Voyages to the Moon

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, Limited TORONTO

VOYAGES TO

THE MOON BY

MARJORIE HOPE NICOLSON

New York : : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY : : 1948

COPYRIGHT,

1948,

BY

MARJORIE

HOPE

NICOLSON

All rights reserved—no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. First Printing.

PRINTED

IN

THE

UNITED

STATES

OF

AMERICA

TO THE

SMITH COLLEGE STUDENTS IN

“SCIENCE AND IMAGINATION” 1936-1941 FROM WHOSE INGENIOUS AND AMUSING TERM PAPERS

THEIR

TEACHER

LEARNED

MORE

THAN

SHE

TAUGHT

PREFACE

volume is a sequel to a small book now out of print, A World In the Moon, which I published in 1935. Since I was there concerned chiefly with the scientific and phil­ osophical backgrounds of the idea of an inhabited moon, I paid a minimum of attention to fiction. Yet the moon voyages I read in passing, and particularly the ingenious devices for flight, amused me so much that I promised myself the fun of finding others and of tracing the idea of flight through the literature of the two centuries immediately preceding man’s conquest of the air, if time ever permitted. In 1937 I went to the Huntington Library to spend a sab­ batical semester with no idea of going on with that particular design, since I knew that the Huntington, rich as it is in other seventeenth-century materials, does not pretend to be a scientific library. But California called me from the bleak New England winter and I went knowing that in San Marino I would find abundant materials for many other interests in seventeenth­ century literature. One can never tell about that “rich storehouse,” as Bacon might well have called it. Like other scholars who have been fortunate enough to work there, I learned that there are always unexpected treasures. I found a collection described in Maggs Brothers’ Catalogue, Number 387, a volume in which I had often browsed, charmed by the illustrations and descriptions of early books on flight. Mr. Huntington, I learned, had bought in the complete collection, now known as “Maggs’ Aeronáutica.” Since the project upon which I was officially engaged was quite different, I could not devote myself primarily to flying machines, but for my own diversion I read through all the books and pamphlets in the Maggs’ collection, and began to collect pictures of early moon mariners and their curious flying machines. wii his

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PREFACE

My visit to the Huntington Library was cut short by the illness of President William Allan Neilson of Smith College, of which I was the Dean, and I returned east early in May to a year so busy that there was no possibility of my collecting other materials. In the summer of 1937, however, President Neilson, who always had the scholarly good of his faculty at heart, urged me to continue my interrupted sabbatical, and I spent part of the summer at the British Museum where I filled in some gaps but came to realize more clearly than before how many remained. Because of President Neilson’s impending retirement and later of my own transfer from Smith to Columbia, the pres­ sure of academic duties and the writing of articles and a book or two of more immediate concern took precedence over the Voyages to the Moon, which remained an avocation rather than vocation for ten years, a mere hobby for my spare moments. During those years I sought for “flying men” and “flying chariots” whenever my professional duties took me near research libraries where I might spend an hour, a day, or a week—the John Crerar, the Surgeon General’s, the Welch and Peabody libraries in Baltimore, most often the New York Public and the Library of Congress, both rich in aeronautical collections. Slowly I added to my materials and collected more pictures, which I have used in the classroom and for public lectures at various colleges and universities as well as at other lecture centers, of which I have reason to remember particularly the Bread Loaf School of English, Cooper Union, and various army camps where I tried to show modern aviators and para­ troopers how they got that way! While they were amused, I often found it difficult to return to the history of aviation after those slight experiences with its present. The opportunity of putting together these materials came last year when the University of Toronto invited me to give the Alexander Lectures, a series given annually in honor of a great teacher. The lectures were to be four in number. It occurred to me at once that John Wilkins in the seventeenth century had suggested four possible means of flight to the moon: by the aid of spirits or angels, by means of birds, by the

PREFACE

ix

use of artificial wings, and by flying chariots. With his sugges­ tion as my basic outline, I prepared the lectures which I delivered in Toronto in January 1946, a visit to which I look back with great pleasure. Certain chronological and topical limitations in those lectures I tried to make clear from the beginning. While I talked about and quoted voyages written in France, Germany, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries, I did not then and do not now pre­ tend to a study of the cosmic voyage in Europe. I have omitted foreign voyages I have read and I have not read others that I know exist. The continental voyages have been introduced, not for themselves, but because they were read in England, where some of them indeed were as familiar as in their own coun­ tries. I have discussed only one or two voyages that I did not first find mentioned in an English book. In so far as this study pretends to be “exhaustive”—and I am the first to realize how much I must have missed—it treats the cosmic voyage as Eng­ lish readers knew it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The other limitation is of time. While I could set myself no terminus a quo, since all these themes reach back into pre­ history and no one can tell when any of them began, I originally set myself a terminus ad quern. I had intended to stop in 1783—4 with the first successful balloon ascensions. As I have tried to show in the latter sections, the ascent of a flying machine, while greatly stimulating another kind of literature, really put an end to the type on which I have been engaged, the imaginary voyage written by authors who were not confined by the reality of flight. In the lectures given at Toronto I kept to that limita­ tion with one exception. For my own pleasure I concluded with what seems to me the greatest of English cosmic voyages, Alice in Wonderland. However, because whenever I have lec­ tured on the older themes, audiences have asked innumerable questions about the interplanetary voyages of more modern writers, I have added a brief epilogue in which I have said something about the sources of Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, one of the fantasies of H. G. Wells, and one or two novels of our own contemporary, C. S. Lewis. I must make my apologies and my acknowledgments.

X

PREFACE

Scholars, I am afraid, will be shocked to discover that this volume, while professedly dealing with a good deal of material unfamiliar even to historians of literature, contains fewer than a dozen footnotes, only one or two of them bibliographical. I bow my head before Jove’s thunder and let his lightning strike as it will! I have deliberately written here less for the scholar— though I hope he may occasionally find something new—than for such audiences as I have faced in colleges and lecture halls. I myself like nothing better than to wander among footnotes, preferably printed on the pages of the text. But the general reader is often distracted by the kind of footnotes that would have been necessary for this kind of book, since our ancestors used long, leisurely titles and many of them wrote in Latin. Whatever the objections of scholars, I hope that general readers, who today take off casually by plane for California or for Europe, may find some pleasure in these tales of their ancestors, who would have considered their descendants very backward, since by this time, they believed, it would be as common for a man to buy a pair of wings to fly to the moon as it then was to buy a pair of boots to ride a journey into a neighbor­ ing county. I have compromised with my scholarly conscience by adding a somewhat detailed bibliography, in which I have attempted to give some information about every tale I have told and almost, though not quite, every quotation I have used. The scholar may have a little more trouble in locating a reference than if I had used footnotes, but I think he will find it if he really wants it. I realize that my own deficiencies as a bibliog­ rapher will afford still further ammunition to technical bibli­ ographers, whom I admire but cannot emulate. Yet I still insist that in such a book as this the tale, rather than the tail, is the thing! So far as acknowledgments are concerned, I am quite unable to pay my debts and must plead bankruptcy of words. I am grateful to authors and publishers who have permitted me to quote, particularly to the Princeton University Press and to Howard Koch who wrote the script of the Orson Welles’ broad­ cast, “The Invasion from Mars.” My quotations in the “Pro­

PREFACE

xi

logue” are taken not from the script itself but from newspaper accounts the morning after the broadcast. I offer my thanks also to Mrs. Marjorie Wells, for permission to quote from H. G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon; to Houghton Mifflin for the quotations from Lowes’ Road to Xanadu; to The Macmillan Company for quotations from C. S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra; to Mrs. Ogden Reid for permission to use material in the Nevu York Herald Tribune and This Week. To a group of editors I offer thanks for permission to quote from myself! It has been necessary for me to go back to my earlier articles and books in order to set the background for these tales. I have made occasional use of materials which I pub­ lished in Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, Smith College Classical Studies, The Journal of the History of Ideas, Studies in Philology, English Literary History, Annals of Sci­ ence, Modern Philology. Usually I have paraphrased this earlier material, though on occasion I have used an original sentence or even paragraph. In a few instances I have made more extended use of earlier materials: The account of Zamagna’s Navis Aeria is taken from the introduction I wrote for that work when it appeared in Smith College Classical Studies; the discussion of Donne’s debt to Kepler follows closely one section of an article that appeared in the Journal of the History of Ideas; the descrip­ tion of Swift’s Flying Island in Gidliver’s Travels is adapted from an article by Miss Nora Mohler and myself that appeared in Annals of Science; the account of the first “electrical” flying machine is part of another article, in the writing of which I also had the assistance of Miss Mohler, which was published in Studies in Honor of William Allan Neilson. Since none of these earlier articles is widely available, it seemed legitimate to repeat what I had said elsewhere. I cannot begin to mention the names of many librarians who have assisted me in various parts of this country and abroad, of scholars who have courteously answered my letters of inquiry, of colleagues in various departments of colleges and universities on whom I have called for aid. I hope they believe that scholar­ ship should be a cooperative affair! One or two names, however, I must mention. Miss Mary Edith Thomas of Columbia Uni­

xii

PREFACE

versity copied the manuscript and corrected a number of errors. She is, I am sure, my most critical (though a most appreciative) reader. When I began to write these lectures, I realized again the debt I owe Dr. Grant McColley who spent many hours assisting me, at first at the Library of Congress, then at Smith College. Reading his careful notes on many subjects, I was impressed as before with the labor and care that went into all his work. I am glad to remember that a number of his own articles and books on closely allied subjects had their inception in the common interests we developed. I am sure that my colleague at Smith College, Margaret Grier­ son, remembers the days when we used to read together the term papers in “Science and Imagination.” She has reason to know that the greatest debt I owe is to my students. Never were there such “busy ants” as those Smith College girls, and never did students write such original, amusing, and really remarkable papers. I think they know that those papers used to come to us, not as papers too often come to teachers, as an onerous task, but with an excitement and interest as great on our part as on theirs. One student, I remember, corresponded with all the leading moving-picture houses and gave us a most remarkable paper, illustrated by “stills” that had been sent her, showing that the theme of the moon voyage was one of the earliest used in the “silents” and had been a persistent theme for many years. A dozen of them kept me up-to-date every year on the “pulps” and the “comics.” They read children’s books and magazines; they made profound studies of cartoons and of advertisements to find reflections of this and other scientific themes. Almost every day I found on my desk or in my mailbox another picture or clipping proving the extent to which—as I have said in my text too often—the theme of other inhabited worlds is one that the world will not willingly let die. Unfortunately for me, most students in the Graduate School of Columbia University do not write term papers. But my graduate students have proved as cooperative as did the under­ graduates in keeping me up-to-date by means of clippings, pic­ tures, advertisements, and reports of radio broadcasts. From

PREFACE

xiil

occasional papers written by them, as from the many written by Smith undergraduates, I have borrowed freely. Always my best audiences, those students who have gone on so many celestial journeys with me, sharing the exhilaration of the early moon mariners, appreciating the different meanings different ages have read into the old tag, Sic itur ad astra. To­ gether we have flown to the moon and planets or fallen to a world in the center of the earth, together we have returned, with a new awareness of "relativity,” to our little world, whether in Northampton or New York. This volume is particularly for them, the best traveling companions any pilot into interplanetary space could ever ask—my students. M. H. N. Columbia University

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

1

ONE: The Discovery of a New World

10

TWO : Supernatural Voyages

40

THREE: Flight by the Help of Fowls

67

FOUR: Wanton Wings

109

FIVE: Flying Chariots

150

SIX: Variations on a Theme

201

EPILOGUE

237

BIBLIOGRAPHY

258

INDEX

289

xv

ILLUSTRATIONS

facing Flight by the Help of Fowls

15

1. Domingo Gonsales and his Gansas 2. Samuel Brunt’s “stream-lined” Palanquin

Wanton Wings

46

1. Daedalus and Icarus, from F. Riederer, Spiegel der War en Rhetoric, 1493 2. A Glum’s “Aquaplane,” from The Romance of Peter Wilkins An Aerial Fight Between a Briton and a German, from Richard Owen Cambridge, Scribleriad

79

A Flying Lover and His Lady, from Restif de la Bre­ tonne, La Découverte Australe par un Homme-volant

no

Cyrano de Bergerac 1. Cyrano’s First Flight by Vials of Dew 2. Cyrano’s Voyage to the Sun

143

Francesco Lana’s Flying Machine, from Bernard Zamagna, Navis Aeria 174 The First “Electrical” Flying Machine, from La Folie, Le Philosophe sans Prétention 207

The World in the Moon, in Filippo Morghen, Raccolta

xvu

238

PROLOGUE

within our recent memories, reports of “interplane­ tary communication” have made headlines in metropolitan dailies, both accounts, curiously enough, emanating from the state of New Jersey. On Sunday evening, October 31, 1938 —if we follow the radio account momentarily accepted by thousands of Americans—“Seismograph registered shock of almost earthquake intensity occurring within a radius of twenty miles of Princeton.” A hurriedly summoned “Princeton scien­ tist” discovered what at first seemed a remarkable meteor, “definitely extraterrestrial—not found on this earth.” Before the eyes of the watchers, an awful change occurred: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is terrific. This end of the thing is begin­ ning to flake off 1 The top is beginning to rotate like a screw! The thing must be hollow!” Another moment, and to the con­ sternation of the observers—not to mention the listeners—the monstrosity opened to display fantastic visitants to our world. The shocked voice of the announcer spoke: wice

T

“Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large as a bear, and it glitters like wet leather. But the face—it’s indescrib­ able. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.” Then, with growing hysteria on the part of actor and unseen audience:

“Wait! something’s happened!” (Hissing sound, followed by a humming that increases in intensity.) “A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small gleam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a jet of flame springing from that 1

2

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

mirror and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on. Good Lord, they’re turning into flame! Now the whole field’s caught fire. The woods. The barns. It’s coming this way !” (Crash of microphone, then dead silence.)

Dragon’s teeth once sown on Mars had sprung up armed men in New Jersey, and Americans from New York to Oregon ran screaming into the streets. Seriously and satirically the press during the following days reflected the panic caused by that broadcast, the excitement and horror of which lingered in many minds until a time when radio dramas of hypothetical interplanetary warfare paled before more poignant communi­ qués of actual combat on this little planet of ours, when human beings rather than Martians landed on the tragic beach of Dunkirk, triumphantly took beachheads of Anzio and Nor­ mandy, when the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, ushering in a new age to mankind. If the sophisticated laughed at the panic in New Jersey in 1938, they read with interest and respect another communica­ tion emanating from the same state on January 25, 1946. Again a celestial body made front-page history, ironically enough sharing space that day with such “peacetime” headlines as these : “United Nations Votes Accord on Atom Control,” “President’s Emergency Fund Killed,” “Ford Faces Shutdown in 10 Days Unless Steel Strike Is Settled,” “Cradle-to-Grave Plan Is Intro­ duced In Parliament.” “RADAR PUSHES INTO NEW FRONTIER OF INTERPLANETARY SPACE,” an­ nounced the New York Herald Tribune above a picture both mysterious and moving tp the layman : antennae of radar equip­ ment of the Evans Signal Laboratory loomed high above the earth, appearing face to face with a ghostly moon, “stooping through a fleecy cloud.” The news story began :

Probing for the first time in man’s history into the cold reaches of interplanetary space, Army scientists have made radar contact with the moon, the Signal Corps announced yesterday. On January 10, a few minutes before noon, a radar pulse was directed at the rising moon from the Evans Laboratory in Belmar, N. J. Two and one-half seconds later a returning pulse was clearly detected on

PROLOGUE

3

a radar scope. In that time it had made a round trip of 480,000 miles—to the moon’s surface and back. At intervals of a few seconds other pulses were sent from the transmitter, and each time they were followed, two and one-half seconds later, by the telltale pulse on a blue-white cathode-ray tube. A loud speaker, tied into the system, picked up the echo as a sound—not a very tuneful sound, but an echo from the moon. Again the public responded to the perennially new appeal of an ancient theme. Illustrated magazines published pages of graphic pictures showing the mountains and valleys of the moon. In planetariums throughout the country men, women, and children went on voyages to the moon. “Letters to the editor,” and scientific, semiscientific, pseudoscientific articles raised again the possibility of lunar rocket ships. I quote from one popular article, “139,000 Miles an Hour,” written for the Sun­ day magazine of the New York Herald Tribune by Major Alexander de Seversky: Ever since the Army’s radar technicians made successful contact with the moon, talk about journeying to our satellite has been run­ ning riot. It is man’s age-old dream, presented generations ago by Jules Verne and revamped some 50 years ago by H. G. Wells. It is being presented now with technicolor trimmings and much fanciful foolishness. ... To my mind man’s imagination has not kept pace with scientific progress.

Major de Seversky finds nothing impossible or even improbable in the idea of a flight to the moon by space ship. “Such a ship is theoretically possible and feasible,” he writes. “More than that, all but one of the elements for such flights are already at hand.” The missing link is a fuel “light enough, powerful enough, compact enough to contain in extremely small packages the immense energy required for interplanetary travel. Given such a fuel, I would gladly undertake to design and build a serviceable space ship.” But to every optimistic voice prophesying that man would be able to visit the moon, there has come a pessimistic echo. Only yesterday—I am writing this on August 30, 1946—th'e newspapers again gave nearly a column of space to the subject

4

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

of moon-voyaging. Rocket to moon faces danger of flak, announced the headline. The story began:

cosmic

The first moon-voyagers will run a sizable risk of being destroyed by cosmic flak, Dr. Fletcher Watson, of Harvard University, pre­ dicts in this week’s issue of “Science” magazine. Calculating the distribution of meteorites in interplanetary space, and estimating the speed of a rocket space ship, Dr. Watson . . . concludes that one out of every twenty-five space ships will be struck and destroyed by a meteorite while it is en route to the moon. Should man attempt a voyage to Venus, the closest planet, the chances will be even slimmer, Dr. Watson writes. Since the space ship must stay aloft far longer than it would on a moon voyage, it would run a far greater risk of being struck and “it seems probable that a sizable proportion would not survive. . . .” The speed of the rocket was calculated at approximately 2,250 miles an hour. At this speed it would take four and a half days to reach the moon and almost a year and a half to reach Venus, the nearest of the planets.

Yet hope springs eternal and even Professor Watson does not leave us completely pessimistic about our chances of voyaging through interstellar space. “By the time space ships are built, and other details of interplanetary travel are settled,” he says, “we may have means of fending off or dodging the oncoming particles.” Among the many commercial adaptations of the great public interest aroused by the Orson Welles broadcast, I happened upon an advertisement published by Gimbel’s Book Department a few days after the event, “go on! . . . it’s all a myth!” declared the caption. The advertisement continued: “If all the folks who ran to police stations and cabled their mothers last Sunday night had read H. G. Wells—they wouldn’t have lost their equilibrium. So, in order to prevent all future nightmares, Gimbel’s suggest you promptly read as many blood-curdling books as possible. (You never know what in the world they may dramatize next!)” Not bad advice, that, to a generation prone to hysteria because it has forgotten or never known long literary traditions its remote ancestors took for granted, many

PROLOGUE

5

of which I plan to retell in these pages. I shall not emulate Mr. Welles in frightening you out of your homes, and I cannot vie with Major de Seversky in proposing to build you a space ship. But I can and do offer to take you to the moon, not on one voyage only but on many, and I may even conduct you to far-flung planets on journeys so extensive that to us, who shall have become seasoned and supercilious travelers, the moon will seem a mere way station to be noted only in passing. You must provide the fuel, “light enough, powerful enough, compact enough, to contain in extremely small packages the immense energy required for interplanetary travel.” But that fuel is possessed by all of you who are worthy your ancestors. You need only imagination if you will travel to the moon with my hardy mariners. If I do nothing else, at least I think I can show you how limited is the knowledge of many contemporary writers who seem to believe with Major de Seversky that the idea of flight to the moon or planets was first “presented” by Jules Verne and “revamped some 50 years later by H. G. Wells.” As we take off on celestial flight, do not be surprised if you hear ghostly chuckles—cicada voices of our departed ancestors, the Lucians and Cyranos of a forgotten past, laughing at modern naïveté. Voyages and travels have stirred imagination in every period. From earliest times men and women have experienced the fascination of Desdemona as she listened to tales of strange countries and stranger peoples, “the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.” The strange, the remote, the inaccessible, will always arouse response in those of us who remain at home while our brothers, lovers, friends, go abroad. As it has proved in our own day, when men return from service in remote corners of the world, so it must have been among the cave dwellers when a more venturesome warrior returned from a foray among other cave dwellers. It was never more true than during the Renaissance, when Columbus dis­ covered a new land and other pioneers set sail in their frail craft to explore and map a brave new world. An old legend, common in maps before the seventeenth century, implies the persistent challenge of the unknown to man: Humanus oculus

6

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

non widet—no human eye has seen it—and off man went again to meet the challenge of the unseen. But there came a time, after that greatest of all periods of discovery and exploration, when it seemed that all that could be discovered had been found, when the whole world seemed known and mapped. Perhaps the spirit of melancholy and despondency that marks so much late Elizabethan literature had some basis in that fact—that the unknown was known, the remotest regions of the world written down on maps. Yet, as so often in the history of man’s progress, the melan­ choly and despair of the late Renaissance was to give way to a new optimism. Seventeenth-century Alexanders who had sighed because there were no more worlds to conquer, sud­ denly discovered not one but a host of new worlds waiting for man’s conquest. In his brilliant analysis of the period during which Coleridge’s imagination “was playing, like heat-lightning, about the remote horizons of the world,” Professor Lowes wrote in The Road to Xanadu: “Nothing, I think, is harder to trans­ late into terms of our own blasé experience than the pregnant fact that the little pre-Columbian world was literally islanded in the unknown—an unknown, none the less, across which came drifting signs and rumors of some kindred knowable beyond, as if to us, whose surfeited generation had set foot on both the poles, strange signal lights should flash from Mars.” From Mars and the moon, from Venus and Mercury, “strange signal lights” flashed across space to that melancholy generation of the early seventeenth century whose ancestors had discovered so much in the geographical world that nothing seemed left for posterity. “Sudden before their eyes”—as before the eyes of Milton’s Satan peering into Chaos—appeared a new expanse, another “vast illimitable ocean without bounds,” the distances of interstellar space. As for a moment Satan was appalled by Chaos and by space, so were our ancestors of the seventeenth century who first discovered new worlds in the heavens ; but the hesitation was only momentary. With Satan they spread the “sailbroad vans” of their imaginations and took off into the ether to find new mortals in new worlds. In these pages I propose to discuss a group of voyages of a

PROLOGUE

7

somewhat different sort than those brought together by the many scholars who have dealt with travel tales. If my travels lead you neither to La Terre Australe nor to Ultima Thule, they will take you to still stranger places. Not less but rather more than the earlier tales of travelers of which they were descendants, they reflect both the terror and the fascination of a vast un­ known stretching beyond man’s knowledge, though not beyond his fancy. The mariners you will meet voyaged upon strange seas of thought indeed. They recognized no barriers of time or space. As post-Columbian travelers discovered a new geo­ graphical world, mine, too,' set out upon another “Ocean un­ known to the sons of Adam,” with a courage equal to that of any of their ancestors, to find, not new countries in our world, but a new world—a world in the moon, worlds in the planets. To be sure, no one of them was to reach his goal, but the spirit of adventure depends little upon attainment, much upon the courage of the traveler who undertakes the journey. In so far as these tales have been considered by scholars and critics, they have been included in a genre of literature called the “imaginary voyage” or the “extraordinary voyage.” “Ex­ traordinary voyages,” according to Geoffroy Atkinson, the scholar who has considered them most fully, are “imaginary voyages” as distinguished from “real” voyages, yet voyages which purport to be veritable accounts of real travels “together with a description of the happy society found in another country.” I prefer to call the travels of my mariners “cosmic voyages,” since they lead not to the outposts of civilization upon our maps, but away from this earth to some other world, usually in the heavens. My voyages have in common one theme: each of them is an extraterrestrial journey in which a mariner or group of mariners discovers a new world, usually in the moon or planets. The distinction between the two types, you will find, is in part chronological. In the earlier seventeenth century, the imagi­ nation of our ancestors was still bounded by the orb of the moon, and therefore the moon voyage was the most character­ istic cosmic voyage of the seventeenth century. Later, particu­ larly after the publication of Newton’s Principia in 1687, the

8

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

moon took its proper place as a minor satellite. In addition, such philosophical presuppositions as that of Bruno and many others about a “plurality of worlds”—even sometimes an “in­ finity of worlds”—and. growing realization of the possibility of other cosmic universes than ours, made our ancestors all the more aware of the comparative insignificance of both our satel­ lite, the moon, and this comparatively small planet, the earth. Imagination expanded, and while the moon voyage never died, our forefathers began to extend their tours by traveling to the sun or planets, and in passing to reflect upon the possibility that if life did not exist there, it might conceivably be found in still other cosmic universes stretching out indefinitely whether in space or time. The idea that man may some day journey into the ether to discover other men and women, like or unlike himself, seems to be a conception the world will not willingly let die. At least from the time of Lucian it has persisted in European litera­ ture. Why the appeal of this perennial theme? Is it curiosity? Is it humility? Is it perhaps a result of the essential loneliness of man, “on this sea of life enisled, where myriad mortals live alone?” “Sole creature of God”—mortal man on a terrestrial earth ? There is more reason for humility and loneliness in that thought than for pride. And so a radio broadcast of an invasion from Mars still startles us, announcement of communication with the moon still enthralls us with the suggestion that, whether for good or ill, human beings may yet establish contact with other mortals in another sphere. Some of the tales I shall retell will be familiar to you, for they have become world classics. Others, I hope, will be quite new, since no one, so far as I know, has ever attempted to bring together the cosmic voyages known in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not even the bibliog­ raphers, who have collected many of the titles, have realized that there were so many kinds of cosmic voyages. Far be it from me to apply “statistics” to literature! Yet the very number of these tales, in drama, in prose, in poetry, suggests the fascina­ tion our ancestors found in them. If there is any originality in this volume—any “contribution,”

PROLOGUE

9

as we scholars are so prone to say—it arises, I think, from the fact that no one else has tried to show the close relation­ ship in the literary cosmic voyage between the history of litera­ ture, the history of astronomy, and the history of aviation. It was no coincidence that the vogue of these journeys to the moon and planets occurred during the period in the history of aero­ nautics that marks the end of the prehistory of aviation and the beginning of modern scientific theories of flight. The “arti­ ficial wings” and “flying chariots” proposed even by serious scientists in the seventeenth century will seem to you, who take flight for granted as a normal means of conveyance, no less fantastic than those suggested by my romancers. As science stimulated the minds of writers of fiction, perhaps some of this fiction may have stimulated the imagination of scientists, for in those two early centuries of modern thought, the paths of science and literary imagination had not diverged as drastically as since the beginning of the nineteenth century. If you find any amusement in this collection of supernatural voyages, artificial wings, and flying chariots, which I have made over a period of years largely for my own diversion, I shall be amply repaid for my efforts. And perhaps—at least this is a pious hope on my part—you may come away from these early tales with a better understanding of your own reading and that of your children. There is no single voyage with which I shall deal, no strange flying machine, no daring flight into the empyrean which your children cannot match. Some of you sharpened the teeth of your youthful imaginations upon Jules Verne, others upon H. G. Wells. Still others of you, somewhat younger, grew up with Edgar Rice Burroughs and “Tarzan.” Your sons and daughters know the same stories, whether in texts or pictures, though they read them largely in the pulps and comics. I may call my flying hero “Icaromenippus,” “Duracotus,” “Domingo Gonsales,” “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Your children call him “Buck Rogers,” “Flash Gordon,” or “Superman.”

CHAPTER - ONE

The Discovery of a Nezv World I

I had wings like a dove!” cried the Psalmist. De­ sire for wings must have been perennial in human his­ tory. Long before any truly scientific theory of flight, the theme may be detected in winged statuary, in legend and in tale. Solomon, who “gave unto the Queen of Sheba whatsoever she wished of splendid things and riches,” is said to have included among his gifts “a vessel whence she could traverse the air, which Solomon had made by his wisdom which God had given him.” In the Orient a flyer is found at the dawn of recorded Chinese history in the person of Emperor Shun, who not only attempted flight but is said to have made the first successful descent in a parachute. Greek legends of flying gods like Hermes and of flying mortals like Daedalus and Icarus are familiar to us all. Diodorus of Sicily told the tale of Abaris and his flight around the world on a golden arrow, Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights of Archytas and his mechani­ cal pigeon, a “heavier-than-air machine” which was “animated by an occult and enclosed aura of spirit.” In England as in China, the prehistory of aviation begins with a monarch, more familiar to us through his son than in himself—Bladud, legendary tenth king of Britain, founder of Bath and father of King Lear, whose daring flight on feathered wings, some say, resulted in his death. While Bladud sup­ posedly lived in the ninth century before Christ, his story first became current among his countrymen after Geoffrey of Mon­ mouth retold it in his twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain. Repeated by Stowe and other chroniclers, the tale was familiar to Renaissance poets, some of whom remembered Bladud for his daring, as did Michael Drayton in Polyolbion: that

O

Wise Bladud, of he kings that great Philosopher: Who found out boyling Bathes; and in his knowledge hie, Disdaining humane paths, heere practiced to flie. 10

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW WORLD

11

More often, however, the flying king served to point a moral, as when Spenser wrote: Yet he at last contending to excell The reach of men, through flight into fond mischief fell. That curious “water poet,” John Taylor, in his Memorial of all the English Monarchs, displayed a picture of the early flyer, from whose shoulders burgeoned feathered wings so small that not even a cherub could fly upon them. With unusual succinct­ ness, Taylor summed up the life and works of Bladud in a quatrain:

Bathe was by Bladud to perfection brought, By Neckromantick Arts, to flye he sought: As from a Towre he thought to scale the Sky, He brake his necke, because he soar’d too high. The most extensive of all verse treatments of Bladud ap­ peared in The Mirror for Magistrates, since its theme was eminently suitable for that “First parte . . . containing the falles of the first infortunate Princes of this lande.” We may well pause for a moment over Bladud’s own story of his flight, as given in an early version of the Mirror, since, even more clearly than in Spenser’s and Taylor’s lines, we shall hear a persistent critique upon all attempts at human flight. After re­ hearsing his other exploits, Bladud told of his skill in “Magicke Mathematicall” :

Though Magicke Mathematicall, Make wooden birdes to flye and sore: Eke brasen heads that speake they shall, And promise many marueiles more. . . .

I deemde I could more soner frame, My selfe to flye then birdes of woode: And ment to get eternall fame, Which I esteemde the greatest goode. I deckt my selfe with plumes and winges, As here thou seest in skilfull wise :

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

And many equall poysing thinges, To ayde my flight, to fall or rise. . . .

By practise at the length I could, Gainst store of winde with ease arise : And then which way to light I should, And mounte, and turne, I did deuise.

