Bab Bab 9 · The colours and liveries of

Chapter 1.IX.

The colours and liveries of Gargantua.

Gargantua’s colours were white and blue, as I have showed you before, by

which his father would give us to understand that his son to him was a

heavenly joy; for the white did signify gladness, pleasure, delight, and

rejoicing, and the blue, celestial things. I know well enough that, in

reading this, you laugh at the old drinker, and hold this exposition of

colours to be very extravagant, and utterly disagreeable to reason, because

white is said to signify faith, and blue constancy. But without moving,

vexing, heating, or putting you in a chafe (for the weather is dangerous),

answer me, if it please you; for no other compulsory way of arguing will I

use towards you, or any else; only now and then I will mention a word or

two of my bottle. What is it that induceth you, what stirs you up to

believe, or who told you that white signifieth faith, and blue constancy?

An old paltry book, say you, sold by the hawking pedlars and balladmongers,

entitled The Blason of Colours. Who made it? Whoever it was, he was wise

in that he did not set his name to it. But, besides, I know not what I

should rather admire in him, his presumption or his sottishness. His

presumption and overweening, for that he should without reason, without

cause, or without any appearance of truth, have dared to prescribe, by his

private authority, what things should be denotated and signified by the

colour: which is the custom of tyrants, who will have their will to bear

sway in stead of equity, and not of the wise and learned, who with the

evidence of reason satisfy their readers. His sottishness and want of

spirit, in that he thought that, without any other demonstration or

sufficient argument, the world would be pleased to make his blockish and

ridiculous impositions the rule of their devices. In effect, according to

the proverb, To a shitten tail fails never ordure, he hath found, it seems,

some simple ninny in those rude times of old, when the wearing of high

round bonnets was in fashion, who gave some trust to his writings,

according to which they carved and engraved their apophthegms and mottoes,

trapped and caparisoned their mules and sumpter-horses, apparelled their

pages, quartered their breeches, bordered their gloves, fringed the

curtains and valances of their beds, painted their ensigns, composed songs,

and, which is worse, placed many deceitful jugglings and unworthy base

tricks undiscoveredly amongst the very chastest matrons and most reverend

sciences. In the like darkness and mist of ignorance are wrapped up these

vain-glorious courtiers and name-transposers, who, going about in their

impresas to signify esperance (that is, hope), have portrayed a sphere--and

birds’ pennes for pains--l’ancholie (which is the flower colombine) for

melancholy--a waning moon or crescent, to show the increasing or rising of

one’s fortune--a bench rotten and broken, to signify bankrupt--non and a

corslet for non dur habit (otherwise non durabit, it shall not last), un

lit sans ciel, that is, a bed without a tester, for un licencie, a

graduated person, as bachelor in divinity or utter barrister-at-law; which

are equivocals so absurd and witless, so barbarous and clownish, that a

fox’s tail should be fastened to the neck-piece of, and a vizard made of a

cowsherd given to everyone that henceforth should offer, after the

restitution of learning, to make use of any such fopperies in France.

By the same reasons (if reasons I should call them, and not ravings rather,

and idle triflings about words), might I cause paint a pannier, to signify

that I am in pain--a mustard-pot, that my heart tarries much for’t--one

pissing upwards for a bishop--the bottom of a pair of breeches for a vessel

full of fart-hings--a codpiece for the office of the clerks of the

sentences, decrees, or judgments, or rather, as the English bears it, for

the tail of a codfish--and a dog’s turd for the dainty turret wherein lies

the love of my sweetheart. Far otherwise did heretofore the sages of

Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hieroglyphics, which

none understood who were not skilled in the virtue, property, and nature of

the things represented by them. Of which Orus Apollon hath in Greek

composed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more.

In France you have a taste of them in the device or impresa of my Lord

Admiral, which was carried before that time by Octavian Augustus. But my

little skiff alongst these unpleasant gulfs and shoals will sail no

further, therefore must I return to the port from whence I came. Yet do I

hope one day to write more at large of these things, and to show both by

philosophical arguments and authorities, received and approved of by and

from all antiquity, what, and how many colours there are in nature, and

what may be signified by every one of them, if God save the mould of my

cap, which is my best wine-pot, as my grandam said.