very naturalistic, and sometimes they are madly extravagant.

But Fracasso, Baldo's friend, is a giant; another friend, Cingar, who
delivers him, is Panurge exactly, and quite as much given to practical
joking. The women in the senile amour of the old Tognazzo, the judges, and
the poor sergeants, are no more gently dealt with by Folengo than by the
monk of the Iles d'Hyeres. If Dindenaut's name does not occur, there are
the sheep. The tempest is there, and the invocation to all the saints.
Rabelais improves all he borrows, but it is from Folengo he starts. He
does not reproduce the words, but, like the Italian, he revels in drinking
scenes, junkettings, gormandizing, battles, scuffles, wounds and corpses,
magic, witches, speeches, repeated enumerations, lengthiness, and a
solemnly minute precision of impossible dates and numbers. The atmosphere,
the tone, the methods are the same, and to know Rabelais well, you must
know Folengo well too.

Detailed proof of this would be too lengthy a matter; one would have to
quote too many passages, but on this question of sources nothing is more
interesting than a perusal of the Opus Macaronicorum. It was translated
into French only in 1606--Paris, Gilley Robinot. This translation of
course cannot reproduce all the many amusing forms of words, but it is
useful, nevertheless, in showing more clearly the points of resemblance
between the two works,--how far in form, ideas, details, and phrases
Rabelais was permeated by Folengo. The anonymous translator saw this quite
well, and said so in his title, 'Histoire macaronique de Merlin Coccaie,
prototype of Rabelais.' It is nothing but the truth, and Rabelais, who
does not hide it from himself, on more than one occasion mentions the name
of Merlin Coccaie.

Besides, Rabelais was fed on the Italians of his time as on the Greeks and