Which learned, but not perfectly, Before I had there of the sleight : I flew aloft but downe fell I, For want of skill againe to light. For what should I presume so highe, Against the cours of nature quite : To take me winges and saye to flye, A foole no fowle in fethers dight. . . . Well then deserts requirde my fall, Presumption proude, depriude my breath : Renowne bereft my life and all, Desire of praise, procurde my death. Centuries after Bladud, exploits of other English flyers were repeated by thé chroniclers. Toward the middle of the eleventh century, Elmer of Malmesbury attempted to fly by feathered wings, with painful though not fatal results, which, he declared, would have been averted had he not carelessly forgotten to add a tail as well as wings. Milton told his story in the History of Britain:

He in his youth strangely aspiring, had made and fitted Wings to his Hands and Feet; with these on the top of a Tower, spread out to gather air, he flew more than a Furlong; but the wind being too high, came fluttering down, to the maiming of all his Limbs ; yet so conceited of his Art, that he attributed the cause of his fall to the want of a Tail, as Birds have, which he forgot to make to his hinder Parts.

Even better known was the reputed attempt of John Damian, Abbot of Tungland and favorite of James IV of Scotland,

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13

who in 1507 essayed to fly from Stirling Castle to France, boasting that he would overtake an embassy which had recently set out to the Continent. John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, who told the tale in his History of Scotland, is our authority for Damian’s explanation of his failure, which vies in ingenuity with that of Elmer of Malmesbury: “bot the wyt thereof he ascryvit to that thair was sum hen fedderis in the wings.” Much less sympathetic were the versified treatments of Damian’s exploit, offered by his rival, William Dunbar, the Scottish poet, who wrote two satires upon “The Fenzeit Freir of Tungland,” in one of which the aviator was set upon by savage birds who refused to admit human flyers to their realm; as usual, he who aspires too high falls ignominiously low, this time deep into the mire which afforded Damian his only protection against the outraged denizens of the air. Apart from such legends there are various serious indica­ tions that men’s minds were concerning themselves with princi­ ples of flight. As in other chapters of science, the Arabians seem to have been responsible for the infiltration into mediaeval Europe of Oriental ideas about flying. Historians will probably never agree on any subject connected with Roger Bacon. Cer­ tainly they have disagreed with some violence about his sup­ posed contributions to aviation. “It’s possible,” Bacon wrote, “to make Engines for flying, a man sitting in the midst thereof, by turning onely about an Instrument, which moves artificial! Wings made to beat the Air, much after the fashion of a Bird’s flight.” What this “Engine” was we do not know, but more recent authorities incline to treat Bacon’s alleged discoveries with much more sympathy and admiration than did the Ba­ conian critics a generation ago. As historians of aviation fail to agree on the importance of the “discoveries” of Roger Bacon, they part company when they discuss the flight of Giovanni Battista Danti over the lake of Trasimeno, supposed to have taken place sometime during the last decade of the sixteenth century. But there is little con­ flict among them when they come to that doctor mirabilis, Leonardo da Vinci. His glider may differ in many ways from those familiar to us, yet a principle is there. His parachute may

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

seem to modern paratroopers a clumsy thing, yet again the principle is there, as apparently it had been centuries earlier in the Orient. And Leonardo’s careful study of birds’ wings and the principles underlying the flight of birds remained unequaled for nearly a century, and even when equaled were hardly excelled. Yet, for all the genius of Leonardo, the history of modern aviation does not begin in the sixteenth century, nor were his discoveries—many of which remained in manuscript for more than two hundred years—responsible for the vogue of a new literature of flight, very different from that we have briefly seen. The cosmic voyage of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not spring from the legends and tales of Bladud, Damian, or Elmer of Malmesbury on the one hand, nor from the experiments and theories of Roger Bacon and Leonardo on the other. It had a dual origin in old literature and in new science. The authors of the cosmic voyage were carrying on literary traditions which came to them in part from Lucian and other classical writers, in part from adaptations of those classical sources made by Renaissance writers. But these tradi­ tions underwent a subtle change when they were touched by the alchemy of the “new philosophy” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. II

It is possible that the first English translation of Lucian’s satiric voyages to the moon in 1634 was responsible for the increasing interest in the theme in England after that date. True, the voyages had been available in Latin and Greek, but Francis Hicks, whose translation remained standard for sev­ eral generations, rediscovered these widely imitated works for the average English reader, and Lucian once more came into his own. Two sections of the Tme History are of particular importance, so far as the later cosmic voyage is concerned— Lucian’s means of reaching the moon, and his first observa­ tions on that supposed “planet.” Lucian made his voyage to the moon by mere chance; he suggested no previous idea of

if/J ilk

2.

FLIGHT BY THE HELP OF FOWLS 1. Domingo Gonsales and his Gansas 2. Samuel Brunt’s ‘‘stream-lined” Palanquin

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW WORLD

15

the possibility, no pondering upon means of conveyance, no plan or design. After a series of adventures in the terrestrial world beyond the Pillars of Hercules, where presumably any­ thing could happen, he tells us that “upon a suddaine a whirlwinde caught us, which turned our shippe round about, and lifted us up some three thousand furlongs into the aire.” On the eighth day, “wee came in view of a great countrie in the aire, like to a shining Island.” His description of the people in the moon and of their customs was mere fantasy. There is no stirring here of the modern scientific imagination, no attempt to determine the nature of creatures who live in the moon or the effects upon them of environment. Lucian’s later voyage among the stars and planets was important also in estab­ lishing the modern genre, since the visits of his travelers to the morning star, the Zodiack, Lynchopolis—a city between the Pleiades and the Hyades—and to “cloud-cuckoo land,” suggest an expansion of what was originally a moon journey into a more extensive cosmic voyage. The ascent to heaven of Lucian’s other great traveler, Icaromenippus, offers more striking parallels with later moon voy­ ages, for Icaromenippus reached the heavenly bodies by no mere chance, but by deliberate plan. His imagination, like that of many writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had long been stirred by meditation upon the night skies. “I saw the starres scattered up and downe the heaven carelessly, I know not how; and I much desired to learne what matter the Sunne was made of; But the greatest cause of marvell to mee was the Moone.” Philosophers proving of no avail, only experience remained, and so Menippus concluded “to get me wings and make a journey into heaven.” He therefore pro­ vided himself with two wings—one of a vulture, the other of an eagle, and, a period of practice over (or as he says, “a chicken no longer”), he took off from the summit of Olympus. Like the mariners of the seventeenth century he paused upon his flight to survey the world he had left behind him; unlike them, he turned with the moon while the earth remained sta­ tionary beneath him. From the moon he looked back to our earth, which he perceived but dimly in the distance. But as in

16

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

the True History, he was not content to visit the moon alone: “I struck up directly towards Heaven. . . . then I left the Sun upon my right hand, and taking my flight thorow the Starres, the third day I arrived at Heaven.” Ultimately he was returned to earth by Mercury, and his wings removed, that he might not venture such godlike audacity again. Other classical prototypes for later moon voyages, in addi­ tion to these tales of Lucian, were undoubtedly a group of Platonic myths, the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, and Plu­ tarch’s De Facie in Orbe Lunare. While no one of these was an actual voyage, each suggested cosmic ideas that are reflected in more modern literature. The myth of Phaedrus is surely one source of many celestial voyages, whose authors remembered Plato’s pictures of the rise and fall of human souls through the heavenly spheres; indeed, the winged chariots of the Phaedrus offered something to inventors of semiscientific “flying chariots” in the seventeenth century. In the myth of Er, Plato made use of a device which became common in modern cosmic voyages. In the first part of the tale we seem to be upon the earth, as we survey “a certain ghostly place wherein were two open Mouths of the Earth hard by each other, and also above, two Mouths of the Heaven over against them.” Later in the myth we have imperceptibly changed our position, so that we, who were upon the earth, are now above, or at least beyond it. At one moment we look up to the “Straight Line extended from above through the whole Heaven and Earth, as it were a pillar”; at another, we see from afar the concentric rings of the cosmos, behold Necessity and Fate, and observe the Siren singing as “she goeth about the circle.” So, too, our later cosmic voyagers will observe now the earth they are leaving, again the heavenly bodies toward which they are speeding. From the Phaedo-myth, too, later writers of cosmic voyages caught something of Plato’s technique in expressing contemporary scientific conceptions in the language of poetry and myth. Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis—in addition to the dream de­ vice so frequently employed in mediaeval and modern literature —offered, if not a true celestial voyage, at least a cosmic view,

THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW WORLD

17

which, following upon the preceding astronomical description, gives somewhat the same effect as later cosmic voyages. In his dream Scipio beheld a vision which, beginning with Carthage, ended with a conception of the whole universe and realization of the comparative insignificance of this earth, a vast panorama of the “Milky Circle” in which appear “stars which we never see from the earth ... all larger than we have ever imagined . . . indeed, the earth itself seemed to me so small that I was scornful of our empire, which covers only a single point, as it were, upon its surface.” Like the Somnium Scipionis, Plutarch’s De Facie in Orbe Lunare, if not in form a cosmic voyage, is so in its implica­ tions. The dialogue is less concerned with the whole cosmic system than with the moon, its size, shape, nature, distance, and light. The moon, says Plutarch, following Anaxagoras, is as large as Peloponnesus; it is “cleft with many deep caves and ruptures.” Over the problem of its possible inhabitation Plu­ tarch hesitated, but after a discussion of arguments on both sides, he concluded that it is no more incredible that there should be life on the moon than that there should be life in the ocean. The philosophical dialogue then merges with an imaginative description of the isle Ogygia which “lies in Ocean’s arms,” and an allegory of the state of souls after death, a strange traveler’s tale which momentarily becomes a celestial voyage, as the souls wander between the earth and the moon. Coming to the moon, some behold the Elysian Fields, others encounter “hollows and great depths.” The natives of the moon are daemons, who are not always confined to the moon “but some­ times descend here below, to have the care and superintendency of oracles”—an idea which, we shall see, was picked up by Kepler in his modern moon voyage. Other souls, too violent and passionate, are sometimes exiled from the moon and sent back to earth until such time as they become worthy of return —a form of punishment that frequently recurs in modern voyages. Such in substance was the tale a traveler told to Sylla, who completes his account: “You may take my relation in such part as you please.” From Lucian, Plutarch, Cicero, down to the seventeenth

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

century, there were only slight variations upon these themes for later cosmic voyages. The celestial journey was, of course, familiar in mediaeval literature. In dreams and ecstasy men scaled the heavens for centuries, seeking other worlds. Mediae­ val spirits after death flew to the regions of the blest, in star or planet; ecstatic souls outdistanced time and space. Dante’s pilgrimage to Paradise was known to many seventeenth-century readers. But except among the more mystical poets, I have found little mediaeval reminiscence in the ethereal voyages of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much more important was the “extraordinary voyage” of Rabelais’ Pantagruel with its strange ports and islands, its lusty humor, its satiric overtones. Even though Pantagruel’s was a terrestrial rather than a celes­ tial journey, it led to lands and seas as curious and fantastic as anything ever conceived by my voyagers to the new world in the moon, and the influence of Rabelais remained as per­ vasive as that of Lucian. Don Quixote, too, was often in the minds of the cosmicvoyage writers. Quixote and Sancho, mounted on Clavileño, took off for the Kingdom of Kandy to find themselves mount­ ing through the middle air into the region of fire:

Don Quixote, now feeling the blast, said, “Beyond a doubt, Sancho, we must have already reached the second region of the air, where the hail and snow are generated; the thunder, the lightning, and the thunderbolts are engendered in the third region, and if we go on ascending at this rate, we shall shortly plunge into the region of fire, and I know not how to regulate this peg, so as not to mount up where we shall be burned.” And now they began to warm their faces, from a distance, with tow that could be easily set on fire and extinguished again, fixed on the end of a cane. On feeling the heat Sancho said, “May I die if we are not already in that fire place, or very near it, for a good part of my beard has been singed, and I have a mind, señor, to uncover and see whereabouts we are.”

But Quixote sternly forbade Sancho to satisfy his curiosity, for he remembered, if Sancho did not, the tale of Torralba, Grande hombre y Nigromente Medico, in the account of Carlo Famoso.

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Among many adventures with his familiar Zaquiel, Torralba once flew too near the moon for comfort:

“Do nothing of the kind,” said Don Quixote; “remember the true story of the licentiate Torralave that the devils carried flying through the air riding on a stick with his eyes shut; who in twelve hours reached Rome and dismounted at Torre de Nona, which is a street of the city, and saw the whole sack and storming and the death of Bourbon, and was back in Madrid the next morning, where he gave an account of all he had seen; and he said more­ over that as he was going through the air, the devil bade him open his eyes, and he did so, and saw himself so near the body of the moon, so it seemed to him, that he could have laid hold of it with his hand, and that he did not dare to look at the earth lest he should be seized with giddiness. So that, Sancho, it will not do for us to uncover ourselves, for he who has us in charge will be responsible for us; and perhaps we are gaining an altitude and mounting up to enable us to descend at one swoop on the Kingdom of Kandy, as the saker or falcon does on the heron, so as to seize it however high it may soar.” Quixote’s belief that in time they would come down to earth proved not misplaced, though theirs was no happy landing. The Duke and Duchess “applied a light to Clavileno’s tail, with some tow, and the horse, being full of squibs and crackers, immediately blew up with a prodigious noise, and brought Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the ground half singed.” The fate of Clavileno—a sort of moon rocket in reverse—was to give ammunition of squibs and crackers to Cyrano de Bergerac, who, we shall find, was the first cosmic voyager to travel by rocket ship. A detail Quixote omitted in his account of the flight of Torralba was picked up by many writers from Kepler to Defoe, for the devils who bore Torralba on his overnight flight gave him an anesthetic that deadened the pain of the voyage—and, conveniently for the author, permitted the traveler to forget many details of his experience. While most seventeenth-century writers of cosmic voyages knew the adventures of Quixote and some the original tale of Torralba, Robert Burton’s favorite cosmic journey seems to

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

have been that “bold and memorable exploit; one never before attempted in this age . . . transactions in the kingdom of the moon, a place where no one has yet arrived, save in his dreams,” told in the Satyre Ménippée, also founded upon the adventures of Pantagruel in the World of Error. There is little considera­ tion in the Menippean satire of means whereby man may reach the moon ; it is enough for the author, as for most earlier writers, that the adventurers simply arrive there. That the moon is inhabited the author of the satire does not doubt, though the only evidence he offers is an old philosophical theory, “Car suyant l’opinion de Xenophanes, tout y éstoit habité.” The moon-world of this modern Menippus is a world of unreality, inhabited not by men and women but by Phantosmes passons et traversants. In spite of the growing verisimilitude of most of our cosmic voyages, we may cross the path of such phantoms more than once. More familiar than the Satyre Ménippée to most English writers of cosmic voyages was the moon voyage of Ariosto’s Astolfo in Orlando Furioso, which was known to the earlier authors either in the original or in Hoole’s or Harrington’s translation and took on renewed interest to popular writers of the last part of the century through the long account of Astolfo’s adventures related by the Philosopher to the Marchioness in Fontenelle’s immensely popular Conversations upon a Plurality of Worlds. On the summit of a mountain, where he had discovered the terrestrial Paradise, Astolfo met St. John the Evangelist, who proposed that Astolfo

a flight more daring take To yonder Moon, that in its orbit rolls, The nearest planet to our earthly poles. The ascent was made by means of a chariot, the same “won­ drous car” that once “received Elias, rapt from mortal eyes.” Drawn by four coursers, red as flame, the car rose, its “wheels smooth turning through the yielding air.” Upon arrival Astolfo found the moon much vaster than he had imagined, and like earlier and later travelers was greatly impressed by its similari­ ties to the topography of earth :

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Swell’d like the Earth, and seem’d an Earth in size, Like this huge globe, whose wide extended space Vast oceans with circumfluent wave embrace. . . . Far other lakes than ours this region yields, Far other rivers, and far other fields; Far other valleys, plains, and hills supplies, Where stately cities, towns, and castles rise.

So much for the literary background of the cosmic voyage, which had been familiar in the classics and familiar, too, among Renaissance writers in various countries. To some extent our later writers will carry on patterns established by Lucian or Rabelais, will pick up details from Carlo Famoso, Cervantes, Ariosto. Yet the differences are more striking than the similari­ ties. The survival or revival of an old literary device is not sufficient to account for the sudden emergence into popularity of the theme of cosmic flight in the 163Q’s, nor will literary traditions alone explain the peculiar features of celestial journeys of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lucian’s tales, after all, had been available in Greek and Latin for many years before Francis Hicks translated them, and the earlier writers of moon voyages read both Greek and Latin. We must turn from literature to science if we will understand the real reason for the emergence of what seems to me quite a different literary genre from that which we find in the old tales we have so far considered. I am sure that the cosmic voyagers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, could they know it, would have smiled as did I when I recently found in one of our modern standard encyclopedias this description of the nineteenth-century Jules Verne: “French romancer, who first exploited the possibilities of science as material for adventure tales”! Nonsense! Science was the inevitable stuff of poetry and prose for my early cosmic voyagers, who seized avidly upon each new discovery and promptly and ingeniously adapted it to the old literary frame­ work. Kepler, Godwin, Cyrano, did not forget their literary heritage whether in Plato, Lucian, Cicero, Plutarch, or in Pantagruel and Don Quixote. But in the discoveries of the

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contemporary “new philosophy” they found materials to inflame their imaginations even more than had literary traditions. If I am to show you why early cosmic voyagers reached the moon in ways never suggested by their predecessors, why some of them were able to construct flying chariots as ingenious as any­ thing proposed by their scientific colleagues, and invent arti­ ficial wings as plausible as those upon which a Frenchman actually flew in 1678, I must turn back to the science of their period. You might legitimately expect me to begin with physics, so far as flying chariots are concerned, or with biology and anatomy, in order to explain artificial wings. But while these sciences were important, it was not physics or biology that proved the chief stimulus to aviation. The real source of a new literary genre, I believe, lay in the “new astronomy” of the early seventeenth century. Ill

To the generation of poets in the period immediately preced­ ing the invention of the telescope, “Luna” had been a delightful but usually poetical or fantastic theme. The moon was the dwelling place of the moon-goddess in any one of her many phases. From the moon the goddess might descend to mortals, or on occasion lift mortals up to her sphere. But the moon of Lyly’s Endiniion or Drayton’s Quest of Cynthia was less a world inhabited by mortal men and women than a mere setting for “fayre Cynthia.” Long after the semiscientific moon journey became popular in England, older attitudes continued to per­ sist, particularly in masque and poetry. Endymion still pined for his lady; Diana shed her silver light from a smooth, lustrous orb; Cynthia was implored to check “her dragon oak, Gently o’er th’ accustomed oak.” Yet even in the midst of convention, there was often an awareness of the new moon that Galileo beheld through his “optick tube.” Early in 1610 appeared the Sidereus Nuncius, the “Starry Messenger,” in which Galileo, the “man who saw through heaven,” excitedly described the new heavens and the new earths which he had been the first to observe through the telescope.

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Only six years earlier, when Galileo had been lecturing at Padua as professor of mathematics, the appearance of the nova or “new star” of 1604 had startled orthodoxy, for as John Donne said, a new star Whose motion with the firmament agrees Is miracle, for there no new things are. Had not Aristotle taught, and had not the Fathers believed, that the heavens were immutable and incorruptible? “Change and decay in all around I see,” but change and decay, in the minds of our ancestors, had been limited to the earth or at least to that part of nature lying beneath the orb of the moon. The starry heavens were eternal, the work of God’s fingers; the heavens declared the glory of God and the firmament showed forth his handiwork. The stars had been counted by men as the hairs of man’s head or the swallows’ feathers were numbered by God. If a new star appeared, it was either miracle—as was the star that shone at the birth of Christ—or dire warning of God’s anger and an omen of punishment. In 1604 Galileo had given public lectures at his university in favor of the belief of Kepler and of his master Tycho before him, that the “strange visitants” in the heavens which had appeared in 1572 and again in 1604 were actually new stars. Suddenly, almost overnight, through his “optick tube” Galileo observed myriads of stars never before seen by mortal eyes. He discovered, too, the explanation for many other celestial phenomena. For generations poets and philosophers had de­ bated the nature of that Milky Way, Milton’s “broad and ample road” whose dust is gold, And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear Seen in the galaxy, that milky way Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest, Powdered with stars.

The radiance of the Milky Way, Galileo declared in the Sidereus Nuncius, was caused by stars innumerable, stars too small to be seen by human eye. Galileo thought he had discovered also

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—and this seemed to him his major discovery—four new planets. While later observation proved that these were not planets but rather satellites of Jupiter, the deed was done; men’s minds had been stirred by the possibility that there might be planets hitherto unseen by men, and as Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador to Venice wrote, Galileo’s discovery bade fair to put an end not only to old astronomy, but—more important for most men—to still older astrology. For if there were four planets man had never known, how could astrologers foretell the conjunctions and anticipate the effect of planetary influ­ ences upon human beings ? For our purposes, however, another of Galileo’s observations was the most important. “It is a most beautiful and delightful sight,” he wrote, “to behold the body of the Moon.” “Beautiful and delightful” to Galileo, perhaps, with his scientific mind, but how would the new moon seem to poets who had so long sung the charm of Diana’s smooth and lustrous orb? “The Moon,” wrote Galileo, “certainly does not possess a smooth and polished surface, but one rough and uneven, and just like the face of the Earth itself, is everywhere full of vast pro­ tuberances, deep chasms, and sinuosities.” To be sure, there was nothing so startling here as in the discovery of the sup­ posed new planets, for, as we have seen, earlier thinkers had conjectured such lunar topography. Indeed, there was logically no great difference between Plutarch’s description of the moon and Galileo’s. Nevertheless the moon passage in the Sidereus Nuncius marked an epoch in human experience. The telescope had proved what logic could only surmise. Galileo’s simple in­ strument put an end to a long period of conjecture. Lucian had fancied a world in the’ moon; Plutarch and Cicero had pre­ supposed it by logic. But Galileo saw it with his eyes. The “great or ancient spots” on the moon man had always seen; from them had grown those legends of the man in the moon, the man and woman in the moon, animals in the moon that are found in primitive literatures. But Galileo’s glass had shown “other spots smaller in size, but so thickly scattered that they sprinkle the whole surface of the Moon.” From his observation Galileo concluded that the surface of the moon,

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25

like that of the earth, “is everywhere varied by lofty mountains and deep valleys.” In his early work, Galileo believed that some of these spots might indicate the presence on the moon of seas and lakes, and while he later denied such possibility, laymen remembered his first statement and conveniently forgot his denial, so that the popular belief was that expressed by Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy: “They find by their glasses that Maculae in facie Lunae, ‘the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea,’ which Thales, Plutarch, and Pythagoras also taught; and manifestly discern hills and dales, and such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo’s observations.” As time went on and the excitement, amazement, even shock of Galileo’s early discoveries settled into familiarity, the satirists began to have their fun about the spots in the once perfect moon. Samuel Butler’s “virtuosi” debated

Whether the Moon be Sea, or Land, Or Charcoal, or a quenched Firebrand; Or if the dark Holes that appear, Are only Pores, not Cities there. Swift in his “Progress of Beauty” could draw a comparison “ ’twixt earthly females and the Moon” :

When first Diana leaves her bed, Vapours and steams her looks disgrace, A frowzy dirty-colour’d red Sits on her cloudy wrinkled face: But by degrees when mounted high, Her artificial face appears, Down from her window in the sky, Her spots are gone, her visage clears.

Yet all the other satirists agreed with Butler that “none but Sots, Would put the Moon out for her Spots.” In the earlier period there was little satire. Galileo’s dis­ coveries made rather for enchantment and romance. Even though the new realistic language used to describe the moon

26

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

was sometimes cumbersome, even grotesque, there was more to stir emotion than laughter in these new discoveries. There was a grandeur in the lunar hills which bore such names of past glory as “Sinai,” “Taurus,” Maeostis Palus.” On the moon, as Fontenelle’s Philosopher taught his Lady, “there is a prom­ ontory of dreams, a sea of tears, a sea of nectar.” The lunar maps and celestial globes of the day were as enthralling to imagination as maps of this world had been to the preceding generation which had explored the earth. Upon the popular moon maps of the day we find old legends coming back with double meaning: Dixerto d exabit ado per caldo—a desert unin­ habitable because of heat; we discover a suggestion that a mare of the moon is indeed oceanus filiis Ade icognitus, an ocean unknown to the sons of Adam. “Not only on the fascinating fringes of early maps,” as Mr. Lowes says, “but universally, the advancing territory of the known is rimmed and bounded by a dubious borderland in which the unfamiliar and the strange hold momentous sway.” Of all the ideas propounded by Galileo, none was so enthralling to lay imagination as that there was a world in the moon, and a world possibly inhabited by mortals.

IV Have we not lately in the moon, Found a new world, to th’ old unknown ? Discovered seas and lands Columbus And Magellan could never compass ? Made mountains with our tubes appear, And cattle grazing on them there ?

So Samuel Butler. According to the half-serious, half-jesting “Ballad of Gresham Colledge,” the first observations reported by the Royal Society were on the new world in the moon: ’Twas broach’t at first but to make myrth There was another world i’ the Moone: The Colledge proves that Globe an Earth And Made ’t as playne as day at Noone. Nay, in a glasse of Fiftie Foot They shew us Rivers and Trees to boot.

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27

“But who shall dwell in those vast bodies, earths, worlds, if they be inhabited?” pondered the curious mind of the Anat­ omist of Melancholy. “ ‘Rational creatures?’ as Kepler demands, ‘or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of creation ?’ ” The idea of an inhabited moon-world was not new. Indeed, as Butler was quick to say to his “modern” generation, “Anaxa­ goras long agone Saw hills as well as you i’ the moon.” The theme had emerged in classical thinking, if we may trust tradi­ tion, as early as the poet Orpheus, one of whose fragments con­ cerned the mountains and cities in the moon. Among seven­ teenth-century writers, we find the idea attributed in turn to Heraclitus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Macrobius, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans generally. Revived by Nicolaus of Cusa and later by Bruno, the old philosophical theory received new stimulus from Galileo’s observation of the moon, even though Galileo himself denied the possibility of its habitability. How­ ever—fortunately for the romancers, who liked their tales to be at least plausible—Galileo refused to commit himself on the possibility of life on the planets, writing to Prince Cesi on January 25, 1613: “If the question be put to me I will answer neither yes nor no.” Opposed by many Aristotelians and of course by many orthodox churchmen, the idea of the possible habitability of the moon was defended by stanch adherents of the new astron­ omy. Campanella, more interested than was the earlier Galileo in philosophical implications, at once proclaimed his belief in dwellers in both moon and planets. His excitement showed in a letter written to Galileo in 1611, in which Campanella read new meaning into a familiar Biblical verse, “And I saw a new Heaven and a new earth.” In the same letter he raised ques­ tions about the planetae habitores and habitores in astris—are they of the blest or are they perhaps mortals like ourselves? Kepler too was greatly interested in the implications of Galileo’s observations. Even before the publication of the Sidereus Nuncius, he had expressed his belief that other bodies, like the earth, were inhabited, indicating his agreement on the subject

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

with Tycho and Bruno. In the Preface to his Dioptrics, written in 1611 shortly after Galileo’s announcement, he wrote: “May not some creatures less noble than man be imagined such as might inhabit these tracts?” Men of letters were not less interested in the new tidings than were philosophers and scientists. Ben Jonson’s Love Freed from Folly and Ignorance was presented on February 3, 1611, only a few months after news of the Sidereus Nuncius first reached England. The cryptic dialogue between Love and the Sphynx reflected the new idea:

Sphynx : I say: you first must cast about To find a world the world without. Love : I say, that is already done, And is the new world in the moon. Sphynx : Cupid, you do cast too far; This world is nearer by a star: So much light I give you to’t. Love : Without a glass ? well, I shall do’t.

A decade later Jonson dealt with the theme more extensively in News from the New World Discovered in the Moon, and returned to it again in The Staple of Nezvs, both plays in their different ways satires upon current methods of “news-monger­ ing.” When in The Staple of News, Pennyboy urged Cymbal to let the princess hear some news, Any, any kind So it be news, the newest that thou hast, Some news of state for a princess,

Thomas, second clerk of the office, reported that the King of Spain had been chosen Pope and Spinola made general of the Jesuits, at which Fitton commented: Witness the engine they have presented him, To wind himself with up into the moon, And thence make all his discoveries! Jonson’s most extensive treatment of the theme, however, occurred in News from the New World. When the Heralds, pre­

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tending to have discovered a new method of collecting news, suggested that their information came from the moon “by moonshine,” the Printer, not to be outdone in familiarity with telescopic discovery, declared:

Oh, by a trunk! I know it, a thing no bigger than a flute-case: a neighbor of mine, a spectacle-maker, has drawn the moon through it at the bore of a whistle, and made it as great as a drum-head twenty times, and brought it within the length of this room to me, I know not how often.

But the Chronicler, equally versed in all that was sophisticated in the way of news, declared that the telescope had ceased to be a novelty. “Your perplexive glasses,” he says, “are common.” As the dialogue continues, one character interrupting another in order to be the first to report current gossip, we hear of “a new world. . . . And new creatures in the moon. ... In the orb of the moon, which is now found to be an earth inhabited . . . with navigable seas and rivers. . . . Variety of nations, policies, laws.” There is humorous discussion of an idea that never ceased to amuse the century, “whether there are inns and taverns there.” Finally, with malicious wit, Jonson suggested that “the brethren of the rosie Cross have their college within a mile of the moon: a castle in the air.” Indeed, one of the great conveniences of the new moon-world, so far as the satirists were concerned, was that it offered the British a place to which they might banish disturbers of the peace of the realm. Of all the many themes—serious or satiric—that entered into literature at this time, none is more amusing than the belief that, with true British imperialism, England might still further extend her empire and that the new world would become a British colony! The original suggestion of lunar colonization was not British but German. John Wilkins, later Cromwell’s brother-in-law and an important English scientist with whom we shall become better acquainted, picked it up in his Discovery of a New World in the Moon in 1638, when he wrote:

It is the opinion of Keplar, that as soon as the art of flying is found out, some of their nation will make one of the first colonies

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

that shall transplant into that other world. I suppose his appro­ priating this preheminence to his own countrymen, may arise from an over-partial affection to them. But yet thus far I agree with him, that whenever that art is invented, or any other, whereby a man may be conveyed some twenty miles high, or thereabouts, then it is not altogether improbable that some other may be success­ ful in this attempt.

