invented and forged words for himself. Following the example of
Aristophanes, he coined an enormous number of interminable words, droll
expressions, sudden and surprising constructions. What had made Greece and
the Athenians laugh was worth transporting to Paris.

With an instrument so rich, resources so endless, and the skill to use
them, it is no wonder that he could give voice to anything, be as humorous
as he could be serious, as comic as he could be grave, that he could
express himself and everybody else, from the lowest to the highest. He had
every colour on his palette, and such skill was in his fingers that he
could depict every variety of light and shade.

We have evidence that Rabelais did not always write in the same fashion.
The Chronique Gargantuaine is uniform in style and quite simple, but cannot
with certainty be attributed to him. His letters are bombastic and thin;
his few attempts at verse are heavy, lumbering, and obscure, altogether
lacking in harmony, and quite as bad as those of his friend, Jean Bouchet.
He had no gift of poetic form, as indeed is evident even from his prose.
And his letters from Rome to the Bishop of Maillezais, interesting as they
are in regard to the matter, are as dull, bare, flat, and dry in style as
possible. Without his signature no one would possibly have thought of
attributing them to him. He is only a literary artist when he wishes to be
such; and in his romance he changes the style completely every other
moment: it has no constant character or uniform manner, and therefore
unity is almost entirely wanting in his work, while his endeavours after
contrast are unceasing. There is throughout the whole the evidence of
careful and conscious elaboration.

Hence, however lucid and free be the style of his romance, and though its
flexibility and ease seem at first sight to have cost no trouble at all,