【英文读物】Three Good Giants.docx

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1、【英文读物】Three Good GiantsAN EXPLANATION BY WAY OF PREFACE. Portrait of Fran?ois RabelaisI freely admit what all the world knows about Fran?ois Rabelais.Long before the day when Fielding and Smollett began to be read on the sly, and before the comic Muse of Congreve and Wycherly began to be looked at a

2、skance, that English moral sentiment, over which Macaulay was to philosophize more than a century later, had solidified in ignoring Rabelais. Nothing is to be said against the sentiment itself. This has always been fairly righteous, if just a bit undiscriminating. A great humorist, showing himself c

3、ontent to grovel in the dirt, is, beyond question, deserving of black looks and shut doors. But more than most old masters of a type, strong, albeit coarse, Rabelaisfrom the distinctly marked physical attributes of his chief personagesmay claim certain good points which, drawn out and grouped togeth

4、er, ought to fall within the circle of those tales which interest children.I have read Rabelais twice in my life. Each time, I have read him in that old French, which has no master quite so great as he; and each time in Auguste Desrezs edition, which, in its careful Table des Matires, learned glossa

5、ry, quaint notes, Gallicized Latin and Greek words, and a complete Rabelaisiana, shows the devotion of the rare editor, who does not distort, because he understands, the Master whom he edits. When I first peeped into his pages I was a lad, altogether too young to be tainted by profanity, while I ski

6、pped, true boy-fashion, whole pages to pick out the wondrous story of his Giants. When I came back to him, after many years, I was both older and, I hope, wiser. Being older, I had learned to gauge him better, both in his strength and in his weakness. I had come to see wherein an old prejudice was t

7、oo just to be safely resisted; and, on the other hand, wherein it had got to be so deeply set that it had hardened to injustice. As I went on, it did not take me long to discover that it was quite possible for my purposefollowing, indeed, the path unconsciously taken in my boyhoodto divide Rabelais

8、sharply into incident and philosophy. That this had not been thought of before surprised, but did not daunt me. I said to myself: I shall limit the incident strictly to his three Giants; I shall hold these, from grandfather to grandson, well together; keep all that is sound in them; cut away the imp

9、urity which is not so much of as around them; chisel them out as a sculptor might, and leave his philosophy with face to the wall. This done, I turned the scouring hose, full and strong, upon the incidents themselves, clearing out both dialectics and profanity thoroughly. I did not stop until I had

10、left the famous trio, Grandgousier, Gargantua, and Pantagruel where I had, from the first, hoped to place them,high and dry above the scum which had so long clogged their rare good-fellowship, and which had made men of judgment blind to the genuine worth that was in them.In this way I believed that

11、I saw the chance to free Rabelais Giants, so long kept in bonds, from a captivity which has dishonored them. To do this was clearly running against that good old law which has invariably made all Giantsfar back from fairy-timethunder-voiced, great-toothed, rude-handed, hard-hearted, bloody-minded cr

12、eatures and truculent captors, never, on any account, pitiful captives. But, to such, the Rabelaisian Giants are none of kin. No more are they of blood to that Giant that Jack slew, or that Giant Despair, in whose garden-court Bunyan dreamt that he saw the white bones of slaughtered pilgrims.Public

13、sentiment has hitherto illogically retched at the name of Rabelais, while it swallows without qualm Tristram Shandy and Gullivers Travels. Shall it always retch? The time, I think, is practically taking the answer into its own hands. Rabelais, through some cotemporaneous influence, rising subtly in

14、his favor among men who are neither afraid nor ashamed to judge for themselves, is, in one sense, slowly becoming a naturalized citizen of our modern Literary Republic. Literature and Art are joining hands in his rehabilitation. Mr. Walter Besant, a novelist, has been so good as to write his life; t

15、o say bright words about him; and to quote clean things from him. Mrs. Oliphant, a purist, has consented to admit him into her Foreign Classics for English Readers. Three years ago M. Emile Hberts bronze statue of him was unveiled at that Chinon, his birthplace, which he lovingly calls the most anci

16、ent city of the world. And, to crown all, as the latest expression of a tardy recognition, his bust by M. Truphme was, only the other day, uncovered at that Meudon of which he was, for a time, the famous, if not always orthodox, Cur.Rabelais himself never, it is clear, appreciated his Giants save fo

