Gargantua/Rabelais to the Reader
From Wikisource
| ←The Author's Prologue to the First Book | Gargantua by |
Of the Genealogy and Antiquity of Gargantua→ |
| Translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux |
Rabelais to the Reader.
Good friends, my Readers, who peruse this Book,
Be not offended, whilst on it you look:
Denude yourselves of all depraved affection,
For it contains no badness, nor infection:
'Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth
Of any value, but in point of mirth;
Thinking therefore how sorrow might your mind
Consume, I could no apter subject find;
One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span;
Because to laugh is proper to the man.