John Bull thrust out his chin. Let the German beware, with his “over-partial affection” to his country! Here was a new world to be colonized, and who but Britain was to claim it? You and I laugh, but I am quite convinced that great stimulus to what we call “aviation” came about in the seventeenth cen­ tury because of this very belief that the first nation to dis­ cover the principle of flight would be the first to plant its flag on the moon—and even on the planets. One country jeal­ ously watched the aeronautical progress of another. I suspect that Oliver Cromwell said a few words in Wilkins’ ear—par­ ticularly after Wilkins married Cromwell’s sister—and Wilkins in turn spoke those words, first to the Philosophical Society of Oxford, later, after the death of his distinguished brother-inlaw, to the Royal Society. The government had changed, but the royalists had as much reason as the opposition for wishing to add to the British Empire the rich natural resources of the moon. Satire is often more indicative of trends of the time than is serious literature. Read for yourselves Samuel Butler’s “Ele­ phant in the Moon” in which he depicted a meeting of the virtuosi of the Royal Society who were peering at the moon for other reasons than those t>f “pure science” : A Learn’d Society of late, The glory of a foreign State, Agreed upon a Summer’s Night, To search the Moon by her own Light; To take an Invent’ry of all Her real Estate, and personall; And make an accurate Survey Of all her Lands, and how they lay,

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31

As true as that of Ireland, where The sly Surveyors stol a Shire; T’ observe her Country, how ’twas planted; With what sh’ abounded most, or wanted; And make the proper’st Observations, For settling of new Plantations, If the Society should incline T’ attempt so glorious a Design.

The “optick Tube” prepared, the learned men peered into its depths, each of these nationalists willing and eager to do his part toward furthering the great design:

And now the lofty Tube, the Scale With which they Heav’n itself assail, Was mounted full against the Moon; And all stood ready to fall on, Impatient who should have the Honour To plant an Ensign first upon her. What was the “good” of science, what the “use” of the Royal Society if these virtuosi who prided themselves on their con­ quest of nature could not find some means whereby the British might be the first to reach the moon ?

Have wee not Built a stately Colledge T’ instruct Four Nations in all knowledge (Who now are Barbarus and Rude) As soon as once they are subdu’de? But what or where these Nations are We know as little as they care Nor when the Busnes wilbe don Unless th’are Colonies i’ th’ Moon. In his “Astrology” Butler continued the satire : So some that passe for Deepe Astrologers Have made great Princes Presents of New-stars, As Virtuosos sillyly have don And giv’n away whole Hands in the Moon : Although not fortifyd so Regular, With Natrall Strength, as Castles in the Air.

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Perhaps Dryden was thinking more seriously of these new ideas when he wrote the familiar yet somehow mysterious lines in Annus Mirabilis, that memorial to years when England ex­ perienced the Great Plague and the Great Fire, and, as today, began to rise phoenix-like from the ashes. Surveying the dis­ coveries of the past at the end of that terrible yet wonderful year, he prophesied the future. Things long unknown and sought in vain Shall in this age to Britain first be shown, And hence be to admiring nations taught.

England would find—as Newton was soon to prove—the cause of “the ebb of tides and their mysterious flow.” Still more, the English would discover, as no one before, the nature of the cosmos: Then we upon our globe’s last voyage shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world securely pry.

Most important of all, through their discovery of strange routes of communication the English would “make one City of the Universe.” As our voyagers mount up into the ether, we shall hear more of the rivalry between nations, for the moon was to be claimed in turn by Spaniards, Italians, Dutch, and many others beside the British. Every time I have discovered another picture of the moon-world I have first looked eagerly to see which flag floats over its territory. Neither England nor Germany nor any other nation has yet succeeded in that early hope of moon colonization. But if ever a planet rocket is perfected or Major de Seversky’s space ship becomes as feasible as he thinks it plausible, this motif will return again to literature, as to politics and economics, and what once was satire or romance will be­ come a matter of profound national and international im­ portance.

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V “Two voices are there . . . each a mighty voice.” Through­ out the Century of Genius, which was also the Century of Revolutions, we are constantly aware of a dual strain: “Ne plus ultra,” lamented many of the “ancients” who looked back to the past. “Plus ultra,” replied the “moderns” who set their hopes on the future. At one time we are so conscious of melan­ choly, despondency, mutability, and decay that Burton’s title, An Anatomy of Melancholy, seems to set the tone of the earlier seventeenth century. At another time we respond to the grow­ ing belief in man’s potentialities, man’s ability to improve on nature, until Bacon’s New Atlantis, with its vision of a future world in which science has been turned to “the benefit and use of man” seems the most characteristic work of that same period. Because the voice of optimism will dominate our cosmic voyagers, it is well to remember the other strain. “For what should I presume so highe, Against the course of nature quite?” King Bladud’s words after his fall harked back in part to the old conception of Hybris, so common in classical legend and in tragedy, implied in the tale of Daedalus and Icarus. Proud man, aspiring to be a god, was punished by the gods for his audacity. In Christianity as in paganism there had always been a warn­ ing voice, urging moderation and restraint, cautioning man against excessive desire. The few tales of human flight that have come down to us from early Christian ages implied that any man who strove to fly was not of God’s party but of the devil’s. Simon Magus, magician and sorcerer, had learned the secret of flight, but his apparently successful attempt was brought to naught by the prayers of St. Peter. Christ on the pinnacle, tempted by Satan, made no attempt to invoke his supernatural power and fly to safety, but waited for the safe conduct of God’s angels. Man’s attempt to make himself a bird seemed to many Christians at best folly, at worst, blas­ phemy. These attitudes were reflected in Thomas Heywood’s Hierarchie of the blessed Angels, in one section of which—

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

under the caption, “Against vaine Curiosity”—Heywood dealt with the growing interest in the possibility of human flight:

They that wade so far Into these curiosities, but mar What they would seeme to make: What undevis’d Is left to us ? or what unenterpris’d ? Unlesse their braines they yet would stretch more hye, And practise how with Daedalus to flye? . . . Great is the confidence (I well might say Presumption) that these Bodies, Dust and Clay Ambitiously assume; who dare aspire After things Supernaturall to enquire ; Striving (if possible) themselves t’invest Even in the secrets of the Almighties brest. What madness is it for a heavy load Of putred Flesh, that onely hath aboad Here in the lower world, (deny’d by Nature) Or to adde to, or take off, from his stature ; Being debar’d all possible means to fly, Or mount himself betwixt the Earth or Sky ? Either like bold aspiring Phaeton, To aime at the bright Chariot of the Sun? Or with his waxen wings, as Icarus did, Attempt what God and Nature have forbid? What is this lesse, than when the Gyants strove To mutiny and menace war ’gainst Jove?

“What madness to attempt what God and Nature have forbid.” One group of men who seriously opposed the efforts of their contemporaries in the seventeenth century to solve the problem of human flight really believed that man was attempting some­ thing impossible in nature. Since we shall have reason to hear many replies to their arguments, we need not now consider them so curiously as we must consider those of others who sincerely believed that men who attempted to find means of human flight were deliberately setting themselves in opposition to a fiat of deity. It was a surprise to find this attitude fairly often in England. On the Continent, as everyone knows, the new science was

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35

often opposed by the Church, sometimes specifically when works we now consider of utmost importance in the history of science were placed on the Index, sometimes because of theological preconceptions that lay deep at the heart of Catholi­ cism. But in the freer island, England, we do not expect so much theological opposition to man’s attempts at flight. I con­ fess that it was a complete surprise to me, after I had discovered such opposition, to learn that behind one group of men who vehemently opposed this most novel of all “modern” ideas hovered the austere shadow of John Calvin! Let me say at once that I have not found any evidence that Calvin himself ever read his theological dogmas over into aviation; yet some of his followers did, with the result that among more orthodox Calvinists, there developed grave suspicion of scientists who devoted so much attention to this popular theme. The most complete discussion of the matter I have found is in the works of a famous Spanish scholar, Juan Caramuel, a Cistercian monk of Polish origin, born in Madrid, ambassador of Philip IV to the Court of Ferdinand, later Bishop of Benjaven, but for our purposes more important because for a time he lived in the British Isles as Abbot of Melrose in Scotland. Caramuel was a scientist as well as a priest and a diplomat. Among his works is a lengthy and important one on aviation, the Nautica Aetherea, in which he discussed all the aeronautical problems known to his generation. Here he considered in turn various arguments, scientific and theological, which he must disprove if he were to establish his own thesis that man can and will fly. At once Caramuel introduced Calvin as the villain of his piece, the most important enemy of “modern” belief in man’s potentialities. In the Institutes, Calvin, following one group of the Church Fathers rather than another, had declared himself for a certain doctrine of the nature and power of God, which again and again in the period of scholastic philosophy had torn sects asunder. Impossible dicitur, quod numquam fuit, aut futurum est. “That which never was nor will be, is im­ possible.” All this may sound to a modern, impatient reader even more absurd than those old arguments about how many angels can stand on the point of a needle—as if angels were

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

ever really interested in such avocation 1 But this was more than logic or rhetoric when Calvin wrote and Caramuel replied. Each in his way was attempting—as were the Fathers before them —to reach a conclusion on a problem which must always engage the thoughtful attention of any man who believes that there is a God : are there any limits to God’s power ? Can God do what­ ever God will do? If he can, how explain the fact that God seems to move in such “mysterious ways his wonders to per­ form”? To Calvin, who followed one stream of thought on this essential subject, the answer was categorical: not even God can make a bird of man, as God could not—in the old scholastic terminology—make a square a circle. Humanity and flight are contradictory terms; to consider them other is to confuse the essences, or as Milton’s Adam realized in another human dilemma, to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself Impossible is held, as argument Of weakness, not of power.

Caramuel picked up Calvin’s general thesis and promptly applied it to aviation. “An ancient heresy,” he declared, had refused to recognize absolute power in God. Since God did not give man wings, Calvin concluded that God could not give man wings. It is therefore impious of man to attempt to do for himself what God could not and did not do for him. But to Caramuel, who had tasted of another dispensation, such an assertion seemed nothing short of blasphemy. If God did not give man wings, -it is not because he could not. In his wisdom—and Caramuel here, like many theologians, was bal­ ancing the wisdom or reason of God against his will or power —he deliberately withheld from man the gift of flight, because he foresaw consequences to man that would follow that gift What was his reason for limiting man’s scope to the earth rather than to the air or the water? Probably, says Caramuel, God denied wings to man because he foreknew that wings would bring man into still more dangers than he now encounters. Caramuel’s is an unconscious pessimism, as old as that of

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Jehovah of the Old Testament, as modern as that of “De Lawd” of Green Pastures. God foreknew that man would abuse his gift of wings, and so he withheld that gift. Yet in spite of God—it almost seems as if Caramuel had used this phrase— the ingenuity and industry of man have supplied what God denied. God did not give man the scales and tail of a fish so that he might swim in water, yet man has conquered the water. Not only can he swim like a fish, but he has invented ships to sail the seas. Why, then, believe that man will not learn to fly? Even though he has no feathers—as he has no scales and tail—in time he will swim in air as he now swims in water, and as his ships today sail over oceans to discover new coun­ tries, so in time, through human ingenuity, his flying ships will sail through the air to discover still more distant lands and worlds. Be the consequences what they may, Caramuel seems to say, human ingenuity and skill will prevail—even, it would seem, over the wisdom and foreknowledge of God. And so Caramuel, a priest of the Church, a Cistercian monk, seems to prophesy in his Latin work man’s ultimate conquest of the air—in spite of God! “Old familiar far-off things, and battles long ago”—these theological controversies of our fathers in a period when men divided themselves into passionate camps on questions of theology as we now divide on economic, social, political, inter­ national problems. Yet if we are to understand the past that has made our present what it is, we must not forget that in the seventeenth century these were not dead issues, not mere academic or rhetorical questions. Whether or not John Calvin ever paused to consider the problem of human flight, some of his followers believed he did—and his shadow continued to cast its gloom upon their pessimistic pages. The more characteristic voice of the seventeenth century in regard to aviation will, however, prove to be the voice of an optimism much more familiar and sympathetic to us than these echoes of long-forgotten theological controversies. “It is the opinion of Keplar”—we have already heard those words—“that as soon as the art of flying is found out, some of their nation will make one of the first colonies that shall transplant into

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that other world.” We have not yet colonized the moon, though scientists among us are at work on moon rockets and space ships. We can appreciate sympathetically the enthusiasm of one of my earliest heroes who believed himself the first man to have solved the problem of human flight: “I hold it farre more honour to have been the first flying man, than to bee another Neptune that first adventured to sayle upon the Sea.” For a time, as we take off into the empyrean, we shall forget the voices of those who protested man’s attempt to improve upon nature, man’s blasphemy in opposing God. Most of our earlier voyagers will be optimists, exulting in man’s power to command nature, feeling only the “benefit and use to man” of the conquest of the air. “We are the Moderns !” It is our slogan as it was the watchword of the first flying men of the seven­ teenth century who in imagination if not in reality winged their way into realms of space. Yet, later in the century, even in the midst of optimism and exultation, we shall again catch the note of warning and of dread. Sometimes that other voice will prove, like the radar answer from the moon, “not a very tuneful echo,” but nevertheless an echo of the age-old warn­ ing of paganism to man against pride and Hybris. Sometimes it will be rather a refrain of Christianity, warning man that had God intended him to fly he would have given him wings. “Two voices are there . . . each a mighty voice.” We need not go back to the seventeenth century to hear them. “We are the Moderns”—who have accomplished wonders and miracles through science. The voice of moderns who have dinner in San Francisco and breakfast in New York, who casually fly from New York to London or Paris in less time than it probably took Columbus to get all sails set, is the voice of optimism. But even in our modern symphony, the other motif thrusts itself in. Twice within a fortnight—I am writing this in October 1946—great planes which took off on routine trips from Europe have crashed in the wilds of Newfoundland, and men and women we knew have been buried—ironically with funeral serv­ ices conducted from the air—in outposts of civilization as wild and remote and strange as ever was the frozen north

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39

to our ancestors. * At least for a moment we too have experi­ enced the dread and terror and protest of our forefathers. “We are the Moderns”—who won the War in the Air, and who used the majestic powers of science to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the most fearful catastrophe that ever befell human beings. Surely, pondered Francesco Lana, the Italian who in the seventeenth century came closer to a solution of the principle of human flight than had anyone in hundreds of years, God would never allow a flying machine to be successful, “since it would create many disturbances in the civil and political govern­ ments of mankind.” “We are the Moderns”—who have proved, as our forefathers only surmised, that nothing in the laws of nature prohibits man from becoming a bird. But what of the judgment of God, who today is an even more mysterious and unknown quantity than He seemed in the seventeenth century? “Two voices are there . . . each a mighty voice.” * By a tragic irony, I delivered this particular lecture at the University of Toronto on the afternoon of January 27, 1947. The newspapers, which I saw for the first time that day when I was going to the lecture hall, carried news of the deaths of Gustav Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden, and of Grace Moore, the American soprano, with many others, the night before.

CHAPTER

TWO

Supernatural Voyages r D dfHERE are but three ways of going thither,” said a Herald I in Ben Jonson’s News from the New World. “One is JL Endymion’s way, by rapture in sleep, or a dream. The other Menippus’s way, by wing, which the poet took. The third, old Empedocles’s way; who, when he leapt into Aetna, having a dry sear body, and light, the smoke took him, and whift him up into the moon.” Jonson harked back to old legend and tradition, but John Wilkins, who in 1638 published his Dis­ covery of a New World in the Moon, looked forward to a scientific future much more than back to a literary past. “There are,” he declared, “four several ways whereby this flying in the air hath been, or may be attempted. Two of them by the strength of other things, and two of them by our own strength. 1. By spirits, or angels. 2. By the help of fowls. 3. By wings fastened immediately to the body. 4. By a flying chariot.” Scientist though he was, Wilkins was still enough a son of Jonson’s age to include the supernatural among his means of flight, though it was of less interest to him than the other methods he discussed and, indeed, he implied that the growing scientific temper of his age would in time render this old idea obsolete. So it was to prove. Yet belief in the supernatural was part and parcel of the thought of an age in which men like Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, Sir Thomas Browne, ardently upheld the possibility of witches’ flight, when spirits and angels seemed closer to man than ever since. Even the scientific Wilkins went back to Scripture for “authority” before he turned his eyes to the future. “We read of divers that have passed swiftly in the air, by the help of spirits and angels; whether good angels, as Elias was carried unto heaven in a fiery chariot, as Philip was conveyed to Azotus, and Habakkuk from Jewry to Babylon, and back again imme­ diately; or by evil angels, as our Saviour was carried by the devil to the top of a high mountain, and to the pinnacle of the temple.” He remembered also popular belief and supersti40

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tion: “Thus witches are commonly related to pass unto their usual meetings, in some remote place; and, as they do sell winds unto mariners, so likewise are they sometimes hired to carry men speedily through the open air.” It is characteristic of the seventeenth century that the modern cosmic voyage should have been established by a tale of flight by means of supernatural spirits. It is equally characteristic of that Age of Genius that even the most supernatural voyage was touched and changed by the alchemy of science, and that as the century advanced, this old device, so long cherished, almost completely disappeared under the impact of the grow­ ing scientific temper of the time.

I

Ironically enough, the best of all supernatural voyages to the moon was written by a great scientist. Kepler’s S omnium marks at once the end and the beginning of an era. No important later voyage will employ so fully the supernatural, yet none will be more truly “scientific” than that “Dream,” which was the fons et origo of the new genre, a chief source of cosmic voyages for three centuries. Just when Kepler began to write his one piece of fiction, we cannot tell, for the libellum, as he called it, is charged with mystery, as it was surcharged with tragedy. “Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark,” it brought calamity to Kepler and his family. Scientist though he was, Kepler was still living in an age of superstition, so that he feared to publish the work during his lifetime, because his mother was con­ demned and except for the valiant efforts of her son would have been executed as a witch. A curse seemed to hover over the pages of that manuscript, for the son-in-law to whom Kepler entrusted it died suddenly while he was preparing it for publica­ tion, and the S omnium appeared from the press only in 1634 when Kepler had been dead for four years. Well before that time, however, the manuscript had found readers, as we shall see. Like so many imaginary voyages before and after, the

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S omnium was cast in the form of a dream. The author tells us that in the year 1608, when discord was raging between the brothers Prince Rudolf and Archduke Matthias, he became interested in Bohemian legends, particularly those concerning the Libyan virago, celebrated in the art of magic. One evening after a period of such reading and of contemplation of the night skies, he fell into a deep slumber and seemed to be reading another book. The tale within a tale has to do with the for­ tunes of a young man named Duracotus, a native of Islandia, “which the ancients call Thule.” He was the son of remarkable parents. He did not remember his father, a fisherman, who had died at the ripe age of 150 when his son was still an infant. His mother, Fiolxhilda, was a “wise woman,” who supported herself by selling mariners little bags of herbs containing mysterious charms. Unfortunately Fiolxhilda was a woman of ungovernable temper; upon one occasion when her young son pried too curiously into one of the bags, she impulsively gave the boy to a sea captain in place of the little sack which he had destroyed, in order that she might retain the money. For a time the mother disappears from the tale and we follow the fortunes of the son, whom Kepler portrays with sympathy. We accompany him on a voyage between Norway and England and arrive with him at last in Denmark. Violently ill from the rough sea, the youth proved of little use to the captain, who was glad of an opportunity to rid himself of an incubus. Since the captain was carrying letters to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, on his island, he dispatched the boy as messenger, promising to return for him later. For some time Duracotus remained with the great astronomer, who saw so much promise in him that when the captain at last returned, he refused to send the youth home. So Duracotus remained, learning the lore of astronomy, “the most divine of sciences.” After five years Duracotus returned home, happy to find his mother still alive, having often repented the fit of temper in which she had sent away her son. To his surprise, the youth discovered that his mother was indeed a wise woman, as wise as Tycho Brahe in the lore of the skies. In some way Fiolxhilda had learned by experience all that Tycho had surmised in theory.

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After a period of hesitation, she was finally persuaded to con­ fide to her son the source of her knowledge. Thus Duracotus learned that his mother was in league with the “daemons of Levania,” the spirits of the moon, whom she could summon on occasion and with whom chosen mortals might voyage to the distant world. Upon a certain evening Duracotus at last achieved his desire. The time was spring, the moon was crescent and joined with the planet Saturn in the sign of Taurus; the omens were auspicious. “My mother, withdrawing from me into the nearest cross-roads, and uttering a few words loudly . . . returned, and, commanding silence with the palm of her right hand outstretched, sat down near me. Scarcely had we covered our heads with a cloth (as is the custom) than behold, there came the sound of a voice. . . So ends the first section of the Somnium. In spite of the language of legend and superstition, this part of the tale is clearly based upon Kepler’s own life, the allusions so thinly veiled that they were readily recognizable, as Kepler learned to his sorrow. The parallel is not exact, for Kepler’s own father, “ignoble scion of the noble family of Kepler ... a mercenary of the notorious Duke of Alva,” lived only too long after his son’s birth. More than once he deserted his wife and children, so that Johann Kepler grew up in a poverty not far different from that he describes in the tale. Kepler’s mother, however, was well depicted in Fiolxhilda. Almost illiterate, much beneath her husband in birth, she was nevertheless a woman of remarkable attainments, a wise woman in the better sense of the word. She was also, like Fiolxhilda, a woman of ungov­ ernable temper, constantly quarreling with her neighbors, who did not forget when time came for retribution. The early life of Duracotus differed from that of his creator, since Kepler himself finally managed to secure a conventional education, including training in theology at Tubingen, where he came under the influence of Michael Maestlin and learned the revolu­ tionary theories of Copernicus, from which he never departed. As Duracotus was apprenticed for five years to Tycho Brahe on Uraniborg, the island on which the Danish astronomer had established his “castle of the heavens,” Kepler too became

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Tycho’s assistant. As in the tale so in reality Tycho and Kepler worked together for some years, and at Tycho’s death in 1601, Kepler fell heir to the rich collection of papers and notes in which Tycho left many of his findings to posterity. The parallelisms, then, while not exact, were obviously in­ tentional. Kepler was telling a veiled story of his own life. For our purposes, only one later biographical detail is necessary. It was in 1615—after the first version of the tale had circu­ lated for some time in manuscript—that Kepler’s mother was charged with sorcery and came near to condemnation. Her son put aside everything else and worked heroically to free her. He was finally successful after a lawsuit which lasted for five years, during part of which his mother was in prison under ignominious circumstances. Shortly after her release she died. If Kepler had intended to publish the S omnium, any such idea was now out of the question. One of his most cryptic notes, in which long bitterness may be read in every line, implies the reason. “You, my friends,” he writes, “who are familiar with my affairs and understand the reason for my late journey into Swabia”—a reference to his journey made when attempting to free his mother—“you will understand that this little book, that those happenings, were of evil omen to me and mine. . . . There is a deep foreboding of death in the infliction of a deadly wound, in the drinking of poison; and there seems to have been no less of private tragedy in the circulation of this work.” Kepler suggests that gossip had passed from one to another in the “tonstrinae,” those early hotbeds of gossip, predecessors of the coffeehouse. “Now is it not only too probable that in the barbers’ shops—especially those where my name is in bad repute because of the occupation of my Fiolxhilda—there was gossip about this story of mine? No doubt at all that from that same city and house, lying tittle-tattle came forth about me in the years that followed, and that those whispers, har­ boured by stupid minds, and fanned by ignorance and super­ stition, blazed out at last into scandal.” The similarities between Duracotus and Johann Kepler—and particularly the similarities between Frau Kepler and Fiolxhilda—had been too apt. Had not Kepler in his manuscript work described his own mother

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as a “wise woman”; had he not declared that she was in league with the daemons ? The spark was burning, and the circulation of the Somnium fanned that spark into a fire that almost con­ sumed both Kepler and his mother. So much for the first part of the Somnium with its tragic reminiscences of Kepler’s own life. We have so far been con­ scious of Kepler, heir to the superstitions of the past. In the second part of the tale we remember rather Kepler the scientist, even though his device for human flight harks past to an age of superstition rather than forward to the era of mechanical flight. Duracotus learned from the “Daemon ex Levania,” who came at Fiolxhilda’s summons, that mortals may reach the moon only by supernatural means: they must be carried there by daemons. In his description of human flight, Kepler used the literary device of Torralba. The mortal was given an anesthetic, a “dozing draught,” so that he remembered little. Yet this was not a mere convenient literary device with Kepler, as it had been with the earlier writer. Kepler was not attempt­ ing to get out of difficulties. As his extensive notes show, he was considering, more profoundly than anyone hitherto, the probable effect of gravity upon the body of man as he left the “attractive power” of the earth. Indeed, some of Kepler’s im­ portant theories of gravitation are to be found in the Somnium in passages and notes which have seldom been noticed by the historians of science. As scientist, Kepler considered, too, the effect of rarefied air upon human beings; his daemons must take care to guard against the “prohibited respiration” of mortals, “by sponges moistened and applied to the nostrils.” Once the voyager had risen above the region of the middle air, ascended into the upper air, and finally passed the “orb of virtue” of the earth, he would discover an intervening district in which “conveyance became easier” and the daemons need no longer, as at first, use force upon their passenger. The voyage in the Somnium is a mixture of fantasy and realism; but when the Daemon describes the moon, fantasy ceases. We find ourselves not in Utopia or Arcadia but in the telescopic moon. Our guide is now no romancer but a scientist.

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In this respect Kepler’s Somnium differs markedly from many cosmic voyages. Nonscientific writers spent their originality chiefly upon inventing ingenious means for getting to the moon and on descriptions of the voyage. Their moon-worlds often prove conventional Utopias or mere convenient vehicles for satire on political and social customs in this world. Kepler, on the other hand, bent his efforts to describing the moon-world as Plutarch had presupposed it, as the telescope had shown it. Kepler’s lunar world is as strange to us as the moon seemed to Galileo. Seasons, length of day and night, climate, all are quite different from those on earth. Levania is divided into two zones, “Subvolva” and “Privolva,” the first of which enjoys its “Volva” in place of our moon. In Privolva “night is 15 or 16 days long, and dreadful with uninterrupted shadow.” In this zone the sun never shines; everything is rigid with cold. In Subvolva, the climate is somewhat less intolerable, thanks to Volva. But throughout the whole of Levania we find extremes to which ours are nothing, cold more intense, heat more parch­ ing than at our poles or equator. Topographically, the world of the moon is much like ours, save that everything is on an exaggerated scale, the mountains soaring to incredible heights, the fissures and valleys more profound than any terrestrial canyon. Life that exists on the moon—for Kepler continued to posit the possibility of life, in spite of Galileo—is in no way like ours. Kepler was too good a scientist not to realize the effect of climate and environment. In Subvolva whatever is born is of monstrous size; the life span of creatures and plants is brief, since they are often born to die in a single day, springing up to prodigious size while they exist. In Kepler’s moon we find no men and women, but creatures that share a “serpentine nature,” though some are winged, some crawl, some swim in water. Civilization as we understand it cannot exist. These crea­ tures build no towns, establish no governments. Nomadic beings, they appear for a short time in the heat of the sun, like lizards basking in tremendous warmth, then disappear either into the sea or into the caverns and fissures nature has designed for their protection. Gigantic race of briefly living creatures, they

WANTON WINGS

1. Daedalus and Icarus, from F. Riederer, Spiegel dor Waren Rhetoric, 1493. 2. A Glum’s “Aquaplane,” from The Romance of Peter Wilkins

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seem to a modern reader memories of an antediluvian world, lunar pterodactyls or ichthyosauri, as for a moment basking in fierce sunshine, then creeping into darkness or flying upon prehistoric wing, they disappear forever from the light of Volva, creatures of only a day. The S omnium is a dream, but it is a dream with nightmare touches. From this vision of monstrous and grotesque creatures which man is glad he never knew, we willingly awake, to find that the strange book was only part of a dream. Duracotus, Fiolxhilda, daemons and lunar monsters left behind, the author awoke “to find my head covered with a cushion, and my body tangled in a rug.” The S omnium is over. II Kepler transformed the old Lucianic literary tradition into the modern scientific moon voyage. The weight of his scientific pre-eminence caused his little fictional work to be taken with utmost seriousness by the learned, and his sense of mystery— part of the mysticism that marked all his work—appealed greatly to poets and writers of romance. The Somnium was familiar to all later writers of cosmic voyages during the seven­ teenth and eighteenth centuries. It was known to Jules Verne and to H. G. Wells, and, I believe, to our contemporary, C. S. Lewis. In the seventeenth century its themes were adapted again and again, seriously, satirically, poetically, fantastically. Samuel Butler had his fun with it, as with all the new ideas of his century. In “The Elephant in the Moon,” the “Virtuous learn’d Society . . . The Pride and Glory of a foreign State,” which had assembled to “make a geometrical Survey” of the lands in the moon for the purpose of “settling and erecting new Plantations,” was simply following Kepler’s suggestion: A Task in vain, unless the German Kepler Had found out a Discovery to people her, And stock her Country with Inhabitants Of military Men, and Elephants,

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For th’ Ancients only took her for a Piece Of red-hot Iron, as big as Peloponese, Till he appeared; for which, some write, she sent Upon his Tribe as Strange a Punishment. When the virtuosi first beheld elephants in the moon, they felt no surprise, for they were familiar with Kepler’s theories of the fantastic size and appearance of lunar creatures:

And, if the Moon can but produce by Nature A People of so large, and vast a Stature, ’Tis more than probable, she should bring forth A greater breed of Beasts, too, than the Earth.

Like many laymen, members of the “Virtuous learn’d Society” were entirely capable of seeing in the telescope what “authority” taught them to look for. Naturally they observed the customs of Kepler’s Privolvans and Subvolvans : Th’ inhabitants of the Moon Who, when the Sun shines hot at Noon, Do live in Cellars underground Of eight miles deep, and eighty round, (In which at once they fortify Against the Sun and th’ Enemy) Which they count Towns and Cities there, Because their People’s civiler Than those rude Peasants, that are found To live upon the upper Ground, Call’d Privolvans, with whom they are Perpetually in open war.

Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, however, always in­ fluenced by Kepler’s mysticism and neo-Platonism, seriously adapted the ■ Keplerian moon-world (as his title) in his “Insomnium Philosophicum,” published among his minor poems in 1647. His body stretched upon his bed in what the world calls sleep, but the mystic knows as trance, his soul departed for the skies.

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Free as in open Heaven more swift then thought In endless spaces up and down I flie, Not carryed on wings, or as well taught To row with mine own arms in liquid skie. . . . But born on the actual efflux of my will,

he began a little cosmic voyage among the planets. Flying through space, he beheld strange phenomena in the heavens. First appeared “a mighty Orb right well compil’d And kned together of opacous mould.” Far off, as men count distance, was a “massie Orb of light,” from which illumination pro­ ceeded to the otherwise dark globe, which, like Kepler’s moon­ world, was a place of sharply contrasted dark and light: Half therefore just of this dark Orb was dight With goodly glistre and fair golden rayes, And ever half was hid in horrid night.

Mystically rather than scientifically, More adapted his topog­ raphy and his inhabitants to the light and dark of his “massie Sphaer.” The inhabitants of this strange ball, “Pangaion,” partake of the nature of their environment: those who dwell in light remain forever perfect, the rest are sons of darkness in nature as in fact: Th’ inhabitants of this big swollen sphear Were of two kinds, well answering unto The divers nature of each Hemisphaer. One foul, deform’d, and ghastly sad in show, The other fair, and full of lively mirth, These two possest this Universall Earth.

