[Gargantua and Pantagruel<br> Complete. by Francois Rabelais]@TWC D-Link book
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Complete.

INTRODUCTION
24/75

It is in every way exceedingly valuable, and superior to that of Nicot, because instead of keeping to the plane of classic and Latin French, it showed an acquaintance with and mastery of the popular tongue as well as of the written and learned language.

As a foreigner, Cotgrave is a little behind in his information.
He is not aware of all the changes and novelties of the passing fashion.
The Pleiad School he evidently knew nothing of, but kept to the writers of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century.

Thus words out of Rabelais, which he always translates with admirable skill, are frequent, and he attaches to them their author's name.

So Rabelais had already crossed the Channel, and was read in his own tongue.

Somewhat later, during the full sway of the Commonwealth--and Maitre Alcofribas Nasier must have been a surprising apparition in the midst of Puritan severity--Captain Urquhart undertook to translate him and to naturalize him completely in England.
Thomas Urquhart belonged to a very old family of good standing in the North of Scotland.


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