It is not the real Rabelais, but however open to criticism it may be, it was under that form that the fifth book appeared in the sixteenth century, under that form it was accepted.

Consequently it is convenient and even necessary to follow and keep to the original edition.
The first sixteen chapters may, and really must be, the text of Rabelais, in the final form as left by him, and found after his death; the framework, and a number of the passages in the continuation, the best ones, of course, are his, but have been patched up and tampered with.

Nothing can have been suppressed of what existed; it was evidently thought that everything should be admitted with the final revision; but the tone was changed, additions were made, and 'improvements.' Adapters are always strangely vain.
In the seventeenth century, the French printing-press, save for an edition issued at Troyes in 1613, gave up publishing Rabelais, and the work passed to foreign countries.

Jean Fuet reprinted him at Antwerp in 1602.

After the Amsterdam edition of 1659, where for the first time appears 'The Alphabet of the French Author,' comes the Elzevire edition of 1663.