comparable to that which we speak of: And the World hath well known by infallible Experience, the great Emo∣lument and Vtility which it hath received by this Gargantuine Chronicle; for the Printers have sold more of them in two Months time, than there will be bought of Bibles in nine Years.

I therefore (your humble Slave) being very willing to increase your Solace and Recreations yet a little more, do offer you for a Present, another Book of the same stamp, only that it is a little more reasonable and worthy of Credit than the other was; for think not (unless you wilfully will err against your Knowledg) that I speak of it as the Jews do of the Law. I was not born under such a Planet, neither did it ever befal me to lie, or affirm a thing for true that was not: I speak of it like a jolly Onocrotarie, I should say Preignotary of the martyrized Lovers, and Croquenotarie of Love: Quod vidimus, testamur. It is of the horrible and dreadful Feats and Prowesses of Panta∣gruel, whose Menial Servant I have been ever since I was a Page till this hour, that by his leave I am permitted to visit my Cow-Country, and to know if any of my Kindred there be alive.

And therefore to make an end of this Pro∣logue, even as I give my self fairly to an hun∣dred Panniers full of Devils, Body and Soul, Tripes and Guts, in case that I lie so much as one single word in this whole History. In like manner St. Anthony's Fire burn you, Mawmet's Disease whirl you, the Squinzy choke you, Botches, Crinckums sink you plumb down to Pegtrantums, Plagues of Sodom and Go∣morrah, cram your pocky Arse with Sorrow, Fire, Brimstone, and Pits bottomless swallow you all alive, in case you do not firmly believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle.