Note 233 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
For those who are not special students, adequate information concerning Rabelais and extracts from his works are to be got in Sir Walter Besant's luminous and charming volume in the series of Foreign Classics for English Readers (Blackwood), and in Morley's Universal Library (Routledge). In one of his poems Browning describes the steps taken by a reader to banish the memory of a dreary pedant, whose book he had been perusing. He says:
"Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf, Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis; Lay on the grass, and forgot the loaf Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais."
Some have turned over Rabelais and searched for the jolly chapter in vain, and have, perhaps, attributed their failure to the want of a bottle of Chablis.