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It is, therefore, altogether unjust to make Rabelais the scapegoat, to
charge him alone with the sins of everybody else. He spoke as those of his
time used to speak; when amusing them he used their language to make
himself understood, and to slip in his asides, which without this sauce
would never have been accepted, would have found neither eyes nor ears.
Let us blame not him, therefore, but the manners of his time.

Besides, his gaiety, however coarse it may appear to us--and how rare a
thing is gaiety!--has, after all, nothing unwholesome about it; and this is
too often overlooked. Where does he tempt one to stray from duty? Where,
even indirectly, does he give pernicious advice? Whom has he led to evil
ways? Does he ever inspire feelings that breed misconduct and vice, or is
he ever the apologist of these? Many poets and romance writers, under
cover of a fastidious style, without one coarse expression, have been
really and actively hurtful; and of that it is impossible to accuse
Rabelais. Women in particular quickly revolt from him, and turn away
repulsed at once by the archaic form of the language and by the
outspokenness of the words. But if he be read aloud to them, omitting the
rougher parts and modernizing the pronunciation, it will be seen that they
too are impressed by his lively wit as by the loftiness of his thought. It
would be possible, too, to extract, for young persons, without
modification, admirable passages of incomparable force. But those who have
brought out expurgated editions of him, or who have thought to improve him
by trying to rewrite him in modern French, have been fools for their pains,
and their insulting attempts have had, and always will have, the success
they deserve.

His dedications prove to what extent his whole work was accepted. Not to
speak of his epistolary relations with Bude, with the Cardinal d'Armagnac
and with Pellissier, the ambassador of Francis I. and Bishop of Maguelonne,
or of his dedication to Tiraqueau of his Lyons edition of the Epistolae
Medicinales of Giovanni Manardi of Ferrara, of the one addressed to the
President Amaury Bouchard of the two legal texts which he believed antique,
there is still the evidence of his other and more important dedications.
In 1532 he dedicated his Hippocrates and his Galen to Geoffroy d'Estissac,
Bishop of Maillezais, to whom in 1535 and 1536 he addressed from Rome the
three news letters, which alone have been preserved; and in 1534 he
dedicated from Lyons his edition of the Latin book of Marliani on the
topography of Rome to Jean du Bellay (at that time Bishop of Paris) who was
raised to the Cardinalate in 1535. Beside these dedications we must set
the privilege of Francis I. of September, 1545, and the new privilege
granted by Henry II. on August 6th, 1550, Cardinal de Chatillon present,
for the third book, which was dedicated, in an eight-lined stanza, to the
Spirit of the Queen of Navarre.

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