The influence of the S omnium, however, is to be found much earlier than in these slight versifications of Butler and More. If I am not mistaken, the first English borrowing from Kepler’s fantasy occurred long before the work was published, shortly after it had been written, in the pages of a writer more familiar to modern readers than either Butler or More. That mysterious note in which Kepler half told and half concealed the tragedy

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of his life, begins: “I suspect that the author of that impudent satire, The Conclave of Ignatius, had got hold of a copy of this little work, for he pricks me by name in the very begin­ ning. Further on, he brings poor Copernicus to the judgment seat of Pluto—if I don’t mistake, the approach to that is through the yawning chasms of Hecla.” Surely the reference here must be to the Conclave Ignatii, or “Ignatius his Conclave,” the most extensive prose satire written by the man who was still “Jack Donne” rather than Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s. The Conclave Ignatii in its Latin original was entered in the Stationers’ Register on January 24, 1611; the English translation appeared on May 18 of the same year. At this time Kepler’s Somnium was circulating in manuscript. How Donne came to see it I cannot tell, though elsewhere I have suggested various possible routes by which it might have fallen into his hands just at the moment he had finished the original version of “Ignatius his Conclave” and was about to depart for the continent. As originally conceived, Donne’s Ignatius followed quite another classical tradition than that of the cosmic voyage, a tradition also established by Lucian. It was a series of “dialogues of the dead,” conversations in Hell. The main body of the little work consisted of a satire on the Jesuits, but before turn­ ing his fire upon his chief villain, Ignatius, Donne introduced a group of “Innovators” of the period immediately preceding his own—Copernicus, Paracelsus, Machiavelli. While there are, of course, reflections of the new astronomy in the passages on Copernicus, they are only such as might have been written before Galileo looked through Heaven. But at the beginning’and again toward the end of the satire occur brief passages which show that even in 1610, Donne had become aware of the discoveries announced by Galileo in the Sidereus Nuncius and that he was also familiar with some of Kepler’s work. Avid for novelty as Donne had always been, it was quite natural that he should have seized upon this “newest” of all themes and attempted to fit it into his satire. The main body of the work was already written; Donne was about to set off for the continent on a long trip; the printer

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was waiting. Yet the artist could hardly treat Galileo in a “dialogue of the dead,” for Galileo was still inconveniently alive, and Donne could not know that not much later Galileo, too, was to be called a heretic and warrant a place with Coper­ nicus in his conversation in Hell. Because the moon voyage was a novelty, Donne, I believe, rapidly wrote a new introduction and added something in conclusion. He made brief use of the theme of Kepler’s celestial journey, and by so combining two old Lucianic genres gave his satire the uneven structure that has often puzzled critics. As printed, Ignatius begins not as a dialogue of the dead but as cosmic voyage: “I was in an Exstasie,” wrote Donne, and My little wandring sportful Soule, Ghest, and Companion of my body

had liberty to wander through all places, and to survey and reckon the roomes, and all the volumes of the heavens, and to comprehend the situation, the dimensions, the nature, the people, and the policy, both of the swimming Hands, the Planets, and of all those which are fixed in the firmament. Of which, I thinke it an honester part to be silent, than to do Galileo wrong, by speaking of it, who of late hath summoned the other worlds, the Stars, to come neerer to him, and give him an account of themselves. Or to Keppler, who (as himselfe testifies of himselfe) ever since Tycho Brahe’s death hath received it into his care, that no new thing should be done in heaven without his knowledge. Here is a suggestion of a cosmic voyage, a device completely neglected in the rest of the work until almost the end, when after the trial of Ignatius, Lucifer, at a loss what to do with him, conceives the idea of writing to the Bishop of Rome urging him to summon Galileo who by this time should have completed his observations on the moon and have developed still more powerful telescopes. “He may draw the Moone, like a boate floating upon the water, as neere the earth as he will.” Thither, to the new world in the moon, all the Jesuits shall be trans­ ferred. Here Ignatius may establish his own kingdom; here also, declares Donne, an apostate from the Roman Church, the

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Jesuits will make not only a new empire but a new Hell. “And with the same ease as you passe from the earth to the Moone, you may pass from the Moone to the other starrs, which are also thought to be worlds, and so may beget and propagate many Hells, and enlarge your Empire.” If I am right in my conjecture, then, Kepler’s “suspicion” that “the author of that impudent satire, the Conclave of Ignatius, had got hold of a copy of this little work” was quite justified. Ignatius had been known in England for more than two decades before Kepler’s Somnium appeared, yet I feel sure that Kepler’s unconscious influence lay behind it. Falling into the hands of the English poet and satirist, the first modern scientific moon voyage caught the imagination of John Donne, who suggested, though he did not completely produce, the first modern English cosmic voyage. * Ill I have often wondered whether Kepler’s haunting vision of the strange, fantastic, often horrible new world in the moon lingered in Milton’s mind when he described his third Hell. There are, of course, three quite different Hells in Paradise Lost, each a combination of many sources. Satan and his rebel angels fell into a “horrid vale” of fire and “mineral fury,” a volcanic region, in which, I have elsewhere suggested, Milton’s imagi­ nation combined with classical and mediaeval sources firsthand recollection of the volcanic region of the Phlegraean Fields near Naples. His second Hell was quite different. When that “fabric * Since it would lead me loo far from the theme of the cosmic voyage, I shall not discuss here the effect of Kepler and Galileo on Donne’s Anatomy of the World, in the “First Anniversary” of which “new philosophy calls all in doubt,” while in the “Second Anniversary” Donne replies to “new philosophy” and science with Faith. It is, however, interesting to notice that when the soul of Elizabeth Drury “Dispatches in a minute all the way ’Twixt heaven and earth,” Donne goes back to the technique of mediaeval celestial voyages. Elizabeth Drury “carries no desire to know” scientific facts about the nature of the middle or upper air, shows no interest in meteors, and particularly She baits not at the Moone, nor cares to trie Whether in that new world, men live, and die.

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huge” rose “like an exhalation” its “Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave,” we forget the “singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke” of the infernal regions and remember only the magnificence of Pandemonium, in which Milton’s imagination again involved with old sources actual memories of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. But there was still a third Hell, stretching far beyond the other two, discovered and explored by that band of angels who were anachronistic descendants of Renaissance far-travelers. Here, among the classical and mediaeval reminiscences, I suspect there may have been memories of Kepler’s world in the moon, a place “of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,” towering mountains and caverns deeper and vaster than any known on earth: Beyond this flood a frozen continent Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk; the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire. Like men who, ascending to Kepler’s lunar world, would have found only gross parody and caricature of the world they had known, the restless apostates wandered on, appalled by all they saw: Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands, With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, Viewd first their lamentable lot, and found No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O’er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death— A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good ; Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,

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Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived. While the possible effect of the Somnium upon Milton’s third Hell must remain surmise, there is no question in my mind that Satan’s voyage through Chaos, in the second book of Paradise Lost, deserves a place among supernatural cosmic voyages of the seventeenth century. Before Milton wrote Para­ dise Lost the literary tradition had already been well estab­ lished by Kepler, Godwin, Cyrano de Bergerac, and others we shall meet on our travels. Scientists were seriously at work on problems connected with human flight. Milton never hesitated to combine with his classical and mediaeval sources stuff of poetry that came to him from contemporary discoveries. Satan’s was a supernatural flight through the cosmic uni­ verse, since in spite of his fall he was still an angel and flew upon angelic wings. From Hell-gate he took off on his cosmic journey, only momentarily appalled as he looked out over the waste of space. The first astonishment and terror past, Satan proved as gallant an aviator as any of his seventeenth-century peers: At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and, in the surging smoke Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious.

At the very moment when all seemed most auspicious, Satan had an experience familiar to modern flyers. He encountered an “air pocket” : but that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fadoms deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft.

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Like other mariners we shall meet, Satan was surprised to discover the nature of the air, “neither sea, nor good dry land.” “Half on foot, half flying,” he made his way laboriously through “the crude consistence.” Indeed, Milton added in words that will seem more significant after we have met other flyers, “Behoves him now both oar and sail.” Satan’s was no easy journey, as

O’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies,

until at last like a weather-beaten vessel, he approached his haven, with “shrouds and tackle torn.” On his journey, like cosmic voyagers before and after him, he “weighed his spread wings” to survey worlds above and below. Far off he saw the empyreal Heaven, “extended wide in circuit, Undetermined square or round,” much nearer at hand hanging in a golden chain, This pendent World, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon. This was only the beginning of Satan’s cosmic voyage. “High above the circling canopy of night’s extended shade,” he surveyed the cosmic universe

from eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas Beyond the horizon; then from pole to pole He views in breadth,—and without longer pause, Down right into the World’s first region throws His flight precipitant, and winds with ease Through the pure marble air his oblique way Amongst innumerable stars, that shone Stars distant, but nigh-hand seemed other worlds. Or other worlds they seemed, or happy isles, Like those Hesperian Gardens famed of old, Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales; Thrice happy isles!

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Unlike many of the later cosmic voyagers who visited each star and planet in turn, Satan did not pause at the moon or planets. “But who dwelt happy there, He staid not to inquire.” Like Cyrano de Bergerac, however, he visited the sun:

Thither his course he bends, Through the calm firmament (but up or down, By centre or eccentric, hard to tell, Or longitude) where the great luminary, Aloof the vulgar constellations thick, That from the lordly eye keep distance due, Dispenses light from far. . . . So, Milton suggested whimsically, there appeared on the face of the sun still another spot, one never seen by Galileo’s eyes:

There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the Sun’s lucent orb Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw. His cosmic voyage ends as from the sun Satan takes wing to the new world which God has recently created, our little planet,

and toward the coast of Earth beneath, Down from the ecliptic, . . . Throws his steep flight in many an aerie wheel, Nor staid till on Niphates’ top he lights.

IV The journey of Milton’s Satan is the last truly “supernatural” cosmic voyage written in England. The temper of the times was changing. The growing scientific interest of the age and increas­ ing belief in the possibility of human flight were leading authors to natural rather than supernatural devices for their fictional voyages. The occasional supernatural English voyage we find during the eighteenth century is usually satiric. For example, in William Thomson’s The Man in the Moon, published in

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1784, Charles Fox is carried off by the man in the moon who bids him “get up therefore on that corneous excrescence”—a wart on the moon-Man’s face. “Carry me softly, if you please, man of the moon,” exhorts Fox, as he departs on a series of adventures which have much to do with English politics but little with the world in the moon. In Catholic countries the device of “spirits or angels” con­ tinued longer than in Protestant England. When we happen upon such Continental supernatural voyages we may expect to find that the worlds visited by aerial travelers usually reflect the old astrology rather than the new astronomy. That is true, on the whole, of one of the most popular, a cosmic journey of 1656, written in Latin and widely read in Catholic countries, the Itinerarium Exstaticum of Athanasius Kircher, traveler, scientist, Jesuit, whose chief character, Theodidactus, set off on a “grand tour” of the heavens as a part of his education—a suggestion Voltaire was to pick up in his immortal satire on cosmic voyages, Micromegas. He was accompanied by an angel guide, Cosmiel, who performed the double duty of Pegasus and Nestor. Well-trained scientist that he was, Kircher intro­ duced many of the newer astronomical theories into his tale, but, a Jesuit before he was a scientist, he usually put them as queries into speeches of the young man to which the angelic Cosmiel replied with “truth.” In the description of the plane­ tary worlds there are still many echoes of the old lore of astrology. A modern reader who has felt the charm of Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus, of which I shall have more to say, regretfully agrees with the judgment of Christian Huygens upon this Ecstatic Journey: “If he had dared freely to speak his mind, Kircher could have afforded us better sort of Things than these.” Nor is there much to hold the attention of a modern reader in a later French supernatural voyage, which seems to have been adapted from Kircher’s tale, Marie-Anne de Roumier’s Les Voyages de Milord Ceton dans les sept Pianettes: ou le Nouveau Mentor. Published in 1765, it tells a story laid in England during the 1640’s. Kircher’s Theodidactus has become Milord Ceton, son of a nobleman of the court of Charles I,

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who with his sister Monime was forced to flee from England after the deaths of their father and his sovereign. Their voyage to the seven planets was made on the wings of Zachiel, a genie who plays the part of Kircher’s angel. The worlds they dis­ cover in the planets are again astrological. Mars is a place of war and carnage, Venus a Cytherean land of love, the Sun a place of light and reason. There is little pondering upon astro­ nomical or philosophical ideas, and what little there is was already old when Milord Ceton and his sister were young in England at the time of the Puritan Revolution. Somewhat more scientific and philosophical was another French voyage of the mid-eighteenth century, the Relation du Monde de Mercure, the author of which declared himself a passionate student of the planet Mercury. One morning just before dawn, after a night of observation, he turned to see a strange little man holding in his hand a kind of telescope unfamiliar to a terrestrial astronomer. Through that telescope our hero is shown a quite different Mercury than he has known, an inhabited world in which he can clearly see the beauty of the country and the figures of both men and animals. The visitor then informs him that the remarkable instrument is “un microscope philosophique” through which he will be able to see not only the inhabitants of the planets and stars, but even “les peuples élémentaires, les atomes d’Épicure, & jusqu’aux mouvemens de l’âme, & aux intentions des hommes.” Certainly the supernatural visitor possessed strange powers, for by means of his spell our author experienced the Cartesian separation of soul and body—which we shall find in still another cosmic voyage—and became capable of all things, even of translating from the Arabic a long tale dealing with the politics, morals, and society of the worlds in the planets. Far more important than these stories, however, were two works that were planetary voyages only by implication, which I somewhat arbitrarily discuss in this section because both authors made their journeys—if I may call them so—not by birds or wings or chariots but merely by the use of their imagina­ tion. In all the literature of the cosmic voyage there was no book more popular than Fontenelle’s Conversations upon the

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Plurality of Worlds. Translated again and again, it seemed to the British peculiarly their own book, read for at least a century both by men and by those “ladies” of whom we have many a description, one of whom would read it aloud to others who were busily engaged in making strawberry jam. This was a book, indeed, that warranted a subtitle I once discovered in an eighteenth-century popularization of astronomy: “Science made clear to the Meanest Capacities, even those of Women and Children.” Strolling on beautiful moonlit evenings in a garden between clipped rose hedges, Fontenelle’s Philosopher delightfully in­ structed his Lady in the elements of the Cartesian cosmography and the new astronomy. An apt pupil he found her, for never did lady learn so quickly and never did she wear her learning more gracefully. Half startled yet always completely enthralled, she learned that the moon and the planets are worlds, that each one of them may have its inhabitants, that in time men from the moon may visit us or we ourselves fly to the moon. So fascinated is the Lady that the Philosopher attempts to dampen her enthusiasm for the new world in the moon by painting it in somber colors, with details drawn largely from Kepler, and warning her that, were she indeed to fly to the moon, she would find herself very ill, since “the upper part of our air . . . is not fit for respiration to us”; should the men on the moon— if such there are—undertake a journey to earth, they would not be able to live in our atmosphere, since the atmosphere to which they have become acclimated—if atmosphere they have—is very different. But the Philosopher had done his earlier work too well, and so aroused the Lady’s scientific curiosity that for once she showed a quite unfeminine reaction to this “horror”:

“Oh 1 what a desire I have, cried the Marchioness, that there might happen some great shipwreck, which would scatter here a great number of these people, then we might consider at ease their extraordinary figures. But, replied I, if they should be able to swim on the exterior surface of our air, and from thence through a curiosity to see us, should fish for us as we do for fishes, would

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this please you? Why not? answered she, laughing. As for me I would readily throw myself into their nets, only to have the pleasure of seeing those who fished for me.”

Enthralled by the moon-world, the Lady is only too eager to join the Philosopher on the imaginary voyages to the planets that occupy other evenings of their conversations, and her imagination expands still further as the Philosopher goes on to teach her the doctrine of a plurality of worlds. Insatiably and incurably romantic, that generation of which the Philoso­ pher and Lady were characteristic products. First in the moon, then in the planets, they sought for fellow men, always replying to logical or scientific doubts and objections, “Plus Ultra!” More beyond, other worlds in the moon and planets, and beyond and beyond still other universes with potential worlds in plenty. Somewhere in this infinite or indefinite universe, there must be men and women like ourselves made by God for our com­ panions. Somehow, sometime, either we shall fly to them or they to us. Less charming though not less interesting was the Cosmotheoros, the last work on one of the great scientists of the seventeenth century, Christian Huygens, written shortly before his death and published in 1698. His celestial observations had led Huygens to many discoveries, none more spectacular than that of the nature of the rings of Saturn. His imagination had clearly been stirred by long study of the night skies to ponder the possibility of other inhabited worlds. “A man that is of Copernicus’s Opinion,” he begins his vision of those worlds, “that this Earth of Qurs is a Planet, carry’d round and en­ lighten’d by the Sun, like the rest of the Planets, cannot but sometimes think that it’s not improbable that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, and perhaps their Inhabitants too as well as this Earth of ours.” A reverent be­ liever, Huygens found nothing in the idea of other worlds to contradict Scripture, nor did he feel that God had set bounds to man’s curiosity. Rather, God had given man the philosophic mind in order that man might better appreciate the glory of the universe He had made. Like other “moderns” Huygens

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points triumphantly to the great discoveries of his century; with them, he echoes, “Plus Ultra.” Man may go on from strength to strength, for “there’s no reason to put any Stop to such Enquiries.” The Cosmotheoros is a cosmic voyage only by implication, but the idea of such a voyage hovered in the author’s mind more than once as he wrote. “If a Man could be carried thither by some powerful Genius, some Mercury,” he pondered, “I don’t doubt ’twould be a very curious Sight, curious beyond all Imagination, to see the odd ways, and the unusual manner of their setting about any thing, and their strange methods of living. But since there’s no hopes of our going such a journey, we must be contented with what’s in our Power: we must sup­ pose ourselves there.” The moon-world and planetary worlds to which Huygens leads us are, like Kepler’s, scientific, yet I know of no more amusing example than this book of the per­ sistence of old logic mingled with new science, as Huygens peoples his worlds in the universe. Surely, he declares, the Great Designer did not make these worlds, several of them larger than our own, with no plan, for no purpose. Intricate in their structure, beautiful in their configuration, they must have ra­ tional inhabitants to appreciate that intricacy and beauty. If there are men, there must be animals to serve them; if there are animals, there must be herbs on which they feed. So purely by logic Huygens sows the dragons’ teeth that spring up men. And there we have it, created in the twinkling of a star—a series of worlds upon worlds furnished with every kind of life! Huygens’ planets are heavenly cities of an idealistic philoso­ pher. Not for him the grotesqueries of some of our cosmic voyagers who find in the moon and planets bird-men, ape-men, insects, not even the realism of Kepler’s nomads with their serpentine natures. Everywhere in the universe, Huygens was persuaded, men and women are rational, for Reason must be universal, as must Justice, Honesty, Kindness, and Gratitude. Since they have equal reason, they must have made many of the same discoveries as have we. Whatever other disciplines of study they follow, three at least, Huygens believed, would prove

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identical with ours—astronomy, music, mathematics, for these are “every where immutably the same, and always will be so.” On we go from world to world, sharing Huygens’ feeling of adventure and delighting with him in the affectionate detail with which he describes Saturn, whose rings he had discovered. We journey on to find everywhere “solemn troops and sw'eet societies” of highly civilized men, who sail their boats with complete knowledge of the laws of navigation, bend their studious minds to scientific invention, delight in the music which is everywhere and immutably the same, and doubtless gaze through their telescopes at this planet of ours, pondering in their turn whether life exists here, concluding that through the universal reason God has given to all created men, there must logically be men and women on the planet Earth to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This type of imaginary voyage was gradually taking the place of that older type in which men journeyed to the cosmic heavens by the aid of spirits and angels, for that kind of supernatural voyage, as I have said, really died during the Century of Genius, destroyed by the impact of science. Men who believed that they were to invent flying chariots ceased to yearn for magic carpets, and the supernatural voyage lost the vitality it once had had in the hands of Lucian and Kepler. Kepler had lived in an age of superstition when witches were more common than were scientists. His descendants of the eighteenth century lived in the cool clear light of reason, in an era when even old fictional devices of flight to the moon must be tested by the criteria of common sense and of plausibility. The wheel of Fortune brought in its.revenges. Kepler, whose mother had been imprisoned and almost executed because she was a “wise woman” who held commerce with the “daemons of the moon,” would be the first to regret the degeneration to which the theme of his Somnium was subjected by many continental writers who attempted to use the “new” theme of flight to the moon while yet they sought to keep within the old fold. V

Yet while the supernatural voyage as a literary form died in the seventeenth century, its long history was not yet over.

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Withering under the impact of science, it nevertheless found new strength in that very science so that another blossoming occurred not in literature but in religion. Emanuel Sweden­ borg was a mathematician and scientist as well as a mystic. He had much to say about the possibility of human flight, and he drew up elaborate plans for a flying machine. What has this to do with the Swedenborgian religion? Much, I believe. Swedenborg’s religious writings are permeated with his read­ ing in cosmic voyages and in the science and philosophy out of which they sprang. Philosophically he had felt a profound response to all the implications of the doctrine of a plurality of worlds. It was natural that, with the conception of "cor­ respondences” which is basic to his teaching, as it had been to Kepler and to most thinkers of the seventeenth century, he should have been assured that there must be correspondence between our earth and the planets, and between our cosmic system and those myriad others stretching always beyond and beyond. His belief sprang from faith—but it was firmly based upon telescopic observation:

That the planets which are visible to our eyes, because within the boundaries of this solar system, are earths, may be clearly known from this, that they are bodies of earthly matter, because they reflect the light of the sun, and when seen through the telescope, they appear, not as stars radiant from flame, but as earths varie­ gated with darker portions. The same may further appear from this, that they are borne like our earth around the sun, . . . and that also like our earth they rotate on their own axis, from which they have their days and times of day, morning, noon, evening, and night, some of them also having moons, called satellites, revolv­ ing in their appointed times around their earth, as our moon re­ volved around our earth; the planet Saturn because farthest dis­ tant from the sun, having also a large luminous ring, which gives that earth much, though reflected, light. Who that knows these things and thinks rationally about them, can ever affirm that these are empty bodies? This sounds like a work on popular astronomy. Actually it is part of the introduction to Swedenborg’s Earths in the Uni­ verse, in which he was laying down for his disciples the prin­ ciples of his mystical religion. That introduction brings sharply

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before us Swedenborg’s cosmic scheme. There are “very many earths, inhabited by man,” in an immense starry heaven, with innumerable stars, “each of which in its place or in the world, is a sun like our sun, but varying in magnitude.” There are “thousands, yea, ten thousands of earths, all full of inhabitants,” earths inhabited by men “not only in this solar system, but also beyond it, in the starry heaven.” “In the sea of life enisled” where “we mortal millions live alone,” Emanuel Swedenborg seems to have felt poignantly the isolation of mortal men, and to have desired, even more passionately than those who are not mystics, “to make one City of the Universe.” He could call spirits from a deep more “vasty” than any known to Hotspur. Sometimes his communication with inhabitants of other planets came about through the descent to earth of spirits and angels; sometimes he himself made the ecstatic journey. In the planets, he tells us, are “spirits whose sole study is to acquire for themselves knowledge, in which alone they find delight, and who are therefore permitted to wander about, and even to pass out of this solar system into others, in order to extend their knowledge.” From such spirits, the master learned the nature of other planets and of their inhabitants, which he handed down to his disciples. His first visitors came from Mercury: “Some spirits came to me, and I was told from heaven that they were from the earth nearest the sun, which in our earth is called the planet Mercury.” In turn visitors came from Jupiter, from Mars, from Saturn, from Venus, and from the Moon. From each group Swedenborg learned about life on a particular planet. There are visions in plenty here; yet in the midst of mystic revelations are literary reminiscences of planetary voyages of the past, passages in which we hear of customs, societies, beliefs in these other worlds, familiar enough to those who know the conventions of the cosmic voyage. The travelers ask and answer questions about the state of knowl­ edge in other worlds. As in Utopias, there is constant compari­ son and contrast of matters terrestrial and matters planetary. The Earths in the Universe has its place in the history of

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religion; but to a greater extent than some of his followers realize, Swedenborg’s religious writings belong also to the literary tradition of Utopias and cosmic voyages. In the second part of the work, we meet with still more familiar matter, for here the prophet sends his soaring soul to sail among the spheres, as had so many cosmic voyagers before him. Released from the limitations of body, he journeys in trance and ecstasy among the stars and planets. “A man [may] be transferred as to his spirit,” he says, “his body still remaining in its place. Thus it has been with me.” Perhaps other men will not believe him when he says that he has had actual experience of heaven: “He who does not know the arcana of heaven, cannot believe that a man can see earths so far away, and relate anything about them from sensible ex­ perience.” Swedenborg could—and did. Yet I cannot read Swedenborg the mystic, Swedenborg the founder of a sect, without remembering Swedenborg the scien­ tist and mathematician, who invented a flying machine and discussed the principles upon which it might fly. Throughout his religious works, I find both scientific and literary reminis­ cences that came to him from the background I am here dis­ cussing. Much of his charm to one who, like myself, is a stranger to his religion, lies in his close copying of the literary sources from which he drew. Nothing in these reminiscences has more delighted me than his attempts at “verisimilitude,” which he shares with his literary forefathers of the age of exploration, whether Marco Polo or Francis Godwin. To Swedenborg, this sort of exactness was not, as Pooh-Bah said, “merely corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimili­ tude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” It was his literary heritage. As he charted his ecstatic voyages, he remembered that he was the descendant of early mariners who had sailed over unknown seas and set down their findings for those who might come after. He was a Columbus, an Amerigo Vespucci, urging another generation to new discovery as he meticulously gave directions, bearings, times, about his journeys into the strange new worlds of the stars and planets:

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In entire wakefulness, I was led as to the spirit by the Lord, by means of angels, to a certain earth in the universe, accompanied by some spirits from this world. Our progress was made toward the right, and lasted some ten hours. The voyage to the second world was also to the right; this passage took two days. The fourth voyage “lasted continuously for about ten hours,” the direction being toward the east. Vague enough to be sure, these directions of Emanuel Swedenborg to the disciples he hoped would follow him in his journeys into interstellar space. What modern disciples have made of these aspects of the religion he founded I do not know, and I have no intention of inquiring. I can only say that to a neophyte, untraveled in those particular realms of gold, the Swedenborgian writings came as a revelation; less, I confess, a religious than a literary revelation. I had not realized until I read widely in those volumes that the adventures of my hardy mariners—many of whom, like Robert Burton, had traveled only in “map and chart”—had inflamed a greater thinker to voyage upon strange seas of thought alone. I have become very fond of the cosmic voyages of Emanuel Swedenborg, with their charming combination of the wisdom of a sage and the naivete of a child who believes extraordinary tales of adven­ ture. His careful “directions, bearings, times” by means of which his followers may ultimately reach heaven continue to remind me of Robert Louis Stevenson’s directions to one of his friends whom he invited to visit him in another enchanted land, the South Sea Islands: “You take the boat at San Fran­ cisco and my place is the second on the right.” The supernatural voyage began as literature in Lucian’s hands. With Kepler it became science, as a great mathematician and physicist reported graphically the grim and austere world in the moon man beheld through the telescope. Yet even in the Somniwn were elements of mysticism. Passing from litera­ ture to science, the supernatural voyage came to its climax in a great modern religion.

CHAPTER - THREE

Flight by the Help of Fowls I second method of human flight, “by the help of fowls,” boasted an ancestry as ancient as that by “spirits or angels.” One version of it is found in early Babylonian literature, though the story as we shall come know it seems to have been Persian. In the semilegendary his­ tory of Iran is found a tale, retold by Firdausi in the Shahnama, of a monarch, Kavi Usan, Kai Ka-us, Kai Koos—there are many variants of his name—who “essayed the sky to outsoar angels” by fastening four eagles to his throne. For a time he flew in triumph, but the eagles tired, and throne and monarch fell to earth with a crash. Here again is the persistent motif of proud man who presumes too high. How old that tale is we cannot tell. There was a suggestion of it in the Zend Avesta, authorship of which is traditionally assigned to Zoroaster, who probably lived some seven centuries before Christ. Scholars have charted the course of this theme, showing how it entered European literature by way of the Greek romances which ascribed to Alexander this exploit, together with many others of the deeds of his Oriental predecessors. On its meandering way, it gathered to itself details from many sources. In later versions there are occasional reminiscences of an Arabian tradition of Nimrod, that “mighty hunter” who, after his futile attempt to reach heaven by building the Tower of Babel, made an aerial ascent drawn aloft by four great birds, only—as always—to descend ignominiously. There are sugges­ tions too of Ganymede, carried off from playfellows on Mount Ida by Zeus, disguised as an eagle, and of winged Pegasus and his master Bellerophon, who through sinful pride strove to reach heaven, until Zeus sent a gadfly to torment the winged horse and unseat his rider. In many later European accounts the original eagles have become gryphons. Here is a transla­ te ilkins’

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tion of a tenth-century version of the tale, in which Alexander relates his adventure:

I took counsel with my friends how I might fashion such a machine that I might ascend the heavens and see if they be the heavens which we behold. I made ready a machine wherein I might sit, and I caught gryphons, and set before them rods and meat on the tops thereof, and they began to ascend to heaven. Nevertheless the divine power overshadowed and cast them down to earth in a meadow more than ten days’ journey from my army, and I suffered no hurt, even in the iron throne. I rose to such a height that the world seemed like a threshing floor below me. The sea, moreover, seemed to me like a serpent writhed about it, and with great peril I was reunited to my soldiers. Even more than in literature, the motif of Alexander’s gryphons, tempted to heavenly flight by those rods with “meat on the tops thereof,” became diffused throughout Europe in mediaeval art. “From Mesopotamia to the English West Country,” writes Roger Loomis, “and from Otranto in the head of Italy to Remagen on the Rhine, the design of the crowned Alexander flanked by his gryphon team seems to have caught the fancy of mediaeval craftsmen.” Reminiscences of the old tale hovered in Dante’s mind when he wrote in the Purgatorio:

An eagle in a dream I seemed to see Poised in the sky, with plumes of gold, and wings Outspread; intent to stoop it seemed to be. And at the spot I found me, as I thought, Where, torn from his companions, Ganimede Up to the high consistory was caught. . . . Then as it seemed, circling a little higher, Terrible as a thunderbolt it fell, And snatched me up into the very fire. Chaucer remembered it, too, in The Hous of Fame, when in his dream, “This egle, of which I now have told, That shoon with fethres alie of gold,” swooped down to earth to seize another Ganymede:

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And with his grimme pawes stronge, Within his sharpe nay les longe, Me, fleinge, in a swappe he hente, And with his sours ageyn up wente, Me carryinge in his clawes starke As lightly as I were a larke.

How high they rose, “I can not telle yow, For I cam up, I niste how.” But higher still and higher flew great eagle and cargo, until the hapless “Geffrey” began to fear that the gods intended to confer upon him a dubious immortality which he neither merited nor desired—he who was no Enoch or Elijah, nor even a Ganymede. Perhaps he was to be translated to the heavens as a star or constellation: “O god,” thoghte I, “that madest kinde, Shall I non other weyes dye ? Wher Joves wol me stellifye ? Or what thing may this signifye ? I neither am Enok, ne Elye, Ne Romulus, ne Ganymede That was y-bore up, as men rede, To hevene with dan Jupiter, And made the goddes boteler.”