17、r the contrasted jollity which they lent to his satires.Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre,Pour ce que rire est le propre de lhomme,was his maxim. But this maxim never rose to a creed. His Giants seem, almost against his will, to stride beyond the territory of mere burlesque. They are as easil

18、y free from theology as from science. They have never been of La Bamette. They are as far from Montpellier. To these colossal creations, heroes fashioned in ridicule of the old fantastico-chivalric deeds of their age, as they come down more and more from the clouds, are more and more given the feeli

19、ngs common to this earths creatures. All three bear, from their birth, a sturdy human sympathy not natural to their kind, as medi?val superstition classed it. Two of them, in being brought to the level of humanity, join with this a simple Christian manliness and a childlike faith under all emergenci

20、es, not set on their own massive strength, but fixed on God, whom they had been taught to know, and honor, and serveand all this by whom? Forsooth, by the same Fran?ois Rabelais, laugher, mocker, and insensate reviler. From Grandgousier, the good-hearted guzzler, through Gargantua, with his heady yo

21、uth and wise old age, to the noble Pantagruel, the gain in purity and Christian manhood is steady. The royal race of Chalbroth follows no track beaten down by other kingly lines known to history. While their line descends from father to son, it ascends in virtue.One chargea legacy from the narrow ti

22、mes when run-mad commentators spied a plot in every foliohas followed, to this day, Rabelais and his work. Wise men have, to their own satisfaction, proved the latter to be an enigma filled with hidden meanings, dangerous to state and morals; with mad attacks directed, from every chapter, against or

23、dered society; with satiric thrusts lurking, in every sentence, against Pope, and King, and nobles; in brief, a Malay-muck run with a pen, instead of a knife, against the moral foundations of the world. All these, if not true, are certainly like, very like the Rabelais as he is painted by purists in

24、 the gallery of great authors. If true, they have wrought more subtly than all else in the forging of those heavy chains which have been bound, coil upon coil, around his hapless big men. It is not to be wondered at that even their mighty number of cubits should have been smothered under the fine, s

25、low-settling dust of three centuries. Happily, however, fair play has been, of old, the standing boast of all English-speaking men. Fran?ois Rabelaisnever once deigning to ask for it at home, when livinghas, in penalty therefor, been ferociously denied it abroad, when dead. To that sentimentmoved, i

26、t may be, by a concurrent testimony given, in this age, to the memory of the author himselfI appeal now in behalf of his Giants. That they have fared badly through all these centuries, mostly by reason of him, cannot be gainsaid. That of themselves, however, they have in no wise merited such ostraci

27、sm, is what I have ventured to claim in this compilation. Freed alike from that prejudice which has hunted them down, and from those formidable. points of ignorancePertaining thereunto,which have, so far, blocked every avenue to modern sympathy, I would have them honored, among all stout lovers of f

28、air play, as I leave them in this Explanation by way of Preface.J. D.CHAPTER I. HOW THE FIRST GIANTS CAME INTO THE WORLD. At the beginning of the world the pure blood of Abel, shed by his wicked brother Cain, made the soil very rich. Every fruit seemed to grow that year to a dozen times its usual si

29、ze. But the fruit that seemed to thrive best, and to taste most toothsome, and to be most eaten, was the medlar. So much of that fruit was eaten at that particular time that the year came to be called the Year of Medlars.Now, in this Year of Medlars, the good men and women who lived then happened to

30、 eat a little too much of this fine fruit. It was all very nice while it was being eaten; but, somehow, after a little time it was found that terrible swellings, but not all in the same place, came out on those who had shown themselves too fond of the fruit.Some grew big and twisted in their shoulde

31、rs, and became what were afterwards called Hunch-backs.Some found themselves with longer legs than others, which, being quite as thin and bony as they were long, made malicious people, who had not eaten of the fruit, shout, Crane! Crane! Long-legged Crane! whenever one of the poor people showed hims

32、elf.Some there were who could boast of a nose as red as it was long and knotty, which made evil-tongued men say they had been more among the grapes than among the medlars. But this was, after all, the fault of the medlars. There was no doubt of that.Others, having a special love for picking out ever

33、ybodys secrets, found their medlars running into big ears, which grew so long that they soon hung down to their breasts. And those who once had the Big Ear lost, after that, all desire for other peoples secrets, because their ears were so large they caught everything bad their neighbors were always

