

The text of the first Two Books of Rabelais has been reprinted from the first edition (1653) of Urquhart's translation. Footnotes initialled 'M.' are drawn from the Maitland Club edition (1838); other footnotes are by the translator. Urquhart's translation of Book III. appeared posthumously in 1693, with a new edition of Books I. and II., under Motteux's editorship. Motteux's rendering of Books IV. and V. followed in 1708. Occasionally (as the footnotes indicate) passages omitted by Motteux have been restored from the 1738 copy edited by Ozell.

Chapter 2.I.—Of the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel.
Chapter 2.II.—Of the nativity of the most dread and redoubted Pantagruel.
Chapter 2.III.—Of the grief wherewith Gargantua was moved at the decease of his wife Badebec.
Chapter 2.IV.—Of the infancy of Pantagruel.
Chapter 2.V.—Of the acts of the noble Pantagruel in his youthful age.
Chapter 2.VII.—How Pantagruel came to Paris, and of the choice books of the Library of St. Victor.
Chapter 2.IX.—How Pantagruel found Panurge, whom he loved all his lifetime.