John Wilkins in the seventeenth century was stirred less by such literary legends than by travelers’ tales of “authorities” in natural history: “Marcus Polus mentions a fowl in Mada­ gascar,” he noted, “which he calls a ruck, the feathers of whose wings are twelve paces, or threescore foot long, which can with as much ease scoop up an elephant, as our kites do a mouse. Cardan and Scaliger do unanimously affirm, that there is a bird amongst the Indians of so great a bigness, that his beak is often used to make a sheath or scabbard for a sword. And Acosta tells us of a fowl in Peru called candores, which will of themselves kill and eat up a whole calf at a time.” In his Discovery of a New World his memory combined such sup­ posedly authenticated “fact” with old legend: “If there be such a great ruck in Madagascar, as Marcus Polus the Vene­

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tian mentions, the feathers in whose wings are twelve foot long, which can scoop up a horse and his rider, or an ele­ phant as our kites do a mouse; when then it is but teaching one of these to carry a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymede does, upon an eagle.” Another legend led Francis Bacon to ponder the possibility of human flight by means of birds :

It is reported that amongst the Leucadians, in ancient times, upon a superstition, they did use to precipitate a man from a high cliff into the sea; tying about him with strings, at some distance, many great fowls; and fixing unto his body divers feathers, spread, to break his fall. Certainly many birds of good wing (as kites, and the like) would bear up a good weight as they fly; and spreading of feathers thin, and close and in great breadth, will likewise bear up a great weight; being even laid, without tilting upon the sides. The further extension of this experiment for flying may be thought upon. In modern times the possibility that birds might at least assist man in flight was seriously considered for two and a half centuries. Even after the first successful ascent of the balloon in 1783—4, a problem still remained of directing a lighter-than-air machine along a given course, and many at­ tempts were made to harness large birds as motivating power. In April 1786 M. Uncles made a public announcement that he was training “four harnessed eagles, perfectly tame, and capable of flying in every direction at their master’s will,” to be attached to a balloon. As late as 1835, a letter written to the Morning Advertiser by Thomas Simmons Mackintosh con­ tinued to suggest the possibility of using hawks or eagles to direct balloons. In that Autolycus age of the seventeenth century, which snapped up every considered and unconsidered trifle, we should expect to find the recurrence of this old theme by flight of birds. We shall not be disappointed, for the first full-length English moon voyage, as familiar for two centuries as Kepler’s Somnium, was a tale of a man who inadvertently flew to the moon by means of birds.

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II Francis Godwin’s Man in the Mo one: or A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales was published in 1638. When the romance was written we cannot tell, for its origins are as vague as are those of the S omnium. One authority dates it as early as 1578—84, another as late as 1627—32; others have guessed at dates between. Perhaps Antony a Wood who first suggested the early date—the years during which Godwin was a student at Christ Church, Oxford—felt that this tale must have been the work of a young man, and indeed much of it seems essentially youthful. Nevertheless, while Godwin may have begun it as a university student, there is no question that in its present form it was completed much later, for there are references to events that had not occurred in Godwin’s student days and reflections of ideas that had not then begun to stir. However, the actual date of composition of the first English moon voyage need not worry us. The printed version of 1638 followed the publication of the S omnium by four years, and the two works combined to establish the genre of the moon voyage in England. The Man in the Moone proved immensely popular, as well it might, for here were all the elements of the kind of romance in which our ancestors delighted, as do our children. A tale of adventure, it carries on the picaresque tradition. The story of a shipwrecked mariner, it foreshadowed Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, both of which drew from it. A Utopia, it is often more charming, if less significant, than More’s Utopia or Campanella’s City of the Sun. Like Robinson, Gulli­ ver, and many another “imaginary voyage,” The Man in the Moone begins prosaically, with much of the corroborative detail of a “real” voyage. Our hero Domingo Gonsales, a Spaniard of noble parentage, came to manhood in poverty, though whether because he was the youngest of seventeen children, or because he ran away from the University of Salamanca, we cannot be quite sure. We first encounter him when he arrives in Antwerp “in something poore estate. For having

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sold my Bookes and Bedding. ... I bought mee a little nagge with which I travailed more thriftily than young Gentlemen are wont ordinarily to doe.” One adventure after another befell him. He was set upon by “certaine of the cursed Geuses” who bereaved him of “Horse, monie, and all.” He entered the service of a nobleman with whom he went on an expedi­ tion against the Prince of Orange. He killed his man in a duel, as a result of which he fled the country, and “put my selfe into a good Caricke that went to the East Indies,” where he profited exceedingly well. “Grievously sicke” on the return voyage, he was put ashore with a faithful Negro servant, Diego, the “man Friday” of our tale, upon the “blessed Isle of S. Hellens, the only paradice, I thinke, that the earth yeeldeth, of the healthfulnesse of the Aire there, the fruitfulnesse of the soile, and the abundance of all manner of things necessary for sustaining the life of man.” In this exotic land begins the adventure with which we are concerned, which occupies the greater part of the book. Upon the “blessed Isle” master and man settled down for the space of a year, only too happy to remain in an enchanted world, where grew in tropical profusion those fruits loved by wistful northern imagination: “Oranges, Limmons, Pomgranats, Almonds, and the like, which beare Fruit all the yeare long.” Not only was there every kind of fruit and vege­ table, but the island “aboundeth with Cattell, and Fowle . . . wild Fowle, beyond all credit.” Most important for the tale to follow was “a certaine kinde of wild Swans . . . that like unto our Cuckoes, and Nightingales, at a certaine season of the yeare, doe vanish away, and are no more to be seene.” Partly for diversion, partly because he anticipated that the “gansas,” as he called them, might be of service to him, Domingo began to occupy himself with training his wild swans:

These birds using to breed there in infinite numbers, I tooke some 30. or 40. young ones of them, and bred them up by hand partly for my recreation, partly also as having in my head some rudiments of that device, which afterward I put in practise. These being strong and able to continue a great flight, I taught them first to

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come at call affarre off, not using any noise but onely the shew of a white Cloth. And surely in them I found it true that is delivered by Plutarch, how that Animalia Carnivora, they are dociliora quam alterius cuiusvis generis. It were a wonder to tell what trickes I had taught them, by that time they were a quarter old; amongst other things I used them little by little to fly with burthens, wherein I found them able above all credit, and brought them to that passe, as that a white sheet being displayed unto them by Diego upon the side of a hill, they would carry from me unto him, Bread, flesh, or any other thing I list to send, and upon the like call returne unto mee againe. So tractable did his swans prove that Domingo’s mind was stirred by the great idea he had secretly in mind: that by means of his gansas, he “might enable a man to fly and be carried in the ayre, to some certaine place safe and without hurt.” But let the English author tell in his own words how a Spaniard became the first flying man: I found by experience, that if many were put to the bearing of one great burthen, by reason it was not possible all of them should rise together just in one instant, the first that raised himself upon his wings finding himselfe stayed by a weight heavier than hee could move or stirre, would by an by give over, as also would the second, third, and all the rest. I devised (therefore) at last a meanes how each of them might rise carrying but his owne pro­ portion of weight only, and it was thus. I fastned about every one of my Gansa’s a little pulley of Corke, and putting a string through it of meetly length, I fastened the one end thereof unto a blocke almost of eight Pound weight, unto the other end of the string I tied a poyse weighing some two Pound, which being done, and causing the signail to be erected, they presently rose all (being 4 in number,) and carried away my blocke unto the place appointed. This falling out according to my hope and desire, I made proofe afterwards, but using the help of 2. or 3. birds more, in a Lamb, whose happinesse I much envied, that he should be the first living creature to take possession of such a device.

Proud Domingo, watching his happy lamb, the first living creature to fly, was prophesying the future better than he knew,

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for when in 1783 the balloon of the Brothers Montgolfier rose precariously from the park before the Palace of Versailles, its chief passenger was a sheep, which with its companions, a cock and a duck, shared the experience of being the first living creatures to fly! Not unnaturally, Domingo found himself “surprized with a great longing to cause my selfe to be carried in the like sort.” So did Diego, who also desired the wings of a dove. For a moment the happy relationship between master and man was threatened by the perennial desire of man to conquer the air. “Diego my Moore was likewise possessed with the same desire, and but that otherwise I loved him well, and had need of his helpe, I should have taken his ambitious affection in very evill part: for I hold it farre more honour to have been the first flying man, than to bee another Neptune that first adventured to sayle upon the Sea.” Momentary trouble smoothed over, Domingo proceeded with preparations for his “great assay,” choosing for his runway a rock at a river’s edge, a choice in which he was to be followed for nearly two centuries by both romancers and experimenters. “Being able to swim well,” he realized that the worst that could happen to him would be that he might fall into the river. The words of Domingo describing the success of the first flying-man deserve a place in every anthology of the history of aeronautics:

So upon a time, having provided all things necessary, I placed my selfe with all my trinckets, upon the top of a rocke at the Rivers mouth, and putting my selfe at full Sea upon an Engine ... I caused Diego to advance his Signail: whereupon my Birds pres­ ently arose, 25. in number, and carried mee over lustile to the other rocke on the other side, being about a Quarter of a league. . . . But when I was once over in safety, O how did my heart even swell with joy and admiration of mine owne invention! How often did I wish my selfe in the midst of Spain, that speedily I might fill the world with the fame of my glory and renowne! Impatiently now Gonsales desired to leave the earthly paradise in which he had been so content, “longing for the Indian Fleet

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to take mee home with them.” When at last, three months later, “3. Carickes sore weather-beaten” finally arrived, Domingo was forced reluctantly to confide the secret of his great invention to the captain, “well knowing how impossible it were other­ wise to perswade him to take in so many Birds into the Ship, that would be more troublesome (for the nicenesse of pro­ vision to be made of them,) then so many men.” His fear was less that the captain would divulge the secret than that “Ambi­ tion, and the desire of drawing unto himselfe the honour of such an invention, should cause him to make mee away.” Whether the captain would have kept his oath of “true deal­ ing,” Domingo was never to know, for his adventures had only begun. “Some 10. leagues from the Island of Tenerik one of the Canaries, which is famous through the World, for a Hill upon the same called el Pico” the battered remnant of the Indian Fleet was set upon by a larger and much better equipped “fleet of the English.” One ship escaped, bearing Diego with it, but another fell before the British. As it rapidly became clear that his ship must either be captured or be battered to pieces upon a “coast full of blind Rockes and Shoales,” Domingo resolved to escape. Fortunately he had taken with him his “Engine, which the Captaine would have had me leave behinde me, and it is a mervaile I had not, but my good fortune therein saved my life, and gave me that which I esteeme more then an hundred lives, if I had them.” Quickly he made his plan: I then betook me to my Gansa’s, put them upon my Engine, and my selfe upon it, trusting (as indeed it happily fell out) that when the Shippe should split, my Birds, although they wanted their Signall, of themselves, and for safeguard of their owne lives (which nature hath taught every living creature to preserve to their power) would make towards the Land; which fell out well (I thanke God) according to my expectation. . . . Some halfe a league we were from the Land, when our Carick strake upon a Rocke, and split immediately: whereupon I let loose unto my Birds the raines, having first placed my selfe upon the highest of the Decke: and with the shock they all arose, carrying mee fortunately unto the Land.

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The land, however, proved as unfriendly as the sea, inhabited as it was “by a Savage kind of people, that live upon the sides of that hill, the top whereof is always covered with Snow, and held for the monstrous height and steepnesse not to be accessible either for man or beast.” Spying in the side of the mountain “a white cliffe, which I trusted my Gansa’s would take for a signal,” Domingo directed his fowls toward it, hoping that at night he might guide himself by the stars toward “Las Laeguna, the City of that Island.” “Whereupon with all the celeritie that might be I put my selfe upon mine Engine, and let loose the raines unto my Gansa’s. It was my good for­ tune that they tooke all one way, although not just that way I aymed at.” “Not just that way I aymed at,” indeed! Domingo’s litotes at this dramatic moment proves his author no fluent Latin, but a British prince of understatement! “But what then, O Reader? Arrige aures, prepare thy selfe unto the hearing of the strangest Chance that ever happened to any mortall man, and that I know thou wilt not have the Grace to beleeve, till thou seest it seconded with Iteration of Experiments.” Thus, as unexpectedly to the passenger as to the reader, begins the voyage of Domingo Gonsales to the world in the moon. Familiar as was Domingo with the customs of his birds, he had no way of knowing one of their most important habits. Gansas hibernated in the moon! The sophisticated modern reader smiles, but in this period ornithology was still in its infancy. Birds hibernate somewhere. Why not in the moon? As the gansas rose with one accord and took their flight upward, Domingo thought they were making for a summit of Mount Teneriffe, which might have been ominous enough. But on they went, higher still and higher, until their author discovered by experience something he had formerly known only vaguely as theory—that there is a point at which the “attraction” of the earth ceases. His birds had been laboring against his weight, but “At length, O incredible thing, they forbare moving any thing at all! and yet remained unmoveable, as stedfastly, as if they had beene upon so many perches; the Lines slacked; neither I, nor the Engine moved at all, but abode still as having

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no manner of weight.” Learnedly Domingo entered into a discussion of “gravity,” as his period understood that term. We need not labor his passage; Godwin had read with care the works of those contemporaries who were doing their best to explain this curious “attraction.” Yet for all his reading he could not fully explain to himself that strange experience when his birds flew on without effort, “as easily and quietly as a fish in the middle of the water,” somehow effortlessly carrying their once “heavy” passenger higher and higher—if, indeed, it was “higher,” for as Domingo says, “whether it were upward, downward, or sidelong, all was one.” In this passage Godwin, even more than Kepler, established a persistent convention of the cosmic voyage. Tale after tale will pick up this motif, mariner after mariner describe the strange sensation of becoming an apparently disembodied spirit. While Kepler had made the same point, his mortal, under the influence of anesthetics, had no such vivid memory as did Gonsales of the moment he felt himself passing from the “orb of virtue” of the earth, with its attendant heaviness, into the aura aetherea where weight, as mortals knew it, no longer existed. Weariness, hunger, thirst, all proved to be effects of gravity. During his voyage to the moon, Domingo “never felt any appetite of hunger or thirst,” finding himself in perfect health, the vigor of body and mind beyond anything he had ever experienced. Fortunately Domingo was a philosopher. Having faced the fact that his birds—and he perforce with them—were bound for the moon, he found his fear giving way to eager curiosity. Perched upon his little roost—a human bird conveyed by birds —he seems to have taken out his notebook and jotted down observations as he flew. Here was an opportunity, never before given to mortal man, to prove or disprove by “experience” age-old contentions of philosophers. What is the nature of the “upper air”? Is it moist or dry? Is there really, as philosophers have said, a “region of fire” ? All these questions Domingo answered categorically, but I need not labor his answers, which the interested reader may find for himself. More important to Domingo, and historically more interesting to us, were

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Domingo’s observations upon what we broadly call “Copernicanism.” For the first time in human history, that AngloSpaniard, Domingo Gonsales, determined the truth or falsity of various “philosophical” theories propounded by astronomers of the past and present. That one theory was true he discovered at once: It appeareth . . . that when we rested, (as at first we did for many howers), either we were insensibly carryed (for I perceived no such motion) round about the Globe of the Earth, or else that (according to the late opinion of Copernicus) the Earth is carried about, and turneth round perpetually, from West to the East, leaving unto the Planets onely that motion which Astronomers call naturall. . . . concerning which question I will speake more here­ after, when I shall have leysure to call to my remembrance the Astronomy which I learned being a young man at Salamanca, but have now almost forgotten. Persuaded of the diurnal rotation of the earth by observa­ tion, Domingo called aloud upon the “Philosophers and Mathe­ maticians” of his age to “confesse the wilfulnesse of their own blindnesse.” Radical though he thought himself, however, Domingo Gon­ sales was not an out-and-out “modern.” He accepted the theory of the diurnal rotation of the earth, believing it to be, as he says, “the late opinion of Copernicus,” not realizing how ancient that theory had been when Copernicus was young. But his observations neither proved nor disproved the more character­ istic Copernican theory. “I will not go so farre as Copernicus,” he says cautiously, “that maketh the Sunne the Center of the Earth, and unmoveable, neither will I define any thing one way or another. Only this I say, allow the Earth his motion (which these eyes of mine can testifie to be his due) and these absurdities are quite taken away.” But because of my own interest in these matters I have, like Godwin, tended to forget the fact that I am telling you a story. Domingo brings me back. “Where am I ?” he wrote at this point. “At the first I promised an History, and I fall into disputes before I am aware. . . . But give me leave now

W J . * •!* •* •' .

AN AERIAL FIGHT BETWEEN A BRITON AND A GERMAN From Richard Owen Cambridge, Scribleriad

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at last to passe on my journey quietly, without interruption for Eleven or Twelve daies, during all which time I was car­ ried directly toward the Globe or body of the Moone.” Twelve days’ flight Domingo’s proved, by means of birds whose “in­ credible swiftnesse” was such that Domingo reckoned they “gained not so little as Fifty Leagues in every hower.” How far did Domingo’s birds fly? How distant was his moon from our earth? Using round numbers, we may say that the gansas flew at a rate of about one hundred and seventy-five miles an hour, and that during his eleven days’ journey, they covered a distance between earth and moon of about 50,000 miles, a distance much less than that calculated by the best mathemati­ cians of Godwin’s day who estimated a figure much closer to our own—approximately 200,000 miles. Perhaps Godwin thought he was following Kepler’s computation, for in the Somnium we were told: “Quinquaginta millibus miliarium Germanicorum in aetheris profundo sita est Levania insula.” If so, Godwin failed to notice that Kepler spoke in terms of German measurements rather than in miles as Englishmen understood them. Yet 50,000 or 200,000 miles—for it does not fundamentally matter to laymen like ourselves—Domingo’s was an incredible voyage to the moon to be made in less than twelve days—by goose power ! On the eleventh day Domingo approached close to “another Earth,” with mountains, valleys, and water, for on the pres­ ence of water Godwin agreed with Kepler. “It was covered for the most part with a huge and mighty Sea, those parts only being drie Land, which shew unto us here somewhat darker than the rest of her body (that I mean which the Country people call el hombre della Luna, the Man of the Moone).” He discovered an ocean “besprinckled here and there with Islands, which for the littlenesse, so farre off we cannot dis­ cern.” He found by his own observation that the moon shines by no light of her own, but by reflected light. All these things he observed at a distance, as his gansas carried him closer and closer to the new moon-world. Unlike Kepler and most of the later writers of moon voyages, Godwin paid little attention to the effect of the “attractive

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power” of the moon. To be sure, he took for granted that there was lunar gravity of a sort, for later he told an amusing story of long-distance travel in that satellite. When he and the lunarians set out from the palace of Prince Pylonas, Domingo discovered a new means of conveyance. At their “first setting forth,” attendants delivered to each of them two feathered fans, “not much unlike to those that our Ladies doe carrie in Spaine, to make a coole Ayre unto themselves in the heat of the Summer.” These fans were used not for cooling breezes but for transportation. While the globe of the moon, he learned, had its “attractive power,” it was so much less than that of the globe of the earth, that “if a man doe but spring upward, with all his force (as Dancers do when they shew their activity by capering) he shall be able to mount 50. or 60. foote high, and then he is quite beyond all attraction of the Moones earth, falling downe no more, so as by the helpe of these Fans, as with wings, they conveigh themselves in the Ayre in a short space. . . .” Thanks to the skill of his birds, Domingo’s was a happy landing. On the twelfth day, which he dates specifically, “Tues­ day the Eleventh day of September, (at which time the Moone being two daies old was in the Twentieth degree of Libra)” the gansas stayed their course with one consent and rested, then rising, set their passenger down upon the top of a high hill. From a strange Mount Pisgah the lunar Moses looked out over a new Promised Land. Godwin’s moon-world is a charming medley of fantasy and romance. With the exception of a few “modern” observations, it follows the old arcadian tradition rather than the new realism of Kepler. Strange as it is, it is almost universally delightful, its charm lying in its utter difference from anything we have ever known. In the moon, man does not eat or drink or speak or live as upon this earth. “Surprised with a ravenous hunger” for the first time since he had left the earth’s gravity, the traveler took out “victuals I had reserved” only to find terrestrial food distasteful. He fed rather, as did his gansas, upon herbs which he discovered to be delicious. Color in the moon, Domingo found ravishing, beggaring all description.

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Those colors were “neither blacke, nor white, yellow, nor red, greene nor blew, nor any colour composed of them. But if you aske me what it was then; I must tell you, it was a colour never seen in our earthly world, and therefore neither to be described unto us by any, nor to be conceived of one that never saw it. . . . Onely this I can say of it, that it was the most glorious and delightfull, that can possibly be imagined.” Objects in the moon, Domingo found to his surprise, are not smaller than in this world, as man might expect from the comparative sizes of earth and moon, but on a much vaster scale. Godwin’s moon, like Kepler’s, is Brobdingnagian. “All manner of things there were of largenesse and quantity 10.20, I thinke I may say 30. times more than ours. Their trees at least three times so high as ours, and more than five times the breadth and thicknesse.” As objects made by nature, so those constructed by man, for Godwin’s moon was, of course, an inhabited world. The first building he saw seemed “for beauty and strangenesse, as all our world cannot shew any neere comparable to it,” though later he was to discover this a mere cottage in comparison with lunar palaces. Doors were thirty feet high and twelve in breadth, rooms from forty to fifty feet in height, with “all other proportions answerable,” as was indeed essential, since men who inhabited these dwellings were, on an average, twenty-eight feet tall. Perhaps the mind of Godwin, reflecting many of the seventeenth-century themes of pessimism, purposely peopled his lunar world with men who lived and grew as did the patriarchs and Titans of old, for cer­ tainly there were giants and miracles of longevity in Godwin’s world in the moon. As he remained among them, however, Domingo discovered, as do all travelers to Utopia, degrees and differences among lunarians as among men in this world. Many passages here anticipate Gulliver’s Travels. Domingo, the mortal, found him­ self classed among the least of the lunarians as Gulliver found himself among the Yahoos, since one’s social status in God­ win’s moon-world depended in part upon his height and stature, in part upon his ability to bear the varied kinds of light Domingo found in the moon. There was one period, he dis­

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covered, when the lunarians dwelt in the subdued light reflected from earth, which even the least of them could bear, another period when the full force of the sun was upon them and only the largest and the strongest of the “upper classes” could re­ main awake. “Now you shall understand,” wrote Godwin, “that of the true Lunars there bee three degrees.” One group, the most magnificent in stature, could endure “all light, both of earth and Sun”; a second group, “beyond the pitch of our stature a good deale, as perhaps 10. or 12. foote high . . . can indure the day of the Moone, when the earth shineth but little, but not indure the beames of both.” The third group, degraded and ignoble in the eyes of their superiors, were ironically like terrestrial men. These were not true lunarians, but “bastard­ men” who seldom lived “above the age of a 1000 moones, which is answerable to 80. of our Years; and they account them base creatures, even but a degree before bruit beastes, imploying them accordingly in all the basest and most servile offices, tearming them by a word which signifieth bastard-men, counterfeits, or Changelings.” Among these puny creatures Domingo found himself, for as the dawn of the lunar day was about to come, he felt “first dull, then heavy and willing to sleepe. ... I delivered my selfe at last into the custody of this sister of Death, whose prisoner I was for almost a fortnight after.” “Even as Owles, and Batts,” the “counterfeits” and “Changelings” slept for a fort­ night, while the fierce solar light illuminated the lunar world. “Awaking then, it is not to bee beleeved how fresh, how nimble, how vigorous, I found all the faculties both of my bodie and minde.” Alert and refreshed, Domingo, like all travelers to Utopia, set himself to learn the language of the lunarians, which like their colors had no affinity with any he had ever heard, con­ sisting not so much of words and letters as of “tunes and uncouth sounds.” The modern reader, planning a trip to the moon by rocket or space ship, may begin to study lunarian language in advance, for Domingo thoughtfully set down the musical notation of their daily salutation and left us another score indicating how they pronounced his Spanish name. The

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language learned—like all utopian voyagers, Domingo proved himself an apt pupil—he was at last able to converse with his hosts, learn their ideas, and tell them about the world from which he came. These sections of The Man in the Moone are slight and on the whole inferior to both serious and satiric treatments of Utopia we shall find in later voyages. Godwin’s moon is merely another exotic land, as was his “blessed Isle of S. Hellens,” where falls no rain nor snow nor any hail. Food grew every­ where in profusion with little labor on the part of man. Men and women were chaste, eternally true to their mates. There were no prisons, no lawyers, since there were no crimes. Murder was unknown, though the absence of this particular crime, a doubting Thomas might feel, was the result less of the innate goodness of the people than of a physical peculi­ arity, “for there is no wound to bee given which may not bee cured. . . . Although a mans head be cut off, yet if at any time within the space of Three Moones it bee put together, and joyned to the Carkasse againe, with the appointment of the Iuyce of a certaine Hearbe, there growing, it will be joyned together againe.” As with Satan, cloven in twain by the sword of Michael, or Pope’s Sylph, carelessly dissected by a lady’s scissors, the “airy substance soon unites again!” There is still another explanation for the virtue of the highest lunarians, for neither in the moon nor in the earth are all men born good. By some means Domingo unfortunately failed to divulge, moon-dwellers are able to detect signs of innate de­ pravity at birth. They exile potential sinners—here Godwin picked up an old mysterious tale of “green children”—sending them to earth, where they exchange these “green children” for good children—an explanation nicely accounting for the exces­ sive amount of terrestrial depravity, particularly in North America! “Their ordinary vent for them is a certaine high hill in the North of America, whose people I can easily beleeve to be wholly descended of them, partly in regard of their colour, partly also in regard of the continuall use of Tobacco which the Lunars enjoy exceeding much.” Even the best of the lunarians are not immortal. Die they

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must, though death comes to a true lunar at a ripe old age. Again Godwin anticipated a scene in the fourth book of Gulli­ ver’s Travels in which Swift showed how a truly rational Houyhnhnm could die. “The time that nature hath assigned unto them being spent, without any paine at all they die, or rather (I should say) cease to live, as a candle to give light, when that which nourisheth it is consumed.’’ Calling his rela­ tives and friends about him, the departing lunarian prepared a great feast, bidding his friends be merry and rejoice with him. No cause for lamentation here; the true lunarian, who has lived a full, rich, and happy life, is as content to leave that life as he had been to enjoy it. “O my wife and Children,” cried Domingo, as he saw how a Christian should die, “what wrong have you done mee to bereave mee of the happinesse of that place.” The ties of nature, however, are strong in “bastard-men,” and in his second spring, Domingo’s conscience stirred him to think of returning home. The Prince attempted to dissuade him, but Domingo realized that it must be now or never. Already three of his gansas had died “for want of their wonted migration.” The rest “began to droope.” Even the monarch could perceive “by the oft baying of my Birds, a great longing in them to take their flight.” Preparations were made. Domingo took his last lunar sleep, then “trimmed up mine Engine” and made his farewells to the great Prince Irdonozur, who had so royally entertained him in spite of his puny stature, and on the twenty-ninth day of the second March, “fastened my selfe to mine Engine.” A great crowd gathered to take leave of the intrepid flyer, and with a last “Beza las manos” of fare­ well, gansas and Gonsales were off. “I let loose the raines unto my Birds, who with great greedinesse taking wing quickly carried mee out of their sight.” The return voyage was shorter than the outgoing passage. After nine days Domingo came in sight of a land that proved to be China. Descent into the “attractive power” of the earth proved far more precarious than had descent upon the moon, and had it not been for the mysterious virtue of a charmed jewel, the “Ebulus,” which the Prince had given him, the

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force of gravity might well have succeeded where bandits, buccaneers, duelists, and gansas had failed, and our Spanish hero might have been no more. The adventures of Gonsales are not yet ended, for he was still to explore the Orient, but our moon voyage is over, and we may look our last upon Domingo at the moment when, "being yet in the Ayre, some of the country people had espied mee, and came running unto me by troopes.” In farewell we salute with a “Beza las manos” this gallant ace who, though he called himself by a Spanish name, was in reality the first English flyer to reach the moon.

Ill Godwin’s gansas were to influence the course of both litera­ ture and science. New editions of The Man in the Mo one were called for, and the tale was translated into several languages. Wilkins, Fontenelle, Huygens, and many another popularizer of science introduced the story to their readers. Cyrano de Bergerac, Defoe, Swift, and less famous writers of imaginary voyages borrowed lavishly from it, adapting its conventions with those of Kepler to their own devices for flight. Gonsales and his gansas became catchwords to two centuries. Sometimes they were symbols of gross exaggeration, as when Councellor Manners, in his advice to his son, warned him not to follow "the Example of vain Travellers and Praters who . . . set such things as they have seen or heard upon the Tenterhooks, stretching them most palpably beyond all credit . . . and have no more affinity with Truth than . . . that Relation of our Countryman of the New World in the Moon, or of Domingo Gonzales, and his flight thither upon the Wings of his Ganzas.” In like mood Samuel Butler declared:

So when our speculations tend Above their just and useful end, Altho’ they promise strange and great Discoveries of things far fet, They are but idle dreams and fancies, And savour strongly of the ganzas.

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Congreve in his “Epistle to Lord Hastings” remembered the tale when he wrote of his Muse: She knows what dangers wait too bold a flight, And fears to fall from Icarian height ; Yet she admires the wing that safely soars, At distance follows, and its track adores, She knows what room, what force the swan requires, Whose towering head above the cloud aspires.

But William Meston urged his Muse to aspire higher still and higher: Come on thou Muse . . . Soaring in high Pindarick Stanzas Above Gonzales and his Ganzas. In the latter years of the seventeenth century, when the earlier excitement over the telescope had given way to new popular enthusiasm for microscopical observation, affording among other satiric devices a new “literature” of those fascinat­ ing creatures, the flea and the louse, Samuel Wesley produced a variant of Domingo’s gansa voyage in his “Pindaric Poem on Three Skipps of a Louse,” in which his hero took off for the emyprean harnessed to a different Pegasus:

Go Charioteer ! the Coach prepare I (Or call a Coach if any’s there!) My Muse forsooth must take the Air; And we intend to rove Beyond the narrow Bounds of Nature, and of Jove. We’ll takd a race Where light-cloath’d Nothings, and thin fantoms dwell, Beyond the narrow Bounds of time and place, Beyond the out-stretcht Line of Earth, of Heaven, and Hell. Pindaric Pegasus! advance Now with the lofty Barbary proudly waving prance, And amble now Like a galloping Cow! . . . There bowles of Helicon my Horse and I’ll carouse, And for the founder’d Jade mount my cirvetting Lowse. . . .

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So, on my fair-neckt Louse securely set . . . With Spur and Switch I make my Steed curvet . . . Beyond th’ attraction of dull Earth we’re born, . . . We hardly see Athos and Tenariff, and Michaels Mount below In Glass or brazen Chariot scarce so soon, Nor with Domingo’s Ganzas had we reach’d the Moon.

