How Panurge and the rest rhymed with poetic fury.

What a pox ails the fellow? quoth Friar John. Stark staring mad, or bewitched, o’ my word! Do but hear the chiming dotterel gabble in rhyme. What o’ devil has he swallowed? His eyes roll in his loggerhead just for the world like a dying goat’s. Will the addle-pated wight have the grace to sheer off? Will he rid us of his damned company, to go shite out his nasty rhyming balderdash in some bog-house? Will nobody be so kind as to cram some dog’s-bur down the poor cur’s gullet? or will he, monk-like, run his fist up to the elbow into his throat to his very maw, to scour and clear his flanks? Will he take a hair of the same dog?

Pantagruel chid Friar John, and said:

Bold monk, forbear! this, I’ll assure ye,

Proceeds all from poetic fury;

Warmed by the god, inspired with wine,

His human soul is made divine.

For without jest,

His hallowed breast,

With wine possessed,

Could have no rest

Till he’d expressed

Some thoughts at least

Of his great guest.

Then straight he flies

Above the skies,

And mortifies,

With prophecies,

Our miseries.

And since divinely he’s inspired,

Adore the soul by wine acquired,

And let the tosspot be admired.

How, quoth the friar, the fit rhyming is upon you too? Is’t come to that? Then we are all peppered, or the devil pepper me. What will I not give to have Gargantua see us while we are in this maggotty crambo-vein! Now may I be cursed with living on that damned empty food, if I can tell whether I shall scape the catching distemper. The devil a bit do I understand which way to go about it; however, the spirit of fustian possesses us all, I find. Well, by St. John, I’ll poetize, since everybody does; I find it coming. Stay, and pray pardon me if I don’t rhyme in crimson; ’tis my first essay.

Thou, who canst water turn to wine,

Transform my bum, by power divine,

Into a lantern, that may light

My neighbour in the darkest night.

Panurge then proceeds in his rapture, and says:

From Pythian Tripos ne’er were heard

More truths, nor more to be revered.

I think from Delphos to this spring

Some wizard brought that conjuring thing.

Had honest Plutarch here been toping,

He then so long had ne&rsq............