he big and strong full early. . . .  There came, however, the time when his instruction must begin.  ‘My will,’ said Gargantua, ’is to hand him over to some learned man for to indoctrinate him according to his capacity, and to spare nothing to that end.’  He, accordingly, put Pantagruel under a great teacher, who began by bringing him up after the fashion of those times.  He taught him his charte (alphabet) to such purpose that he could say it by heart backwards, and he was five years and three months about it.  Then he read with him Donotus and Facetus (old elementary works on Latin grammar), and he was thirteen years, six months, and two weeks over that.  Then he read with him the De Modis significandi, with the commentaries of Hurtebisius, Fasquin, and a heap of others, and he was more than eighteen years and eleven months over them, and knew them so well that he proved on his fingers to his mother that de modis signifieandi non erat scientia.  After so much labor and so many years, what did Pantagruel know?  Gargantua was no bigot:  he did not shut his eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him.  He saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and yet he got no good by it.  And what was worse, he was becoming daft, silly, dreamy, and besotted through it.  So Pantagruel was taken away from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new creature of him and complete his education there.  Ponocrates was very careful not to send him to any college.  Rabelais, as it appears, had a special aversion for Montaigu College.  ‘Tempeste,’ says he, ’was a great boy-flogger at Montaigu College.  If for flogging poor little children, unoffending school-boys, pedagogues are damned, he, upon my word of honor, is now on Ixion’s wheel, flogging the dock-tailed cur that turns it.’  Pantagruel’s education was now humane and gentle.  Accordingly he soon took pleasure in the work which Ponocrates was at the pains of rendering interesting to him by the very nature and the variety of the subjects of it. . . .  Is it not a very remarkable phenomenon that at such a time and in such a condition of public instruction a man should have had sufficient sagacity not only to regard the natural sciences as one of the principal subjects of study which ought to be included in a course of education, but further to make the observation of nature the basis of that study, to fix the pupil’s attention upon examination of facts, and to impress upon him the necessity of applying his knowledge by studying those practical arts and industries which profit by such applications?  That, however, Rabelais did, probably by dint of sheer good sense, and without having any notion himself about the wide bearing of his ideas.  Ponocrates took Pantagruel through a course of what we should nowadays call practical study of the exact and natural sciences