More than once the tale of Domingo appeared in dramatic versions. In his Wonders in the Sun, published in 1706, Thomas D’Urfey adapted The Man in the Moone to comic opera. While much of the central portion of the play was based upon other cosmic voyages—particularly those of Cyrano de Bergerac and Defoe—the framework came from Godwin, and indeed D’Urfey’s opera was a sequel to Domingo’s moon voyage. In “a Bright Luminous Country,” we find our hero in the sun, “a Machine hanging in the Air at a small distance, with Gonzas Harness’d to it.” His appetite whetted by his discov­ eries in our satellite, Domingo, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, could not rest from travel but would drink life to the lees. Still in­ finitely curious, and though in spite of occasionally “sad and musing” fits of passing melancholy, still essentially an optimist, the later Domingo seeks new ethereal worlds to conquer. But Diego, once more his faithful companion, has become jaded and disillusioned, wearied to death of these journeyings, yet unwilling to desert his master. Sullenly he tells himself that he is as silly as the gansas, “for had I been anything else but a Goose, I had never serv’d a Philosopher, nor flown with him by a Project here into the Sun, to hunt for Knowledge in un­ certainty, and Starve in reality.” “Philosophic 1” he snarls, “Name it again, and I grow Mad-Stark, Raving-Mad: A Plague on your Philosophy; this is your World in the Sun, you us’d to brag on.” A strange world they find it, divided, as usual after Kepler, into various zones, “several Tracts of Land of several Names, some Artificial are, and others Real.” “The Property of things,” they discover, as do all cosmic voyagers, “are strangely different from our World.” In the “Land of Artificers” at which they

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first arrive, they find it impossible to eat, for they break their teeth on apples that prove to be stones, radishes that “fell a whizzing, and went off in my hand like a Squib,” peaches like tennis balls, and berries of red glass. No place of peace and harmony, this world of the sun, a kingdom of birds where two great political parties, the “High-Flyers and the Low” strive for mastery. The voyagers meet with strange peoples, most of all the “Daemon of Socrates,” whom Diego calls “the oddest prating little Devil of an Angel I ever saw.” The Dae­ mon, their mentor, salutes Domingo : “As a Philosopher and Poet, thou art my Brother, which has made me bring these Divinities, whose abode is in this Region of the Sun to enter­ tain thee with the famous Fable of Orpheus—nay more, I have resolv’d to be thy Friend, I have been privy to thy late attempt of coming hither to these Sunny Mansions ; and since a generous Thirst of knowledge mov’d thee, will to my Power guard thee from ill Accidents.” Over their adventures in the kingdom of the birds and the warfare between the several factions of the solarians we need not linger, for D’Urfey adds nothing here to traditions estab­ lished by Cyrano de Bergerac. At the conclusion the Daemon, who has faithfully followed Gonsales through many tribula­ tions in “Radiant Plains of everlasting Day, and untrod Plains of Light,” prepares the gansas, the “Season being now proper for their Flight,” and the machine moves off, with a farewell from their guide and mentor :

Now then for Earth, and let Immortal Fame Renown amongst great Enterprizes done, Gonzales and his Passage to the Sun. Fainter and less amusing were the reflections of Godwin’s tale in Elkanah Settle’s spectacle, The World in the Moon, pub­ lished in 1697. We hear at the beginning that “the Actors have a general Practise of the Musick and Machines of some part of their New Opera . . . their NEW WORLD IN THE MOON.” In the first spectacle “the Flat-Scene draws, and dis­ covers, Three Grand Arches of Clouds extending to the Roof

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of the House, terminated with a Prospect of Cloud-Work. . . . A Circular part of the back Clouds rolls softly away, and gradu­ ally discovers a Silver Moon, near Fourteen Foot Diameter: After which, the Silver Moon wanes off by degrees, and dis­ covers the World within.” In the moon-world we find, allitera­ tively enough, Clouds, Cupids, Chariots, Children, and Cynthia herself, and learn that the moon is a place of peace and harmony, We know no Discords, know no Wars, Unless the gentle amorous Wars : We fear no shafts but those that fly From Phyllis or from Celia’s eye: Nor Death, but when in melting Charms we die.

At this point occurs “A Dance of Four Swans,” together with the entrance of “Five green Men,” in whom there is perhaps a passing reminiscence of Godwin’s tale of the lunarian “green children” who proved unfit for the moon and were dispatched to earth. But if Settle’s nostalgic “green Men” had hoped to return to their native land, they were disappointed, for “the Swans take Wing, and fly up into the Heavens.” Spectacle suc­ ceeds upon spectacle, the world in the moon affording momen­ tary variety to the threadbare theme of Settle’s typically Restoration plot. That it still seemed a “new” theme to the searchers for novelty, the last words of the play indicate:

Well Sir, and what think you of our New World in the Moon? Wildblood: Why, Faith, Jo, I think, as your Painter has dressed it, ’tis a new World indeed. Hayns : And how do you like it ? Wildblood : As I do a Mistress the better for being a new one. Hayns:

Much more interesting was another sequel to Godwin’s tale, Aphra Behn’s Emperor of the Moon, based in part upon Godwin and in part upon the popular Arlequin I’Empereur dans la Lune, played in Paris by Biancolilli, which in its turn had picked up many clues from the French translation of Domingo’s voyage. The theme of Mrs. Behn’s play was the hoodwinking of the

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learned Doctor Baliardo by two young men, suitors to Eleria and Bellemante, daughter and niece of the Doctor, a plot rendered easy enough because of the known enthusiasm of the learned Doctor for the world in the moon. Scaramouche, the Doctor’s “man,” speaks to his daughter: Scar. : You must know, Madam, your Father (my Master, the Doctor) is a little whimsical, romantick, or Don-Quicksottish, or so. Ela. : Or rather mad. Scar. : That were uncivil to be supposed by me; but lunatic we may call him, without breaking the Decorum of good Man­ ners ; for he is always travelling to the Moon. Ela. : And so religiously believes there is a World there, that he Discourses as gravely of the People, their Government, In­ stitutions, Laws, Manners, Religion, and Constitution, as if he had been bred a Machiavel there.

“As great a Scholar, as grave and wise a Man, in all Argument and Discourse, as can be met with,” the Doctor was but mad nor-nor-west. “Name but the Moon . . . and he grows as mad as the Wind.” The chief cause of the Doctor’s madness, his daughter declared, was the reading of three authors : Scar. : How came he thus infected first ? Ela. : With reading foolish Books, Lucian’s Dialogue of the Lofty Traveller, who flew up to the Moon, and thence to Heaven; an heroick Business, call’d The Man in the Moone, if you’ll believe a Spaniard, who was carried thither, upon an Engine drawn by wild Geese; with another philosophical Piece, A Discourse of the World in the Moon; with a thousand other ridiculous Volumes, too hard to name. Scar. : Ay, this reading of Books is a pernicious thing.

The lovers, in the meaatime, “laying their Heads together,” were preparing the plot of a “Farce” in which they proposed to make the Doctor a leading character. Without difficulty they persuaded him that they were in communication with the inhabitants of the moon: “Our Intelligence is by wrays more secret and sublime, the Stars, and little Daemons of the Air

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inform us of all things, past, present, and to come.” From their daemons they had learned that “the Emperor of the Moon, the mighty Iredonozar”—such is Mrs. Behn’s version of God­ win’s monarch—has fallen in love with a fair mortal. By tinkering with his optical instruments—for the Doctor was always busy with “his Microscope, his Horoscope, his Tele­ scope, and all his Scopes”—the plotters showed him one vision after another of empyreal wonders and easily prepared him for the great news that the mortal who had attracted the moon­ monarch was no other than his daughter Eleria. Flattered as never before, the Doctor willingly provided every opportunity lovers could wish, raising no questions about the strangeness of the creatures who sometimes appeared, for lunarians, he was told, may change their shapes at will, and “transform all they touch, by virtue of a certain Stone they call the Ebula.” At the name of that mystic charm the Doctor pricked his ears: Doct. : That wondrous Ebula, which Gonzales had ? Char. : The same, by virtue of which, all Weight was taken from him, and then with ease the lofty Traveller flew from Par­ nassus Hill, and from Hymethus Mount, and Gerania, and Acrocorinthus, thence to Taygetus, so to Olympus Top, from whence he had but one step to the Moon. Dizzy he grants he was. Doct. : No wonder, Sir, Oh happy great Gonzales! From his visitors Doctor Baliardo learned more about plane­ tary worlds than even Domingo had discovered. One visitor —no other than Scaramouche in disguise—who had “seen all the Regions beneath the Sun and Moon” possessed “the compleatest Map in Christendom” of these regions, including details “which Gonzales himself omitted in the Cosmographia of the Lunar Mundus.” Others told him of means of reaching the moon even more ingenious than by Domingo’s gansas— and here Mrs. Behn added to Godwin’s materials by borrowing copiously from other moon voyagers. Finally the climax of the play occurs, in a great spectacle designed by the lovers :

The Scene in the Front draws off, and shews the Hill of Par­ nassus; a noble large Walk of Trees leading to it, with eight or

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ten Negroes upon Pedestals, rang’d on each side of the Walks. Next Kepiair and Galileus descend on each side, opposite to each other, in Chariots, with Perspectives in their Hands, as viewing the Machine of the Zodiake. Soft Musick plays. Kepler and Galileo are but messengers “sent as Interpreters to Great Iredonozar, Emperor of the Moon, who is descending.” They have made the journey from the moon—presumably now the home of these immortal moon-gazers—“by Cloud thro the Regions of the Air down to the fam’d Parnassus; thence by Water, along the River Helicon, the rest by Post upon two wing’d Eagles.” At their signal, the Doctor looks up to “see the Orbal World descending,” and the moon comes down toward earth, “two thousand Leagues below its wonted Station, to shew Obedience to its proper Monarch.” Showing first like a new moon, the globe increases as it moves forward until the moon is at the full; it opens to show the Emperor and all his train. So childlike is the excitement of the Doctor, whose madness after all was but “a pretty sort of pleasant Disease, when it tickles but in one Vein,” that we have only sympathy for his shock when the players unmask and “Kepiair,” “Galileus,” even the great Iredonozar himself, show too familiar faces. “Keplair” attempted to console him : Be patient, Sir, and call up all your Virtue, Your’re only cur’d, Sir, of a Disease That long has reign’d over your nobler Faculties. Sir, I am your Physician, Friend, and Counsellor; It was not in the Power of Herbs or Minerals, Of Reason, common Sense, and right Religion, To draw you from an Error that unmann’d you.

Sadly the Doctor faced a future in a barren universe in which there is “no Emperor of the Moon, and no Moon-World,” then, an apostate, turned against his former enthusiasm: Burn all my Books, and let my study blaze, Burn all to Ashes, and be sure the Wind

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Scatter the vile contagious monstrous Lyes. . . . I see there’s nothing in Philosophy— Of all that write, he was the wisest Bard, who spoke this mighty Truth—

“He that knew all that ever Learning writ, Knew only this—that he knew nothing yet.”

So the first English moon voyage captivated popular imagina­ tion. Throughout its own century and well into the nineteenth, The Man in the Moone was read with pleasure and amusement at home and abroad. Again and again we shall find later cosmic voyages reflecting it, shall hear passing tributes to Domingo and the gansas. But in the meantime the effect of the little work was to merge with that of another in causing scientific imagination to consider more curiously than ever before the possibility of human flight, whether by birds or by other means. IV

In the same year as The Man in the Moone John Wilkins published the first edition of his Discovery of a Neva World: or, a Discourse tending to prove, that it is probable there may be another Habitable World in the Moon. What had been romance in Godwin’s hands became science in Wilkins’, for Wilkins was no writer of fiction but one of the important members of the Philosophical Society of Oxford and the Royal Society of London. Widely read in the literature of science, Wilkins was equally well read in Lucianic fantasy and in the philosophy from which the cosmic voyage grew. His Discovery is one of the first important books of modern “popular science,” a work written by a man who knew the technicalities of science, yet who—no mean stylist—had the ability to explain those technicalities to the general reader, even to the “meaner capaci­ ties” of ladies who could understand his natural philosophy as they later understood that of Fontenelle. When he wrote the first edition of the Discovery, Wilkins

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knew Kepler well both as scientist and as writer of romance. At that time he did not know Godwin’s tale, which was pub­ lished the same year, though he was familiar with another work of Godwin’s, the Nuncius Inanimatus, which had appeared in 1629 and of which only a single copy remains today. In this "little thing,” written by “our Bishop,” as Wilkins says, he had discovered a fellow-enthusiast for one of his own great interests—the possibility of secret communication with others at a distance. Apparently Wilkins read The Man in the Moone as soon as it appeared. To the 1640 edition of the Discovery he added a section on Godwin’s romance: “Having thus finished this discourse,” he said, “I chanced upon a late fancy to this purpose, under the feigned name of Domingo Gonsales, written by a late reverend and learned bishop; in which (beside sundry particulars wherein this latter chapter did unwittingly agree with it) there is delivered a very pleasant and well-contrived fancy concerning a voyage to this other world.” Briefly he gives the substance of the story, agreeing with Godwin’s thesis that, could birds strong enough be properly trained, they might carry a man to the moon. Indeed, Wilkins found it “easily con­ ceivable, how once every year a man might finish such a voyage.” Enthusiastically Wilkins considered “the great benefit and pleasure to be had by such a journey,” when a man could dis­ cover for himself “the strangeness of the persons, language, arts, policy, religion of those inhabitants, together with the new traffic that might be brought thence.” Again we feel the seventeenth-century fascination with the possibility of a new Columbus. “Do but consider the pleasure and profit of those later discoveries in America,” says Wilkins, “and we must needs conclude this to be inconceivably beyond it. But such imaginations as these, I shall leave to the fancy of the reader. Sic itur ad astra.” With the romances of Kepler and Godwin, Wilkins’ Dis­ covery established the conventions of the moon-voyage for more than a century. There is no one of the full-length English voy­ ages that did not draw from it, and it seems to have been as familiar to romancers on the continent. Yet while Wilkins, with his great prestige, gave fresh impetus to the literary moon

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voyage, he also unconsciously retarded the scientific advance of that genre, since many of the eighteenth-century writers of moon voyages followed the pre-Newtonian Wilkins so slavishly that they failed to take into account the extent to which New­ ton’s discoveries had sometimes disproved and sometimes ad­ vanced the astronomy and physics that Wilkins—standing halfway between Kepler and Newton—took for granted. There is no one of the physical problems faced by Kepler and Godwin in their romances that Wilkins did not discuss. Firmly believing in the possibility of human flight, convinced that man could and would discover those “laws of nature” which alone kept him from making himself a bird, Wilkins grappled in turn with problems of gravity and of the nature of the air. It was he who established for the later romancers the figure many of them adopted for the distance between moon and earth as 179,712 miles; he who gave them the figure, common to many of them, for the “attractive orb” of this great loadstone, the earth. The proponents of the idea of human flight, accord­ ing to Wilkins, need not wrestle with problems of gravitation once their flyers had passed the “sphere of attraction” of the earth. Their problem was merely to find an initial force that would carry the flyer or the flying chariot above the “orb of influence.” And how far does that “influence” continue? “I answer,” declared Wilkins, “ ’tis probable that it does not reach much farther than that orb of thick vaporous air, that encompasseth the earth.” But how far is that? Wilkins con­ sidered in turn “divers ways used by astronomers, to take the altitude of this vaporous air.” The ancients had computed it to be about fifty-two miles, but they were deceived because they proceeded upon a wrong ground. The moderns, using other methods, had estimated the height of the vaporous air as much less. “Cardan answers, not above two miles; Keplar not above 16,000 paces or thereabouts.” Judiciously Wilkins considered these various measurements, then expressed his own opinion: “We will suppose it (which in all likelihood is the most) to be about twenty miles high. So that you see the former thesis remains probable: that if a man could but fly, or by any other means get twenty miles upwards, it were possible for him to

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reach unto the moon.” Once above this “sphere of magnetical virtue which proceeds from the earth,” the flyer will encounter no difficulty. “He might there stand as firmly in the open air, as he can now upon the ground; and not only so, but he may also move with a far greater swiftness, than any living crea­ tures here below. . . . And if he may stand there, why might he not also go there ?” The major problem of the force of gravity settled for himself and for the layman, Wilkins turned to the question of the nature of the air, and again proved to his own satisfaction— and certainly to that of the romancers—that neither the “ex­ treme coldness” nor the “extreme thinness” of the upper air was a really insuperable objection. His arguments, standard in the period before Robert Boyle and his associates had done their important work on the nature of the air, were to be picked up and repeated by the imaginative writers, and we may wait for them to tell us how these problems of flight were solved. Still less difficult did Wilkins find those practical issues faced by all moon voyagers: How shall we eat? Where sleep and refresh ourselves on the way? “I believe he shall scarce find any lodging by the way,” declared Wilkins with sly humor, picking up Ben Jonson’s idea. “No inns to entertain passengers, nor any castles in the air (unless they be enchanted ones) to receive poor pilgrims, or errant knights.” Of all the absorbing passages in The Discovery of a New World, those on “diet and sleep” are the most charming. Here Wilkins momentarily ceases to be a scientist and takes his place with Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne as a “digressor.” Rich in legend and lore, these passages seem at first strangely anachronistic in this basically scientific work, until we remember that this was a Janus age, and that the “true amphibiums” of that bygone period lived with delightful incon­ sistency in two worlds at once. “I suppose there could be no trusting that fancy of Philo the Jew,” pondered Wilkins regret­ fully, “who thinks that the music of the spheres should supply the strength of food.” Back to “authority,” back to the world

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of legend, Wilkins sent his mind, like most minds of his genera­ tion rich in its allusiveness. Did not Albertus Magnus tell of a man who had lived for seven weeks “by the meer drinking of water”? “Mendoca reckons up divers strange relations”: there was Epimenides, who was storied to have slept seventyfive years, and a rustic in Germany who, accidentally covered by a hayrick, slumbered placidly all autumn and the following winter. Perhaps the mariners might be nourished by “aethereal air”; certainly there are plants that grow and shoot forth in the air, without soil on which to feed. Rhonodoletius tells of a priest “that lived forty years upon meer air. As also of a maid in France, and another in Germany, that for divers years together did feed on nothing but this: nay, he affirms that he himself had seen one, who lived till ten years of age without any other nourishment.” Rhonodoletius’ maid in Germany lived on “meer air,” Sir Thomas Browne’s on “the smell of a rose.” “Why may not smells nourish us?” pondered Wilkins. Physi­ cians agree that sweet odors both strengthen and repair the spirits, and was not Democritus able, for days together, to feed himself with the mere smell of hot bread? Or if this will not serve, says Wilkins with another flash of sly and ironic humor—and perhaps with some reminiscence of Donne’s exile of the Jesuits in Ignatius—“Why may not a papist fast so long, as well as Ignatius or Xaverius?” Wilkins the antiquarian was quite willing to give credence to old tales. But Wilkins the scientist had a better solution to this problem. “It is considerable, that since our bodies will then be devoid of gravity, and other impediments of motion, we shall not at all spend ourselves in any labour, and so conse­ quently not need the reparation of diet: but may perhaps live altogether without it, as those creatures have done, who by reason of their sleeping for many days together, have not spent any spirits, and so not wanted any food: which is com­ monly related of serpents, crocodiles, bears, cuckoos, swallows, and such like.” As with diet, so with sleep. Once man has passed beyond gravity, there will be no labor, no wearing down of the system as on this weary loadstone, earth. “We shall not,

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it may be, need the refreshment of sleep. But if we do, we cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers.” Ten years after the first edition of The Discovery of a New World in the Moon, appeared Wilkins’ most extensive work, Mathematical Magick: or, the Wonders that may be performed by Mechanical Geometry, consisting of two books, “Archi­ medes : or, Mechanical Powers,” and “Daedalus : or, Mechanical Motions.” In the latter, along with descriptions of a “sailing Chariot,” a “submarine Ark,” and many other actual or possible inventions—not to mention a long section on perpetual motion —Wilkins included another discourse on the “Art of Flying,” in which he repeated much that he had said in the Discovery and added some new material. While “Daedalus,” too, was widely read by the writers of cosmic voyages, it could not vie in charm with the earlier Discovery, in which Wilkins, as vividly as any romancer of the century, took his generation on an imaginary voyage to the new world in the moon. There is no better “document” than the Discovery to show the mingled web and woof of old legend and new science in the mid-century, as there is no title better illustrating the Janus temper of the Century of Genius than that of Wilkins’ magnum opus. Supernatural beliefs of the past, reflected even in Kepler, were gradually giving way to the scientific realism of the future, but science itself was still shrouded in mysteries. “Wonders” were already being performed, as Wilkins’ sub­ title suggests, “by Mechanical Geometry.” “Mathematicks” was pointing the way to a “mechanical” future, in which magic would be forgotten. But John Wilkins and his contemporaries in the seventeenth century lived without contradiction in a world of “Mathematical Magick.”

V

Nearly a hundred years elapsed between Godwin’s Man in the Moone and the only other full-length English moon voyage to use the device of “harnessing of birds,” A Voyage to Cacklogallinia, published in 1727 by a pseudonymous “Captain

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Samuel Brunt.” Posterity has continued to preserve the anonymity of that author more zealously than he might have wished. Whatever his parentage—he informs us that his father and mother both died in his infancy—he may best be referred for ancestry to the illustrious family of literary mariners of which his progenitor, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, was the most distinguished member. A Voyage to Cacklogallinia has been attributed both to Swift and to Defoe, but there is no valid reason to believe that either was concerned with it, except in so far as both gave impetus to dozens of lesser writers in that form of composition. On the one hand this is a “Robinsonade,” on the other an obvious imitation of the fourth book of Gulli­ ver’s Travels which had been published a year before Brunt’s lesser work appeared. The century that had passed since Godwin wrote his bird voyage had caused many changes which make the eighteenth­ century moon voyage different in important ways from its seventeenth-century models. Brunt knew a great deal about science that Godwin and even Kepler could not have guessed, and while in his discussion of gravitation and the nature of the air, he followed Wilkins too slavishly for his own originality, nevertheless he not only lived in the Age of Newton, but pub­ lished his little tale in the very year of Newton’s death. The originality of A Voyage to Cacklogallinia does not arise from its science, however. It comes from the fact that this is the first moon voyage, the inspiration for which is to be found primarily in contemporary economics. It is not great literature, shining as it does only by light reflected from Defoe and Swift. I resurrect it for you, not as a forgotten “classic” but because it is readily intelligible to a generation that has lived through at least one great inflation and great depression, and seems destined to live through another. This is a satire upon that great orgy of speculation, the South Sea Bubble. The period following the Revolution of 1688 had seen tremendous changes in attitudes toward credit and specu­ lation in England. A new and powerful economic instrument had been put into the hands of men who had not as yet dis­ covered its dangers. With the natural confusion that ensued

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between “credit” and “wealth,” and a new emphasis upon possible values inherent in “expectations of wealth,” rather than immediate control over money, an unheard-of speculative emphasis entered into business. Rapid increase in new trades and new industrial systems afforded possibilities of immediate rise to affluence. The public engaged in speculation to a degree never before known. Exaggerated gains, violent fluctuations in prices, meteoric rises and collapses gave rein to the gambling spirit perennial in man. The word “projects” became a recur­ rent motif, curiously familiar to our own generation, which need only turn Defoe’s “Essay on Projects” into contemporary language to see the similarities between that age and ours. Of the many speculative schemes of the earlier eighteenth century, none is better known than the South Sea Bubble. After a long period during which English trade with the Spanish West Indies had been carried on by subterfuge, an Act of Parliament in 1710 incorporated into a joint stock company the state creditors, upon the basis of their loan of ten million pounds to the government, and conferred upon them the monopoly of English trade with the Indies. In spite of this, however, the South Sea Company found itself so hampered and limited in credit that it offered to convert the national debt into a “single redeemable obligation” to the company in return for a monopoly of British foreign trade. The immediate effect of that offer is reflected in the many descriptions, both serious and satiric, of an era of speculation which has sounded fantastic to many generations—but not to yours and mine! From this background, so poignantly in the minds of his contemporaries, Captain Samuel Brunt drew the materials for his satire. The earlier sections of A Voyage to Cacklogallinia are so derivative and so conventional that we need not pause over them. Suffice it to say that after the usual perils of bandits, buccaneers, and shipwreck, another mariner was cast ashore in a strange country, which he found inhabited by birds, as Gulliver found the land of the Houyhnhnms peopled by horses. With thinly veiled satire, Brunt describes the government, customs, and society of Cacklogallinia, a country remarkably reminiscent of England under Walpole.

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As always, our traveler quickly learned the bird language and settled down to life among the natives, becoming the pro­ tégé of the Chief Minister of the birds, an officer whose perch was only too precarious. Since the country had been impover­ ished by wars for sixty-seven years, “every Brain was at Work to project Methods for raising Money to pay the Inter­ est,” so that the whole time of the Minister was occupied in passing upon extraordinary schemes and proposed “Projects.” Only too glad to rid himself of this onerous duty, he appointed Captain Samuel Brunt “Chief Project Examiner” of the nation. The long list of “bubbles” actually proposed in England is still accessible and may be found in many books. Nothing in Brunt’s description of the “Projects” of cloud-cockoo-land is more fantastic and absurd than those he had heard discussed at home in England: The first project proposed to him “was the laying of a Tax on Cloath, and all manner of Stuffs. . . . There were Projects for taxing Soot, Corn, Ribbons, for coin­ ing all the Plate of the Nobility, for prohibiting the wearing of Gold or Silver. Some were for the Government’s taking all the Torch-trees (which gave a Light, and are used like our Candles) and dispose of them, by which great Sums might be raised.” Tax after tax was suggested—on those who kept coaches, on those who wore gold or silver spurs, “but these touching only the Rich, the Minister would not listen to.” One tax the Minister endorsed for obvious reasons: “The Tax he approved of most, was on the Light of the Sun, according to the Hours it was enjoy’d; so that the poor Peasant, who rose with it, paid for Twelve Hours Day-light, and the Nobility and Gentry, who kept their Beds till Noon, paid only for Six.” The most spectacular and most immediately popular of all the “Projects” brought to Brunt—here our themes come to­ gether—was a proposal that an expedition be sent to the moon in the hope of extracting gold from the mountains of the moon and bringing it back to Cacklogallinia. “He who de­ liver’d that Project . . . was caress’d abundantly.” In vain did Captain Brunt rehearse all the arguments against a world in the moon and the possibility of getting there which he had inherited from the seventeenth century. He was answered by

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“modern” Cacklogallinian philosophers, who saw nothing more incredible in reaching the moon than in Brunt’s tale of sailing across a vast body of water unknown to Cacklogallinians, to discover their world. Indeed, they slyly suggested, perhaps Brunt himself was a lunarian. “I myself might have dropp’d out of that World, which was more reasonable than to believe the Story I told, of having pass’d so great a Sea.” Worsted in his philosophical argument against the existence of a world in the moon, Brunt attempted a more practical approach when he and the Projector were called before the Bird Emperor. In this dialogue Captain Samuel Brunt shows himself curiously antiquated, for the whole passage is merely a recapitulation of what Wilkins had said more than eighty years before. In vain did Brunt stress all these problems dis­ cussed by an earlier generation. Wilkins’ chief difficulty of human flight was of course no difficulty at all to a nation of birds. “I look upon the Distance, which you have computed to be about 179,712 Lapidians (answerable to so many English miles),” said the Emperor replying to Wilkins’ figures, re­ peated by the English Brunt, “to be none at all, since we have Cacklogallinians, who, with Provisions for a Week, will fly 480 Lapidians a Day, and hold it for many Days.” Even could the birds fly “at the rate of 1500 Lapidians a Day,” replied the still doubting Samuel, “the Journey could not be ended in less than six Moons,” and, again, there were no inns by the way, no places to rest. The Projector won, and Samuel Brunt lost the battle. “The only Talk now in Town was our designed Journey to the Moon, for which a great many of the swiftest Flyers were inlisted with Promises of great Reward.” Reluctantly Brunt agreed to head the convoy. A specially designed “Palanquin” was made for him, since he alone among the company was not a natural flyer. Such palanquins manned by “lower-class” birds were nothing new in Cacklogallinia, to be sure. One of Brunt’s first surprises in bird-land had occurred when he realized that while all Cacklogallinians could fly, few of the nobility bothered to use their wings—as why should they? After all, men of quality in England could walk—but how

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many of them did? The palanquins which the Cacklogallinian carriage-makers designed for Brunt and the Projector were “close and lined with Down,” for, in spite of the logic of the philosophers, the Projector was taking no chances with that possible “extream Coldness” of the air. The palanquins, too, were “made sharp at each End, to cut the Air”—so far as I have discovered, the first instance in aeronautical history of a streamlined flying chariot! Upon the announcement of the new project, wild speculation broke out upon the Cacklogallinian ’Change. “A Company was erected, Shares sold of the Treasure we were to bring back; and happy was he who could first subscribe. These Subscrip­ tions were sold at 2000 per Cent. Advantage, and in less than two Months, the Time spent in preparing for our Journey, I saw at least Five Hundred Lacqueys, who had fallen into the Trade of buying and selling these Subscriptions in their gilt Palanquins, and Trains of Servants after them.” In Cacklogallinia as earlier in the London he remembered only too vividly, Captain Samuel Brunt saw men mortgage their houses to purchase shares in a wildcat company. As in London, so in Cacklogallinia, speculation was not confined to one sex, for the Squabbaws, bird-ladies of quality, sold their jewels to play the market. The English Brunt must have recalled many of the anonymous ballads sold on the London streets during the period of the South Sea Bubble, one of which reported: Our greatest ladies hither come, And ply in chariots daily; Oft pawn their jewels for a sum To venture in the Alley.

Spectacular as was the rise in shares in the Cacklogallinian moon-project, it was no more meteoric than had been the rise in London, when between April and July 1720 shares in the South Sea Bubble rose from £120 to £1020. No matter what Brunt thought of the philosophy and science of the moon­ project, he was forced to admire the practical statesmanship of the Minister. “This open’d my Eyes, and I found I had

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been very short-sighted, in condemning the Minister for giving Ear to a Project so contrary to Reason: But when I saw the noblest Families, and such whose Ruine was necessary to his own Support, sell their Estates to buy Shares, I look’d upon him as the wisest Minister in the known World; and was lost in Wonder, when I consider’d the Depth of his Designs.” Brunt had met his master. He ceased to protest and entered wholeheartedly into preparations for the great ascent from the earth to the moon. Again, as with Domingo Gonsales, we make that ascent from a mountain. But from now on the differences will prove much more striking than the similarities. A century of science had done its work. Brunt’s was no such fortuitous journey as had been Lucian’s or Godwin’s. His was a moon voyage made deliberately, with a great deal of knowledge of the physical difficulties and of the laws of nature. Slowly Brunt and the birds ascended the mountain, deliberately acclimating themselves to the more rarefied mountain air in preparation for ascent into the stratosphere. Brunt’s generation knew much more than Godwin’s about “trial and error.” Flyer after flyer was sent aloft with Volatilio, the Projector, who since he had proposed the journey, had been ordered to take the initial risk of ascent above the mountaintop. For a moment even his daring spirit quailed when he found the air at the summit “too thin to continue there, without the Help of humected Spunges,” but his logic and his science—not to mention his enthusiasm—still persuaded him that “the Air above the second Region” would prove “rather denser than that near the Earth,” and birds and man might breathe normally again. Brunt himself had more difficulty than did the birds who, after all, were accustomed to more rarefied air. Ascending to the “Mid-space” of the moun­ tain, he “found a vast Alteration in the Air, which even here was very sensibly rarefied,” and “was obliged, by the Thinness of the Air, to have Recourse to my wet Spunge, and was Four and Twenty Hours before I could intirely remove it.” Yet as he gradually became acclimated, and as daily the bird-messengers flew higher and higher into the stratosphere, he too began to feel some of the excitement that exhilarated all the others.