34、saying about them.Othersand now, listengrew long in legs, but not longer in legs than they grew stout in body, and it was from these people that the Giants sprang. When those who grew so long in legs and so stout in body began to walk on the earth, the neighbors did their best to please them. You ma

35、y be sure there was no talk about medlars then.The first who became known as a giant was called Chalbroth.engravingTHE GIANT CHALBROTH.Chalbroth was the father of all the Giants, and the great-grandfather of Hurtali, who reigned in the time of the Deluge, and who was lucky enough not to be drowned i

36、n the deep waters.Doubtless, the eyes of some of my young readers are twinkling, and they are ready to cry out very positively: Oh, no! There was no Giant in Noahs Ark, you know. How could there be? Only Noah and his family were in the Ark. The Bible says that!There was one Wise Man, however, who li

37、ved a long time after the first Giant had appeared, and after many great ones had been noticed, and who had seen some with his own eyes. This Wise Man had thought, in a quiet way, a great deal about the Big People, and, through much study, had found out why it was they were not all drowned.This Wise

38、 Man makes himself very clear on this point. He says that Hurtalithe great-grandson of Chalbroth, the first Giantescaped the Deluge, not by getting into the Ark,it was altogether too small for that,but by getting outside of it. In other words, he used it as a man strides a horse, riding on top of it

39、, with one huge leg hanging over the right side and the other over the left. If Hurtali was very heavy, the Blessed Ark was very stout. He got so used to his seat after a while, that, being on the outside, and able to see everything around him, he made his long legs do for the Ark just what the rudd

40、er of a ship does for her. He must have saved it from many and many a rough shock against jutting mountains and sharp rocks as the waters were rising, and as, after covering the earth, they began to sink lower and lower; but it may be relied onsince the Wise Man says sothat, during the forty days an

41、d nights, Giant Hurtali was on the best of terms with Noah and all his family. This might look strange; but it appears that there was on the top of the Ark a chimney, and it was through this chimney that Hurtali could always, for the asking, have his share of his favorite pottage handed up to him.en

42、gravingTHE GIANT HURTALI ON THE ARK.It would really be of no use to tell the names of all the Giants who came between Hurtali and our merry old King Grandgousier. Some of them you already know. Long after Hurtali came Goliath, the Giant, whom young David slew with his sling and stone; Briareus, the

43、Greek Giant of a hundred hands; King Porus, the Indian Giant, who fought with Alexander, and was defeated by him; and the famous Giant Bruyer, slain by Ogier the Dane, Peer of France. There are so many of them that I would soon grow tired of giving, and you of hearing, even their names. All that we

44、care about knowing is that, in a straight line from Hurtali, the Giant who rode on the Blessed Ark, the fifty-fourth was Grandgousier, who was the father of Gargantua, who, in his turn, was the father of Pantagruel.These are the three Giants whose story I am about to tell, two of whom will prove mor

45、e wonderful heroes than are to be read of either in ancient or modern history.CHAPTER II. GARGANTUA IS BORN. Initial KKing Grandgousierthe fifty-seventh in a straight line from Chalbroth, the first Giantwas a jovial King in his day. Although a Giant, he was the pink of politeness and kindly feeling.

46、 His whole life was one continual dinner. He was very fond of his own ease, this jovial King, but he also loved to make those around him happy. He kept open house, and the sun never rose on a day when there was not some high lord or some poor pilgrim at his table, eating and drinking of his best. He

47、 had a great horror of seeing people thirsty around him. There is too much good wine flowing in my kingdom for anybody to feel thirsty. Everybody should drink before he is dry, he was fond of saying. So one of the main duties of his Chief Butler Turelupin was to make all the servants, all comers and

48、 goers, drink before they were dry. It was said to take eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly to do this. He never was known to look at the clothes a guest wore,oh, no, not he, that good, hearty old King Grandgousier! And it was a pretty sight to see, whenever a guest or a friend wished to say anyth

49、ing privately, how tenderly the old Giant would pick him up, and put him on his knee, and bend his great head and listen ever so carefully to try and find out what he had to say. His head was lifted so far above the ground that, otherwise, one would have had to shout out loud enough for all in the palace to hear.engravingKING GRANDGOUSIER KEEPS OPEN HOUSE.King Grandgousier was very fond of his wine, and could drink,being a giant,at a