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From the summit of the mountain, as he waited the return of the explorers whom he sent every day into the “upper air,” Brunt sent bird-messengers daily back to His Majesty, obeying “secret orders” he had opened for the first time upon the moun­ taintop, in which he read: “I need not tell you the Publick must be amused with Hopes of Success, tho’ you have Reason to despair of it.” So the Cacklogallinian ’Change daily reflected fluctuation from wild enthusiasm to temporary despair, as Brunt’s messages came back. The arrival of the first enthusiastic reports, based upon Volatilio’s reaching the summit of the moun­ tain, provoked a new burst of excitement and speculation. “This Messenger told me,” noted Brunt, “that on the Contents of my Letter being publish’d, the Town was illuminated through­ out, and such a number of Coaches and Palanquins bespoke, that he believed at our Return, we should find none out of them but the Ostriches.” After seven days of trial flight, Volatilio declared himself ready to make the crucial test, which he believed would settle once for all the question of the extent of the “orb of influence” of the earth. “Wrapt up as warm as possible, accompanied by two Servants, he parted with great Alacrity, and we soon lost Sight of him. Some Half a Score, in Complaisance, took a Flight of three Hours to see him part of his Way towards his Discovery.” At the return of that convoy, Brunt sent back an express flyer to inform His Majesty that during their ascent they had found the air no rarer, and the cold if anything less intense. “This News at Court made every one run mad after Shares, which the Proprietors sold at what Rate they pleas’d.” Day and night passed, and still another day, with no word of Volatilio. Gloom had settled upon Brunt and the Cacklogallinians, when, as evening of the second day began to close in, suddenly they saw the flyer far off, like an evening star. Ex­ citement ran high. “Courage, my Friend,” such was the first salutation of the breathless ace, “I have pass’d the Atmosphere, and, by Experience, have found my Conjecture true; for being out of the magnetick Power of the Earth, we rested in the Air, as on the solid Earth, and in an Air extreamly temperate, and less subtle than what we breathe.” At once Brunt dispatched

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another express messenger to the palace, “but the Courtiers having no more shares to sell, gave out, that Volatilio did not return as he promis’d, and it was expected, that I despair’d of the Undertaking, and believ’d him lost. This was such a Damp to the Town, that Shares fell to Half Value, and none of the Courtiers would buy, sell they cou’d not, having (I mean those let into the Secret) already dispos’d of all by their Agents, tho’ they pretended the contrary. . . . The Messenger return­ ing, told me, that my last Letter had fallen the Shares to five per Cent, under Par, nothing but Lamentations echo’d thro’ the Streets, and it was impossible to give an Idea of the Change it had occasion’d.” Leaving the Cacklogallinian Exchange in a state of utmost confusion, Brunt and his bird companions, after an eight days’ delay required by the Emperor while the Cacklogallinian court had an opportunity to manipulate the market, at last took off to determine for themselves the possibility of flight to the moon. And now Brunt discovered by “experience” what Godwin too had learned. In less than an hour and a half after their departure, Volatilio “folded his Wings, and came to me on Foot, and told me I might get out and stretch my Limbs. My Palanquineers stood still, and confirmed what he said; and more, that they had not for a Quarter of an Hour past been sensible of my Weight, which had lessen’d by Degrees, so as not to be felt at all.” Again one of our cosmic voyagers has experienced the strangest sensation ever known to man. Dismounting from his chariot, he found himself a disembodied spirit in a region where weight did not exist. “I could with as much Ease lift a Palanquin of Provisions, which did not on Earth weigh less than 500 Weight, as I could on our Globe raise a Feather.” Whatever interest or amusement we may have found in A Voyage to Cacklogallinia ceases when we land in the new world. Brunt’s moon-world is little more than a spectacle of the sort he had seen upon the eighteenth-century stage. It is largely the abode of Phantosmes passans et traversans, like the early moon-world of the Satyre Menippee. The shades Brunt met in the moon were spirits of terrestrial men who had suffered from what a modern generation would call “suppressed desires,”

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creatures who changed their grotesque shapes in the twinkling of an eye and indulged in most extraordinary antics, which perhaps a Freudian could interpret, as I cannot. “Being loos’d from the Body by Sleep,” Brunt learned, we repressed mortals resort to the moon, and for a short space of time “indulge the Passions which predominate, or undergo the Misfortunes they fear while they are in your Globe.” The end of the story I can tell you rapidly. The project of extracting gold from the mountains of the moon came to nothing. The Selenites proved to be idealists, men governed by philosophy, a state of affairs that appals the materialist, and leaves him helpless and hopeless. The men in the moon, Brunt discovered when he was allowed to talk philosophy with them —after an ignominious period when Volatilio, that great phi­ losopher, had been packed off to the barnyard with the lunar fowls with which he belonged!—have no passions to gratify, no wants to supply. Living lives of perfect peace, tranquillity, and contemplation, they wait quietly and dispassionately throughout their lives preparing themselves for that event for which even they have no other word than “death,” waiting for the period when the Understanding shall return to its Creator. To such men as these what was the gold in the moun­ tains of the moon? “Let none admire,” said Milton, “that riches grow in Hell.” Riches may grow in the moon, but the lunarians have no interest in them, nor do they intend that others shall. “Had the Cacklogallinian Prince known thus much,” the Selenite declared, “he would have been sensible how vain were his Expectations of getting from us the Gold he thirsts after; For were we to meet with the purest Veins of that Metal, by removing only one Turf, not a Selenite would think it worth his while.” Such was the answer of eighteenth­ century men in the moon to an England that had gone mad through gambling, an England that found its “values” in gold rather than in the contemplation of eternal things. Captain Samuel Brunt returned to earth. The lunarians did not want him in the rational world of the moon. His machina­ tions continued to the last, for he learned from the moon-men how to “steer thro’ the Air ... to find some Part of the

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Terrestrial World, known and frequented by Europeans.” Brunt’s pocket compass served his purpose. He and Volatilio descended to the Blue Mountain in Jamaica, where they said their farewells, Brunt taking off toward his familiar England, Volatilio forced to find his wandering way—if he ever did find it—to a Cacklogallinia devastated by depression, where, as Brunt coolly reminded him, he would “meet with a disagree­ able Welcome from the Emperor and the whole Court.” On the whole, an unpleasant character, this pseudonymous Captain Samuel Brunt, I always think when I reread him. But he affords me a scholar’s privilege. In a way I discovered him; I published him for modern times, because his satire on the South Sea Bubble proved so “contemporary” when I dug him up in 1930—and still proves “contemporary” as I reread him in 1946. But since I resurrected him, I should have the privilege, I think, of sending him back to the Limbo from which he came. He has served my purpose by bringing to an end still another of the themes of my voyagers to the moon. The English moon voy­ age by Wilkins’ second method, “the help of fowls,” is ended.

CHAPTER - FOUR

Wanton Wings I

Men rashly mounting through the empty Skie, With wanton wings shall crosse the Seas well-nigh: And (doubt-less) if the Geometrician finde Another World, where (to his working minde) To plan at pleasure and convenience His wondrous Engines and rare Instruments, Even (like a little God) in time he may To some new place transport this World away.

o Du Bartas prophesied at the beginning of the period when men began to labor more assiduously than ever before to make “wanton wings” in order that they might ascend into the element of birds. When the “Geometrician” Galileo discovered a new world, men sought less to “transport this World away” than to scale the heavens and learn what was done in the orb of the moon. “If the heavens then be pene­ trable,” Burton wrote in the Anatomy of Melancholy, “it were not amiss in this aerial progress to make wings, and fly up, which that Turk in Busbequius made his fellow-citizens in Constantinople believe he would perform; and some new-fangled wits, methinks, should some time or other find out: or if that may not be, yet with a Galileo’s glass, or Icaromenippus’s wings in Lucian, command the Spheres and Heavens, and see what is done amongst them.” “Icaromenippus’s wings in Lucian” had been well enough in their day. But vague legendary means of possible flight were not enough for the generation that had seen a new earth in the heavens. As the scientific minds of the period laid the basis for modern physiology and ornithology and came to understand more exactly the anatomy of both man and bird, they sought to invent artificial wings by which man might emulate the bird and fly in the air as he already emulated the fish and swam in the sea. 109

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From 1490 until 1514, the myriad-minded Leonardo da Vinci pondered at intervals the possibility of human flight. His important contribution to the history of aviation, “Sul Volo degli Uccelli,” written in 1505, remained in manuscript for many years, but some of his theories were known among his contemporaries. “A bird,” he said, “is an instrument working according to mathematical law, an instrument which it is within the capacity of man to reproduce in all its movements.” There was, he believed, a difference between the “vital” princi­ ple of the bird and the “mechanical” principle man must employ —a distinction which persisted until Descartes developed his theory that birds, like all animals, were “automata.” Leonardo, persuaded that man might compensate for the lack of a vital principle of flight by mechanical ingenuity, directed his atten­ tion to the need of study of both the physiological principles of the muscles of birds and the physical principles of air, the medium of flight, with results important to both anatomy and physics. Leonardo was not to achieve his ambition of making a flight from the summit of Monte Ceceri, but possibly his influence lay behind the reputed attempt of Giovanni Baptista Danti to fly over the lake of Trasimeno by means of artificial wings. Here is an account of that flight as it was told in the seven­ teenth century. One day, towards the close of the fifteenth century, whilst many of the principal gentry had come to Perugia to honour the wedding of Giovanni Paolo Baglioni, and some lancers were riding down the street by his palace, Giovanni Baptisti Danti unexpectedly and by means of a contrivance of wings that he had constructed proportionate to the size of his body took off from the top of a tower nearby, and with a horrible hissing sound flew successfully across the great Piazza, which was densely crowded. But (oh horror of an unexpected accident!) he had scarcely flown three hundred paces on his way to a certain point when the mainstay of his left wing gave way, and being unable to support himself with the right alone, he fell on a roof and was injured in conse­ quence. Those who saw not only this flight but also the wonderful construction of the framework of the wings, said—and tradition

A FLYING LOVER AND HIS LADY From Restif de la Bretonne, La Découverte Australe par un Homme-volant

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bears them out—that he several times flew over the waters of Lake Trasimene to learn how he might come to earth. But, notwithstand­ ing his great genius, he never succeeded.

Perhaps Danti succeeded in flying by artificial wings. As modern historians disagree, one accepting, another rejecting the account as tradition and legend, so too they disagree about Paola Guidotti of Lucca who also was said to have put into practice some of Leonardo’s theories and to have succeeded in making a number of gliding flights using wings made of whalebone covered with feathers. Yet whether or not his fol­ lowers actually achieved flight, there is no question either of Leonardo’s genius or of the basic soundness of his observations and experiments on both birds and human anatomy. A modern critic, Louise Faure-Favier, has suggested that Leonardo’s scientific study of wings is reflected in his art. Cer­ tainly the illustrations of early flyers found in printed books seem absurd—Daedalus and Icarus, Bladud or Elmer of Malmesbury attempting to fly on minute feathered wings at­ tached to the shoulder or at most to the upper arm. The preRaphaelite angels, too, supernatural though they were, could hardly have flown far upon their petty wings, but Leonardo’s Angel of the Annunciation seems a natural as well as a super­ natural flyer :

L’ange de l’Annonciation du Vinci a des ailes très longues, aussi longues que sons corps. Cet ange, lorsqu’il étend ses ailes, est un bon planeur. Il possède une envergure, une surface portante qui lui permet de se sustener en l’air. Déjà, dans VAnnonciation de Fra Angelico, on ne remarque pas sans étonnement le forme géomé­ trique des ailes de l’ange, dont l’empennage régulier rappelle la structure d’un plan d’avion. One kind of “wings”—at least the seventeenth-century writers so described the parachute—had already been invented by Leonardo. Centuries earlier, we have heard, the Chinese Em­ peror Shun had made a safe descent in some sort of parachute, but of that Leonardo and his contemporaries knew nothing. A picture and description of an early Homo Volans making

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a jump may be seen in one of the rarest of all books in the history of aviation, the Machinae Novae of Faustus Veranzius, published in the last years of the sixteenth century with texts in Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, and German. Many others than Robert Burton knew the story of ‘'that Turk in Busbequius,” which is told at length in The Generali Historie of the Turkes by Richard Knolles. The “active Turke had openly given it out that against an appointed time he would from the top of a high tower in the tilt-yard flie by the space of a furlong.” Great excitement followed the announcement and a vast throng assembled to see the show. “The Turke according to his promise, upon the top of the high tower shewed himself, girt in a long and large white garment, gathered into many plites and fold­ ings . . . wherewith the foolish man had vainely persuaded himselfe to have hovered in the aire, as do birds upon their wings, or to have guided himselfe as are ships with their sailes.” At the crucial moment the Turk’s courage momentarily failed and he hesitated, but pricked on by “the beholders still laugh­ ing, and crying out, ‘Flie Turke, flie, how long shall we expect thy flight?’ ” he suddenly jumped and “committed himselfe with his vaine hope unto the aire,” only to share the fate of so many early flyers, for “he brake his neck, his armes and legs, with almost all the bones of his bodie.” And yet he lived—prob­ ably to his own regret, for he became the laughing-stock of Constantinople and “could not walke in the streets underided.” Wherever he went he heard the jeering words, “Flie Turke, flie!” From this time on we shall find suggestions of the parachute in many of our authors, as we find increasing study of the anatomy of birds and of human beings, together with many serious and fantastic proposals for the making of artificial wings. “Wanton wings” alone will not lead us to the moon, as will our other devices, since even the most enthusiastic of our ancestors realized the limitations of human strength. Neverthe­ less the idea of such wings greatly stimulated science and, like our other themes, passed rapidly into literature.

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II

The possibility of flight by artificial wings dominated the minds of scientific experimenters in England throughout the seventeenth century, giving way only gradually to the “flying chariot” which became the great enthusiasm of the eighteenth century. In the history of wings Wilkins was again a pioneer, not only in stimulating popular interest but in communicating his own enthusiasm to associates in the Philosophical Society of Oxford and to members of the Royal Society. His master Bacon, in the New Atlantis, had declared that the “Fathers of Salomon’s House” had discovered “some Degrees of Flying in the Ayre,” in which they imitated the flight of birds. In the Sylva Sylvarum, too, Bacon had listed two experiments: “Experiment solitary touching flying in the air,” and “Ex­ periment solitary touching the flying of unequal bodies in the air.” While some modern authorities on the history of aviation have made a good deal of these “experiments,” Bacon’s descrip­ tions are so vague and lacking in circumstantiality that other historians cannot feel that the later Bacon made any advance over the earlier. In his Discovery of a New World Wilkins naturally dis­ cussed artificial wings only briefly. Concerned as he was with means by which man might reach the moon, he merely said: “It is not perhaps impossible that a man may be able to fly by the application of wings to his own body: as angels are pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and as hath been attempted by divers.” But in his long section on human flight in Daedalus he investigated the possibility more thor­ oughly. “It is the most obvious and common opinion,” he tells us, “that this may be effected by wings fastened immediately to the body, this coming nearest to the imitation of nature, which should be observed in such attempts as these. This is that way which Fredericus Hermannus, in his little discourse de arte volandi, doth only mention and insist upon; and if we may trust credible story, it hath been frequently attempted not without success.” He reminded his readers of such early

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attempted flights as that of Elmer of Malmesbury, and added that “Busbequius speaks of a Turk in Constantinople, who attempted something this way. M. Burton mentioning this quotation,” he wrote, “doth believe that some new-fangled wit (it is his cynical phrase) will some time or other find out this art.” Burton might scoff, but Wilkins was a “modern,” an ardent Baconian, sharing Bacon’s optimism over human potentialities, his belief in the ability of man to learn from nature, and by “imitating” her to improve upon her works. Not for him the pessimism of some of his contemporaries who looked back rather than forward, believing no further progress possible. “By far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein,” Bacon had written in the Novum Organum, “is found in this—that men despair and think things impossible.” In 1640 Wilkins was sure that his “modern” age had transcended that of the “ancients.” “If we doe but consider,” he wrote, “by what steps and leasure, all arts doe usually rise to their growth, we shall have no cause to doubt why this also may not hereafter be found out amongst other secrets. . . . Time will come, when the indeavours of other ages, shall bring such things to light as now lie hid in obscurities. Arts are not yet come to their solstice.” To be sure, errors had been made in the past, but to Wilkins as to Bacon awareness of those errors should breed hope rather than discouragement. To the “cynical phrase” of the Anatomist of Melancholy he replied with optimistic belief in man’s ulti­ mate conquest of the air, in words which echoed in literature for a century, caught- up and repeated now seriously, now satirically by popular writers :

Though the truth is, most of these artists did unfortunately mis­ carry by falling down, and breaking their arms or legs, yet that may be imputed to their want of experience, and too much fear, which must needs possess men in such dangerous and strange attempts. Those things that seem very difficult and fearful at the first, may grow very facil after frequent trial and exercise: and therefore he that would effect any thing in this kind, must be brought up to the constant practice of it from his youth; trying

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first only to use his wings, in running on the ground, as an ostrich or tame goose will do, touching the earth with his toes; and so by degrees learn to rise higher, till he shall attain unto skill and confidence, I have heard it from credible testimony, that one of our own nation hath proceeded so far in this experiment, that he was able by the help of wings, in such a running pace, to step con­ stantly ten yards at a time. Why is it incredible that “practice and custom” should enable man to do this, when we consider the dexterity we take for granted in much lesser matters ? “Common tumblers and dancers on the rope” perform feats of skill impossible for the average human being, merely because of long practice. Indeed, such “funambulones, or dancers on the rope,” declared Wilkins, actually achieve “somewhat like to flying, when they will, with their heads forwards, slide down a long cord extended; being fastened at one end to the top of some high tower, and the other at some distance on the ground, with wings fixed to their shoulders, by the shaking of which they will break the force of their descent.” Earlier experimenters like Elmer of Malmesbury and Damian had thought only of wings attached to human arms. Wilkins went farther, as did the ornithologists and physiologists of his period: But now, because the arms extended are weak, and easily wearied, therefore the motions by them are like to be but short and slow, answerable it may be to the flight of such domestic fowl as are most conversant on the ground, which of themselves we see are quickly weary; and therefore much more would the arm of a man. as being not naturally designed to such a motion. It were therefore worth the inquiry, to consider whether this might not be more probably effected by the labour of the feet, which are naturally more strong and indefatigable: in which con­ trivance the wings should come down from the shoulders on each side, as in the other, but the motion of them should be from the legs being thrust out, and drawn in again one after another, so as each leg should move both wings ; by which means a man should (as it were) walk or climb up into the air; and then the hands and arms might be at leisure to help and direct the motion, or for

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any other service proportionable to their strength. Which con­ jecture is not without good probability, and some especial advan­ tages above the other.

Yet in spite of all that Wilkins had to say about the possi­ bility of wings, his real interest was in the “flying chariot.” More important in the history of artificial wings in England was that versatile Robert Hooke at whom Pepys looked with eager interest on his second visit to the Royal Society, noting in his diary that night that “Mr. Hooke is the most, and promises the least, of any man in the world that ever I saw.” A first-rate scientist, Hooke was also an expert craftsman and an excellent draftsman. One reads the records of the Royal Society with some amusement and much sympathy for this son of Martha! If a new instrument or invention was reported to the Society at home or from abroad: “Mr. Hooke was in­ structed to make a model,” or “Mr. Hooke was ordered to draw a plan,” and always Mr. Hooke did so, even though the reports from which he worked were vague and scanty in details. At least as early as 1655, when the Royal Society was still a foundation of the future, Hooke was making experiments on human flight. He shared Wilkins’ enthusiasm, even though he always shook a doubting head over Wilkins’ obsession with the flying chariot. In his Micrographia, which he presented to the Royal Society shortly after its foundation, he wrote: “The way of flying in the air seems principally impracticable by reason of the want of strength in human Muscles; if therefore that could be supplied, it were, I think, easier to make twenty con­ trivances to perform the office of wings.” In 1660 Hooke recorded the fact that during that year he had made “many trials about the Art of Flying in the Air, and moving very swift on the Land and Water, of which I shew’d several Designs to Dr. Wilkins then Warden of Wadham College.” He reported that he had made a model which, by means of springs and wings, raised and supported itself in the air, but when it came to adapting his design to human flight, he faced again the problem of “the want of strength in human Muscles.” Both he and Wilkins were momentarily discouraged

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by the difficulties encountered, but five years later Hooke was still engaged upon the problem, as the minutes of the Royal Society show. On June 21, 1665, “Occasion being given to discourse on the art of flying, and Dr. Wren being desired to leave with the society what he had considered on this subject promised to do so.” There follow Christopher Wren’s sugges­ tions and Hooke’s criticisms, all dealing with that perennial problem of the want of strength in human muscles. Hooke and Wren continued their interest in human flight as did the Royal Society. On February 11, 1674—5, “Dr. Croome read his discourse concerning the manner, how flying is per­ formed by birds; showing, in order thereunto, the structure of a duck’s wing and body, especially of the muscles and their insertion into the humereus.” At the same meeting, Hooke “intimated, that there was a way which he knew, to produce strength, so as to give to one man the strength of ten or twenty men or more, and to contrive muscles for him of an equivalent strength to those in birds. He hinted likewise, that a contrivance might be made of something more proper for the feet of man to tread the air, than for his arms to beat the air.” In the following year, Hooke read with interest the careful discussion of birds’ flight in the classic work of the greatest English ornithologist, Francis Willughby, another Fellow of the Royal Society, in which Willughby discussed at length the principles of flight, and proved by exact and careful measurement Wilkins’ contention that the strength of a bird’s wings is comparable to the strength not of human arms but of hitman legs. More than once Hooke mentioned hearing or reading accounts of men of his own time who had professed to have discovered means of flying by artificial wings. On one occasion he paid tribute to Roger Bacon as a pioneer of flight, and added: We have not wanted later Instances in England, of several In­ genious Men, who have employed their Wits and Time about this Design. Particularly, I have been credibly informed, that one Mr. Gascoigne did about 40 Years since try it with good Effect; tho he since dying, the Thing also died with him. And even now, there are not wanting some in England who affirm themselves able to

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do it, and that they have proved as much by Experiment. We have little or no account of the ways they have taken to effect their Designs; but we may conclude them defective in somewhat or other, since we do not find them brought into common Use. In Daedalus, Wilkins, discussing such inventions—the rela­ tionship to human flight of such volant Automata as the dove of Archytas and the eagle of Regiomontanus—had urged in­ quiry into such matters by amateurs, men of his age “who have both leisure and means for such experiments.” Perhaps the second Marquis of Worcester, who had both means and leisure, had been impressed by that admonition when he made the many experiments he reported in 1663 in his Century of Inventions, among them: “How to make a Man to Fly; which I have seen tried with a little Boy of ten years old, in a Barn, from one end to the other, on a Hay-Mow.” Even the usually phlegmatic Hooke showed excitement when in 1679 the Journal des Sgavans published a statement that during the preceding year a French smith named Besnier had actually achieved a flight “from a high place cross a river to a pretty distance” by means of a contrivance of four folding wings fastened to his arms and legs. Here was another Domingo Gonsales who had taken off from a hill conveniently situated by water. But this was not fiction; this was attested fact. As rapidly as possible Hooke produced for the Society a model of the contrivance and explained the device, accom­ panied by a diagram. The paper is still extant in the Philo­ sophical Transactions:

The Art of Flying: by S. Besnier. The Sieur Besnier, a Smith of Sable in the County of Maine, hath invented an Engine for Flying. It consists of two Poles or Rods, which have at each end of them an oblong Chassie of Taffety; with Chassie folds from above down­ wards, as the frame of a folding Window Chassie. He sits these Poles upon his Shoulders, so that two of the Chassies may be before him, and the other two behind him. The order of moving them is thus: When the right Hand strikes down the right Wing before. A, the left Leg by means of the String E, pulls downwards the left Wing behind, B; then immediately after the left Hand moved or

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strikes downwards the left Wing before, C; and at the same time the right Foot, by the String F, moves or pulls down the right Wing behind D; and so successively, or alternately, the diagonally opposite Wings always moving downwards, or striking the Air together. The invention of the French smith, which seems to have been an attempt to combine wings with the principle of the para­ chute, suggests that flyers of the seventeenth century had already proceeded far beyond those early Britons from Bladud to Damian whose conception of wings was limited to feathers attached only to the arms. Crude though Besnier’s invention was and short as his flight, enthusiasts of aviation worked for years upon improvements of his principle. Allusions to the French smith became almost as common as references to Godwin’s gansas. The account of his exploit was repeated again and again until in the mid-eighteenth century it formed the basis for a satirical scene that seems unconsciously prophetic to our generation. In his Scribleriad—one of the many imitations of Pope’s Dunciad—Richard Owen Cam­ bridge included among various mock epic contests an aerial fight between two aviators, ironically enough a German and a Briton. Let brisker youths their active nerves prepare, Fit their light silken wings, and skim the buxom air,

bade Scriblerus, evidently bored by more conventional con­ tests. He was answered at once: Mov’d by my words, two youths of equal fire Spring from the crowd, and to the prize aspire. The one a German of distinguish’d fame : His rival from projecting Britain came. They spread their wings, and with a rising bound, Swift at the word together quit the ground.

If we may judge from the picture—for Owen gives no descrip­ tion in his text—the conservative Briton had contented him­

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self with the old Icarian wings of his ancestor King Bladud; the German, however, employed the wings of the French smith (thereby introducing an early international complication). At first Icarian wings seemed to triumph: As some light bark, pursu’d by ships of force, Stretches each sail to swell her swifter course, The nimble Briton from his rival flies, And soars on bolder pinions to the skies. Sudden the string, which bound his plumage, broke; His naked arms in yielding air he shook : His naked arms no more support his weight, But fail him sinking from his airy height. So the Briton crashed and the German won the first aerial fight. I regret to add that the Briton evidently had not learned his sportsmanship on the playing fields of Eton: Yet as he falls, so chance or fate decreed, His rival near him urg’d his winged speed, Nor unobserv’d, (despair suggests a thought.) Fast by the foot the heedless youth he caught, And drew th’ insulting victor to the ground : While rocks and woods with loud applause resound.

II

The head that turns at super-lunar things, Pois’d with a tail, may steer on Wilkins’ wings. So Pope in the Dunciad, and so a majority of popular writers who satirically or in fantasy reflected the theme of flight by wanton wings. Hooke had made more important practical con­ tributions than had Wilkins, the “Sieur Besnier” had actually achieved a short successful flight, yet as time went on their accomplishments all came to be attributed to John Wilkins, who had not only discovered a new world for his countrymen, but had persuaded them that they might soon fly to that world. Hooke’s careful technicalities left little mark upon the popular

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mind, but Wilkins aroused lay imagination to fever heat. The author of Democritus Turned Statesman, proposing the ap­ pointment of an ambassador to the Man in the Moon, begged that “the great clerk, Doctor Wilkins, warden of Wadham college in Oxon” be desired with all speed to make the neces­ sary arrangement for passage to the moon, “in regard he hath the greatest knowledge in that new plantation.” Samuel Butler, as usual, had his fun with Wilkins in “The Elephant in the Moon.” When the “elephant” proved only a mouse in the “optick tube,” the disillusioned observers Amazed, confounded, and afflicted, To be so speedily convicted, Immediately they get them gone, With this Discovery alone: That those who greedily pursue Things wonderful, instead of true, That in their Speculations chuse To make Discoveries strange News ; And Nat’ral History a Gazette Of Tales stupendous, and far-fet; Hold no Truth worthy to be known, That is not huge, and over-growne, And explicate Appearances, Not as they are, but as they please. In vain strive Nature to suborn, And, for their Pains, are paid with Scorn.

Many another than Aphra Behn’s “Doctor Baliardo” was driven slightly mad nor-nor-west by reading Wilkins’ “philosophical fancies.” It might indeed have been of Wilkins that an un­ known parodist wrote:

All my Disciples must be airy, And dance as nimble as a Fairy, Must never think of sordid Dying, But practise must the Art of Flying.

“Modern” men now laughed at the once honored art of “dying well,” but many of them took most seriously this newest art of flying, whether well or not.

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To his acute embarrassment Wilkins became for a time the most popular man of letters of the day and a lion among ladies. Domingo Gonsales had not exaggerated the fame of the first flying man—and rumor had it that Wilkins had already found the answer to the great enigma. That extraordinary exhibi­ tionist, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who, if she was not herself the newest sensation, managed to play the satellite to anyone who was, meeting the lion at a festivity given in his honor, taxed him with a problem about his flyers to the moon: “But where, Sir, shall they be lodged, since you confess there are no inns on the way?” The learned Doctor Wilkins suavely replied: “Surely, Madam, you who have writ­ ten so many romances will not refuse my mariners rest and refreshment—in one of your many castles in the air!” A very different type of lady has left us a charming picture of the desultory talk of an evening in the period when both the Discovery and Daedalus were being widely read. Dorothy Osborne wrote to her lover, Sir William Temple, on October 23, 1653: You could not but have Laught if you had seen mee last night. My Brother and Mr. Gibson were talking by the fyre, and I satt by, but as noe part of the company, amongst other things (wch I did not at all minde) they fell into a discourse of fflyeing and both agreed that it was very possible to finde out a way that people might fly like Birds and dispatch theire Journy’s soe. I that had not said a word all night started up at that and desyr’d they would say a little more in it, for I had not marked the beginning, but instead of that they both fell into soe Violent a Laughing that I should appeare soe much concern’d in such an Art; but they little knew of what use it might have bin to mee. Yet I saw you last night, but twas in a dream. Fontenelle’s Marchioness also was amazed to learn that human flight would be possible in the near future. Would the time ever come, she wondered, as she listened to the Philosopher’s account of a new world in the moon, when man would “find out a method of going through the air?” “We do more than suppose the thing possible,” replied the Philosopher. “We have already

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begun to fly a little; several different people have found the secret of fixing and adjusting wings to themselves, so as to sustain them in the air, to give them motion, and to pass over rivers. In truth, it has not been an eagle’s flight, and it hath sometimes cost these new birds an arm or a leg. . . . The art of flying is yet in its infancy, it may hereafter be brought to perfection; and the time may come when mankind may fly to the Moon.” But the Marchioness still shook her charming head: “I will never consent to this, said she, that mankind will ever carry the art of flying to such perfection, but that they will immediately break their necks.” During the years when the Battle of the Books was raging in England, arguments for and against human flight were hurled by both parties. To the “ancients” such absurdities were all of a piece with the other wild fantasies and exaggerations of the “moderns.” Sir William Temple in that unfortunate “Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning”—unfortunate for him though fortunate for posterity, since it brought Swift into the foray to write The Battle of the Books—dismissed as foolishness “airy speculations of those who have passed for the great advancers of knowledge and learning these last fifty years.” He added, “I have indeed heard of wondrous preten­ sions and visions of men ... as the art of flying till a man happens to fall down and break his neck, . . . discoveries of new worlds in the planets, and voyages between this and that in the moon, to be made as frequently as between York and London; which such poor mortals as I am, think as wild as those of Ariosto, but without half so much wit, or so much instruction.” But such a “modern” as Joseph Glanvill was willing to go the whole way with Wilkins. In the Vanity of Dogmatising he made use of a phrase which became so much a part of current patter that men forgot its origin and usually attributed it to Wilkins himself: “I doubt not but posterity will find many things, that are now but Rumours verefied into practical Reali­ ties. It may be some Ages hence, a voyage to the Southern unknown Tracts, yea possibly to the Moon, will not be more strange than one to America. To them, that come after us, it

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may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly into remotest Regions: as now a pair of Boots to ride a Journey.” That moon-enthusiast in Shadwell’s Virtuoso, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, always several years ahead of those virtuosi of “Gresham Colledge” who were so jealous that they would not admit him to the Royal Society, picked up Glanvill’s phrase and combined it with the experiments of Hooke and Wren and Wilkins’ passage, insisting that a man might learn to fly by long and careful practice. “A Man, by Art,” he declared sagely, “may appropriate any Element to himself. You know a great many Virtuoso’s that can fly; but I am so much advanc’d in the Art of flying that I can already out-fly that ponderous Animal call’d a Bustard; nor should any Grey-hound in England catch me in the calmest Day, before I got upon Wing: Nay, I doubt not, but in a little time to improve the Art so far, ’twill be as common to buy a pair of Wings to fly to the World in the Moon, as to buy a pair of Wax-Boots to ride into Sussex with.” Addison hardly exaggerated the enthusiasm of the late Restoration period when he wrote in the Guardian on July 20, 1713: “The philosophers of King Charles’s reign were busy in finding out the art of flying. The famous Bishop Wilkins was so confident of success in it, that he says he does not question but in the next age it will be usual to hear a man call for his wings when he is going a journey as it is now to call for his boots. The humour so prevailed among the virtuosos of this reign, that they were actually making parties to go up to the moon together, and were more put to it in their thoughts how to meet with accommodations by the way, than how to get thither. Every one knows the story of the great lady, who at the same time was building castles in the air for their reception.” In the same number, he printed a letter supposedly received from pseudonymous “Daedalus,” who showed himself an earn­ est pupil of Wilkins: Mr. Ironside, Knowing that you are a great encourager of ingenuity, I think fit to acquaint you, that I have made a considerable progress in

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the art of flying. I flutter about my room two or three hours in a morning, and when my wings are on, can go above an hundred yards at a hop, step, and jump. I can fly already as well as a Turkey-cock, and improve every day. If I proceed as well as I have begun, I intend to give the world a proof of my proficiency in this art. Upon the next public thanksgiving-day, it is my design to sit astride the dragon upon Bow steeple, from whence, after the first discharge of the Tower guns, I intend to mount into the air, fly over Fleet-street, and pitch upon the May-pole in the Strand. From thence, by a gradual descent, I shall make the best of my way for St. James’s Park, and light upon the ground near Rosamond’s pond. This, I doubt not, will convince the world, that I am no pretender; but before I set out, I shall desire to have a patent for making of wings, and that none shall presume to fly under pain of death, with wings of any other man’s making. I intend to work for the court myself, and will have journeymen under me to furnish the rest of the nation. I likewise desire, that I may have the sole teaching of persons of quality, in which I shall spare neither time nor pains till I have made them as expert as myself. I will fly with the women upon my back for the first fortnight. I shall appear at the next masquerade, dressed up in my feathers and plumage like an Indian prince, that the quality may see how pretty they will look in their travelling habits. You know, sir, there is an unaccountable prejudice to projectors of all kinds, for which reason, when I talk of practising to fly, silly people think me an owl for my pains; but, sir, you know better things. I need not enumerate to you the benefits which will accrue to the public from this invention, as how the roads of England will be saved when we travel through these new high-ways, and how all family-accounts will be lessened in the article of coaches and horses. I need not mention post and packet-boats, with many other conveniences of life, which will be supplied this way. In short, sir, when mankind are in possession of this art, they will be able to do more business in threescore and ten years, than they could do in a thousand by the methods now in use. I therefore recommend myself and my art to your patronage, and am, Your most humble servant.

“Mr. Ironside” may have been “a great encourager of in­ genuity,” but he proved no such thoroughgoing “modern” as his correspondent had hoped. Rather he was outraged and

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declared that, far from abetting such a scheme, he would bend every effort to discourage all men from flying in his time. Consider—it seems to be “Paterfamilias” speaking—what would happen to public morals. “It would fill the world with innumerable immoralities, and give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them. You should have a couple of lovers make a midnight assignation upon the top of the monument, and see the cupola of St. Paul’s covered with both sexes like the outside of a pigeon-house. Nothing would be more frequent than to see a beau flying in at a garret window, or a gallant giving chase to his mistress, like a hawk after a lark. There would be no walking in a shady wood without springing a covey of toasts. The poor husband could not dream what was doing over his head; if he were jealous, indeed, he might clip his wife’s wings, but what would this avail when there were flocks of whore­ masters perpetually hovering over his house? what concern would the father of a family be in all the time his daughter was upon the wing? every heiress must have an old woman flying at her heels. In short, the whole air would be full of this kind of gibier, as the French call it.” The strictures of “Mr. Ironside” were not original with Addison; as so often in his periodical essays, he merely adapted material he found ready to his hand. Here he seems to have taken his point of departure from the first extended poem on human flight, Francis Harding’s In Artem Volandi which had appeared in 1692 in a collection of Latin poems to which Addi­ son himself contributed two early versifications of scientific subjects. In lofty language but satiric vein the author tells us that as he passed by the doors of inventors, he found anxiety everywhere because all interest was centered in a baneful art whereby man was to be borne through space on light wings. What, questioned the startled poet, would be the outcome ? Will laborers fly to and from their work ? The Senate has been urged to pass laws prohibiting travel beyond the confines of the kingdom except by ordinary conveyances. If this pernicious art is permitted to flourish, what shame to the nation! Let him who is wedded to beauty beware, let him strengthen the bolts

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on his doors and windows with triple bronze, lest a new adulterer enter on wings, another Jupiter descending like a swan to a modern Leda. Sadly the poet shakes his head over the morals of a new air age. Yet as he looks into the future, he reluctantly con­ fesses that there may be advantages in the novel invention. Who would not prefer the swift journey to the slow pace of wagons, the clean air to the noisome odor of pitch and oil on the axles? In the future, men of wealth, tempted by wings, will fly to other planets, leaving behind broad estates to be inherited by the poor who now cumber the earth. Not only will the rich fly to the moon, but we may at last rid ourselves of those poets who weary us with their songs of flight and those irritating pioneers who eternally seek new ethereal worlds to conquer. Those who remain will be the inheritors of a new earth; they may live out quiet days unoppressed by wealth, unencumbered by the adventurers whose voyages of discovery, in song or in reality, put us to shame, making us feel that ours is a slothful generation. Is the new invention, then, as per­ nicious as it seems at first? What a colony England may found in the moon, where she may establish British tradition and ancient religion! Accustomed as the English have become by long practice to settling disputes here upon earth—angry Bel­ gians, savage Gauls—the new British aerial navy will soon establish peace in the lunar world. To that world shall be trans­ ported all men who are now problems to Britain. Best of the colonists will prove the Scots, a people who can subsist on little and so will wax fat in the airy regions of the moon. More illustrious than any Columbus of the past will be that man who designs means to escape from earth. The regions of the air shall be called by his name, he who alone has found a way to give eternal peace to the happy race of Britain and to all its posterity. More charming than Harding’s poem was the Luna Habitabilis of Thomas Gray, the deftest and most romantic Latin verse written on the subject. “My College,” Gray wrote to West in March, 1737, “has set me a versifying on a public occasion, on the theme of Lima est habitabilis.” Here are many

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of the themes that had developed during the seventeenth cen­ tury. With the coming of night, the poet calls upon his muse to accompany him as he walks in cool darkness. As he con­ templates the pageant of the skies, he longs for wings to bear him into ether that he may survey the vaults of heaven and see the moon as she is. To his ears comes the response of the eighteenth-century muse : wings are not necessary; the poet need only turn to the optic tube and before him the lofty halls of heaven will lie open. Through the glass he may see the moon, its ocean sown with islands. Its waters, greedy for light, drink the rays of the sun and quaff the distant fires. But the islands show in sharp contrast, since they feed upon the liquid light and turn back the darts of day. In the moon the poet will dis­ cover new lands and new mountains like the snow-capped ranges of Thrace, behold caves darkened by the shadows of those hills, and the somber shadows of the woods. Can man doubt that this world, so like our own, contains inhabitants ? asks the muse, and the poet echoes her words. This is a world of men, says Gray, men who build walls, wage warfare, celebrate their victories. On clear nights they watch with fascination our golden globe, to them the moon, though a mightier moon than ours. As that moon revolves, or they revolve about it, they watch the sea and land, the countries that appear in stately revolu­ tion : France, Germany, little England, which though smallest is yet brightest, in turn show their shores. The Princes of the Moon gather together to observe the mighty spectacle, each in turn desiring to give his name to a district of our earth, as we have given mortal names of the great districts in the moon. Stirred by the prospect of new lands, the poet becomes a prophet. In time the moon shall become a British colony; struggling upward, men of our world will reach those new shores as they have reached distant countries on earth. The original inhabitants will watch in silent astonishment, seeing the air filled with strange birds and the flying fleet of men. At a new Columbus they will stare in amazement and wonder. In the future, we shall hear of the making of new treaties, shall see the development of relations between two worlds; the air

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will be filled with mighty caravans, no longer strange. England, for generations mistress of the seas, shall in the future wield sway over the air, extending to another realm her triumphs of old. As in the past she conquered the seas, so in time to come shall she show herself proud before men, mistress of the con­ quered air. Lightly, almost imperceptibly, often satirically, new themes are entering into the literature of flight. An earlier generation was amused, yet the twentieth century finds double meaning in some of these prophecies. The invention of wings for man would bring political and social problems and might have eco­ nomic repercussions. Did not Addison’s “Daedalus” plan a monopoly on the making of wings, so that none might fly under pain of death with wings made by any other man? “Mr. Iron­ side” replied that while he was forced to grant the contention of “Daedalus” that men could do far more business in an age of flight than in an age of stagecoach, “I question not but there would be more petitions out of the city against it, than ever yet appeared against any other monopoly whatsoever. Every tradesman that cannot keep his wife a coach could keep her a pair of wings, and there is no doubt but she would be every morning and evening taking the air with them.” “John Buncle, Junior” (through his author Thomas Cogan), solemnly laid before the Lords and Commons his “Planetarium Politicum, Or Political Project. Being a Scheme to pay off the National Debt, by the Influence of the Planets.” “Your Lord­ ships will doubtless have heard,” he began respectfully, “that the ingenious Mr. M------ has invented a machine, so happily constructed, that it will move in any direction.” Their Lord­ ships also knew that, thanks to careful observations made at the time of the last transit of Venus, astronomers were now able to produce exact charts of the planetary system, together 'with the distances between all the celestial bodies. Their Lord­ ships were only too acutely aware that the British national debt amounted to one hundred and forty millions of pounds—but had it come to their attention that the distance from the earth to the sun was one hundred and forty millions of miles ? Surely they could make capital of such a striking coincidence. Why

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should not the Commons purchase the patent for a new flying machine, and “order a competent number of aerial post-chaises to be made after this model, and that these post-chaises be let out to travellers at the reduced price of one penny a mile?” So restless and so avid for novelty are our people that they will go anywhere—so long as it is not England. Why should not droves of tourists be encouraged to journey to the sun— at a penny a mile? Not only that; there were various other sources of revenue of which no government was taking heed. The moon, after all, is our satellite and completely dependent upon us both for its place and for its light. Let the Commons impose on the moon the heaviest of taxes, and “pass a vote of eternal eclipse in case of obstinate refusal.” And what about the inhabited planets, said by more than one writer to be the dwelling places of souls of the dead? If they are British souls, let us consider them emigrants who have quitted our world without permission and are therefore subject to a “leaving tax” ; if the inhabitants prove of any other species, there always re­ mains to Britain the right of conquest. As early as 1694 a French satirist anticipated one of the curious problems that might arise in an age of flight. The anonymous author of Arliquiniana introduced a nameless hero, strongly reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac, both in his “emportemens”—he had killed his man—and in his skill in designing “une machine qu’il prétendoit conduire au travers de l’air,” in order to save himself from the consequences of his impetuous deed. Hidden in the upper story of his dwelling, he remained only long enough to construct artificial wings—not forgetting as had Elmer of Malmesbury to add a tail ! The machine com­ pleted, the hardy mariner bade farewell to his friends, and was about to take off with the French equivalent of “Bezel las Manos,” when he became fearful not, as most earlier experi­ menters, that his wings would prove too heavy, but that he would be too light and fly too high. He had no wish for the moon but only for St. Germain. “Pour éviter cet accident, il remplit deux sacs, chacun de cinquante livres pesant, & se les attacha un à chaque pied, afin qu’il allast au milieu de l’air sans craindre d’estre enlevé avec trop de précipitation.” But,

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alas, victim of his own caution, he had weighted himself too heavily. He achieved the initial flight, only to fall with his ballast upon the next building. Like Bladud, he “brake his legs”—and the weight of his fall also broke the roof of his neighbor’s house. Daunted neither by broken bones nor wrecked wings, he promptly threatened to bring suit against the owner of the house who, he declared, was legally responsible for the damage because he had not made his roof strong enough. Dazed and fearful, the simple owner was on the point of paying both costs and charges, when he was rescued by a friend better versed in the law and less overwhelmed by the magnificent audacity of this early flying man, who first introduced into popular literature a nice point of the law of the air I Doubtless there were broken arms and legs in many parts of England as others, like Addison’s “Daedalus,” fluttered about their rooms, chickens seeking to be eagles. Certainly “wings” were the talk of the day, and many a charlatan reaped a rich harvest by announcing, like Damian centuries before, that on a certain day he would fly to a specific destination—for a con­ sideration, to be sure! That gossip, Faustina Bordoni, told of one “flying Man” of 1727 in The Devil to Pay at St. James’s, a volume filled with the latest news and scandal, which bore the intriguing subtitle, “A full and true Account of a most horrible and bloody Battle between Madam Faustina and Madam Cazzoni.” Commenting upon a piece of gossip sent her about a Quaker, she went on: “The Quaker is nothing to compare to the flying Man, who had given the Town a great deal of Diversion if the Doctor had not baulk’d him by taking down his Scaffold. There was a World of Company had made Parties for his second Operation: and if this Thing had not happen’d, in all probability a Subscription had been rais’d for the Continuance of this Diversion instead of the Opera, as being so much the cheaper.” But the mysterious flying man had not left his admirers without hope for the future. “Before he leaves us,” noted Faustina, “he intends, I hear, to discover his Secret, and proposes to establish Flying Stages all over England; by which Means Gentlemen of Agility may fly any Distance in a very small Time. This will be of general Use,

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and I hope”—added the lady with the foreign name who had fought “a most horrible and bloody Battle” with another lady, Italian at least by marriage—‘‘I hope teach the People of Eng­ land how much they are indebted to Foreigners for the Improve­ ment of all Arts and Sciences.” Ill

So rich is the ‘‘literature of wings” that I must deliberately pick and choose among many writers of the eighteenth century who dealt with the subject, confining myself on the whole to familiar names that you may see where authors known to you took their stand. The main themes are now familiar to us; there is much repetition but little novelty among later authors. Satirists laughed, the more pessimistically inclined gloomily shook their heads, the optimists continued to believe that in time man would conquer the air. Major writers and minor all had their say on the subject. There was, for example, a slight, forgotten tale which Henry Fielding published in a periodical, A Jotirney from This World to the Next in which the novelist lightly parodied the tradition of flying-voyages, and particularly Wilkins’ enthusiastic belief that by practice man could accustom himself to flying. The author tells us in his introduction that he happened upon a curious manuscript which had been “hawked about . . . among all the booksellers,” and which had even been shown to the Royal Society, who curtly refused it, declaring that there was nothing “wonderful” enough in it for them. The manuscript, evidently written after its author’s death, tells of a man who was to be conducted by Mercury to the stagecoach of the dead in order to travel from this world to the next. His body dead upon its bed, the author’s spirit escaped through the window, expecting from all the books he had read on the subject that at last he would be able to fly. “To my great aston­ ishment, I found myself unable to fly, which I had always in the body conceived of spirits; however I came so lightly to the ground that I did not hurt myself; and though I had not

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the gift of flying (owing probably to my having neither feathers nor wings) I was capable of hopping such a prodigious way at once, that it served my turn almost as well.” A barnyard fowl rather than a bird—or as Wilkins had said, “an ostrich or tame goose”—he made his way by a series of hops to the appointed place, and set out with Mercury on his grand tour to the other world. His journey took him to strange places, but did not become a cosmic voyage, since his translation from this world to the next took place by a most conventional classical arrival at the River Cocytus, from whose bourne no traveler returns. Earlier in the century Samuel Johnson satirized among the many vanities of human wishes man’s persistent desire for the wings of a dove. The “Dissertation on the Art of Flying,” which constitutes the sixth chapter of Rasselas, was probably inspired at least in part by an attempt made by the Marquis de Bacqueville in 1742 to fly over the Seine by means of an invention of his own. Great crowds gathered in Paris to watch the flight, which ended in ignominy for the inventor as does the flight of the projector in Johnson’s “Dissertation.” Rasselas, visiting “a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers,” found him engaged in building a flying machine. Although the term used by Johnson is “sailing chariot,” this invention, too, belongs, as later description shows, to the his­ tory of artificial wings. In spite of doubts expressed by Rasselas, the mechanic was persuaded of the possibility of human flight. “You will be necessarily upborne by the air,” he declared, “if you can renew any impulse upon it, faster than the air can recede from the pressure.” Like his predecessors, he felt that the only real difficulty lay in the initial “labour of rising from the ground”; after that, “the earth’s attraction, and the body’s gravity, will be gradually diminished, till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.” As in his discussion of the air and of gravity, so in his flying device the mechanic showed his seventeenth-century heredity. “I have considered the structure of all volant animals,” he told Rasselas, “and find the folding continuity of the bat’s

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wings most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my task tomorrow, and in a year expect to tour the air beyond the malice and pursuit of man.” Johnson’s mechanic belonged with those “moderns” who believed that the world’s great age would begin anew once man had conquered the air. Even more than the economic and social values, the projector thought of the consolations of philosophy which ability to fly would give to thoughtful man : “You, Sir, whose curiosity, is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would'see the earth, and all its inhabitants, rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel.” But Rasselas foresaw rather the dangers of flight: “What would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light at once with"irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the southern sea.” Alas, Johnson’s mechanic was never to know whether the philosophic advantages of human flight would outweigh its dangers, for he joined the company of martyrs. His wings invented, the flyer sought to begin his flight beyond malice and envy—taking off, as usual, from a hill near the water. “He waved his pinions awhile to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water, and the prince drew him to land, half dead with terror and vexation.” But the eighteenth century chorus was swelled by voices of optimists as well as pessimists. If Johnson in England satirized the possibility of human flight by means of wings, Jean Jacques Rousseau at approximately the same time upheld it in still another rare work—of which only one or two copies remain— Le Nouveau Dédale, which seems not to have been noticed by

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historians of aviation. Possibly Rousseau, then living in Paris, was among that great crowd which gathered to watch the attempt of the Marquis de Bacqueville in 1742. According to at least one authority, the fragment was written in that year. Certainly its mood is that of one defending his belief in the possibility of human flight against current attacks. There is nothing original in the argument of Le Nouveau Dédale. Rousseau, like many of his contemporaries, shows him­ self an ardent believer in the possibility of human flight, refus­ ing to be deterred by pessimists who insisted that because man never had flown he never would. Too many have taken the easy way of ridicule and satire: “Si pour détruire une proposi­ tion, il n’étoit question que de tourner en ridicule, j’avoue que la navigation aérienne n’auroit pas beau jeu. Son idée porte avec elle un certain air de paradoxe et de chimère tout propre à mettre les railleurs de belle humeur.” Why, demands Rous­ seau, should the air alone be forbidden to man, by whom earth, fire, water have been subjugated? Air, after all, is an element as other elements; of the two, it would seem logical that the air man naturally breathes should be at his command even more than water. So far as means of flight is concerned, Rous­ seau’s comments are so vague that we can merely say that Le Nouveau Dédale belongs to the history of wanton wings rather than to any of Wilkins’ other categories, and that Rous­ seau, like Wilkins, feels that man’s success will come from long practice. “Revenons à nos ailes,” he says ; “quand elles seront donc ainsi bien arrangées, il faut les oindre d’huile légèrement pour les rendre impénétrables à l’eau. Nous les attacherons bien proprement de long de nos bras, après nous être équipés le plus légèrement qu’il sera possible; il ne restera plus qu’à nous essayer quelques tems, en nous balançant avec beaucoup de précaution. Nous ne ferons d’abord que raser la terre comme de jeunes étourneaux, mais bientôt enhardis par l’habitude et l’expérience, nous nous élancerons dans les airs avec une impétuosité d’aigle, et nous nous divertirons à con­ sidérer au-dessous de nous le manège puérile de tous ces petits hommes qui rampant misérablement sur la terre.” Human flight might have social and economic implications,

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but it might also afford new themes for romance. Perhaps, sug­ gested Rousseau, there will come a new Hero and a modern Leander to seek his mistress through the Hellespont of air. Rousseau adds: “Il ne seroit pas même bien difficile d’imaginer plus d’une tendre héroine également hardie, complaisante et légère, qui daigneroit quelquefois leur épargnes la Moitié du chemin.” IV Inspiration for the use of wings as a theme for romance did not begin with Rousseau’s fragment; it was inevitable in the idea itself. Once more we are led to fiction, and again we shall make strange voyages, traveling this time not by the aid of spirits and angels nor harnessed to birds, but rising upon artificial wings. Our journeys will not be true cosmic voyages, for no important traveler except Lucian’s Menippus flew to the moon on his wanton wings. Even Wilkins granted that “man would be so slow in it, and so quickly weary, that he could never think to reach so great a journey as it is to the moon.” Time was when all our ancestors knew that romantic tale, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, which vied in popularity with Robinson Crusoe and Gidliver’s Travels. “Here,” declared the Monthly Review in 1750, just after the book appeared, “is a very strange performance indeed. It seems to be the illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction betwixt Gidliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe; but much inferior to the meaner of these two performances, either as to entertainment or utility. It has all that is impossible in the one, or improbable in the other, without the wit and spirit of the first, or the just strokes of nature and useful lessons of morality of the second. There are likewise many things in this work which appear to be derived from hints drawn from the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.” But even this reviewer found a certain merit in the work: “However, if the invention of wings for mankind to fly with, is a sufficient amends for all the dullness and unmeaning extravagances of this author, we are willing

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to allow that his book has some merit; and that he deserves encouragement at least as an able mechanic, if not as a good writer.” This was not the prevailing tone, however. For over a hum dred years the romance was widely known and loved. Southey thought its winged men and women “the most beautiful crea­ tures of imagination that were ever devised”; Lamb read it surreptitiously at Christ’s Hospital; Leigh Hunt, Scott, Thack­ eray, Dickens, knew it well. Coleridge not only talked about the romance in his Table Talk, but both he and Shelley reflected it in their poetry. Indeed, a writer in the Retrospective Review in 1823 felt that the debased temper of his own times was shown in the “destruction of the immortal fame of the unknown author of Peter Wilkins.” Critics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have made some attempt to revive the old tale, Edmund Gosse calling it a “beautiful dream of the winged race ... a minor classic,” Edith Morley, finding it “difficult to understand why the book has not been more widely known in recent years.” There were dozens of editions, abridge­ ments, bowdlerizations of The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, translations into various languages, imitations. Its flying women become opera, drama, spectacle, pantomime; one version, Peter Wilkins: or, the Flying Islanders, was played in New York as late as 1852 and in Boston in 1854. The earliest reviewer was quite correct in feeling that Peter Wilkins was inspired by Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels—with a touch of the Arabian Nights. But it also went back to the flying men of our cosmic voyages. I suspect that the name of its hero was intended to remind readers of John Wilkins. Its plot has already been nicely abridged for us by the author, Robert Paltock—if indeed he was the author—in one of those long and leisurely series of titles and subtitles in which our ancestors liked to give away their whole story:

The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, A Cornish Man; Relat­ ing particularly, His Shipwreck near the South Pole; his wonderful Passage thro’ a subterraneous Cavern into a kind of new World; his there meeting with a Gawry or flying Woman, whose Life he

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preserv’d, and afterwards married her; his extraordinary Convey­ ance to the Country of Glums and Gawrys, or Men and Women that fly. Likewise a Description of this strange Country, with the Laws, Customs, and Manners of its Inhabitants, and the Author’s remarkable Transactions among them. Taken from his own Mouth, in his Passage to England, from off Cape Horn in America, in the ship Hector. With an Introduction, giving an Account of the sur­ prizing Manner of his coming on board that Vessel, and his Death on his landing in Plymouth in the Year 1739. Illustrated with sev­ eral Cuts, clearly and distinctly representing the Structure and Mechanism of the Wings of the Glums and Gawrys, and the Manner in which they use either to swim or fly. Here again we have a tale of a mariner whose adventures on both sea and land had been enough to quell the hardiest soul before he came to the strange new world our travelers always discover. Like the Ancient Mariner, he loses his com­ panions one by one until at last he finds himself alone on a ship sailing by some power stronger than wind or tide straight toward an island which rises fearfully and abruptly before him. Here are memories of Gulliver’s adventures on his third voyage to Laputa, for Wilkins’ island, too, proves a giant loadstone, a vast magnet, the force of whose attraction has pulled toward it Peter Wilkins’ ship, which carried a heavy cargo of iron. For three weeks the lonely mariner was forced to sail round about the land, seeking an entrance, until one evening he “heard a great noise, as of a fall of water, whereupon I pro­ posed to lie by and wait for day, to see what it was; but the stream insensibly drawing me on, I soon found myself in an eddy; and the boat drawing forward, beyond all my power to resist it, I was quickly sucked under a low arch, where, if I had not fallen flat in my boat, having barely light enough to see my danger, I had undoubtedly been crushed to pieces, or driven overboard. I could perceive the boat to fall with in­ credible violence, as I thought, down a precipice, and suddenly whirled round and round with me, the water roaring on all sides, and dashing against the rock with a most amazing noise.” Here we have a variant of the cosmic voyage. Instead of flying up to the new world, Peter Wilkins descends to it,

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reversing the process by which Lucian’s shipload of mariners once reached the moon. The Adventures of Peter Wilkins was not the first subterraneous voyage in literature, though it happens to be the first we have encountered. Since it is by no means the greatest of such voyages, I shall wait to discuss this genre until we come upon a better example. Actually the subterraneous voyage occupies only a short section in Paltock’s romance. For a period he estimated as about five weeks, the mariner remained in this world of complete darkness dread­ ing the moment that seemed inevitable—when, his oil gone at last, he must wait for death in a lonely world devoid of life. But without his realization, his boat was drifting along a subterraneous river, and he found himself at last emerging from darkness to see a great lake of water, flanked with a wood rising like an amphitheater, “and behind, and above all, ap­ peared the naked rock to an immense height.” Discovering a natural grotto in the rock, he settled his habitation, returning again and again to his ship for supplies which seemed as inex­ haustible as those of his descendants, the Swiss Family Robin­ son. For a time Wilkins lived a life that combined the “hard primitivism” of his ancestor Robinson Crusoe with the “soft primitivism” of the exotic land in which Domingo Gonsales had lived with the trusty Diego. We often forget, as did he, that we are in a subterraneous world, and tend to think our­ selves in the new world in the moon, for Paltock clearly shows his heritage in that tradition. His new world, too, is divided into two zones, one much darker than the other, though in neither zone is the light so bright as in our world. So far the tale, except for the descent into the subterraneous world, has been largely an imitation of Robinson Crusoe, but now Paltock strikes out in another direction, bringing into the conventional tale of a shipwrecked mariner the theme of human flight. Occasionally Peter Wilkins had believed that he heard human voices in the air, but never had he glimpsed a human being. The voices, he was sure, were human, though the in­ tonation was different from his own and the language like none he had ever heard. At length came an evening when the voices were clearly distinguishable overheard, then suddenly

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“such a thump upon the roof of my antichamber, as shook the whole fabric, and set me all over into a tremour; I then heard a sort of shriek, and a rustle near the door of my apart­ ment.” Armed to the teeth, Wilkins went bravely forth, but all was still. “I went then softly to the corner of the building, and there looking down by the glimmer of my lamp, which stood in the window, I saw something in human shape lying at my feet.” So enters into the tale its heroine, Youwarkee, “a most beautiful female,” and the first “gawry” or flying woman Peter Wilkins had ever seen, a native of the other zone of the world who had lost her way. The gawries and glums—flying men and women—prove to be like human beings in all things except their ability to fly. As in our world some infants are born with a caul, so the men and women of Youwarkee’s country are born with a “graundee” that grows with them and that they may assume or remove at will. As we watch Youwarkee dress for the first flight Peter Wilkins saw her take, we shall see that this flying equipment of hers, while of course “natural,” traced its ancestry to the careful study made for a century of the wings of birds, par­ ticularly of bats: She first threw up two long branches or ribs of the whale-bone, as I called it before, (and indeed for several of its properties, as toughness, elasticity, and pliableness, nothing I have ever seen can so justly be compared to it) which were jointed behind to the upper bone of the spine, and which, when not extended, lie bent over the shoulders on each side of the neck forwards, from whence, by nearer and nearer approaches, they just meet at the lower rim of the belly in a sort of point; but when extended they stand their whole length above the shoulders, not perpendicularly, but spreading outwards, with a web of the softest and most pliable and springy membrane that can be imagined, in the interstice between them, reaching from their root or joint on the back up above the hinder part of the head, and near half-way their own length; but when closed, the membrane falls down in the middle upon the neck, like an handkerchief. There are also two other ribs rising as it were from the same root, which, when open, run horizontally, but not so long as the others. They are filled up in the interstice between them and the upper ones with the same

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membrane; and on the lower side of this is also a deep flag of the membrane, so that the arms can be either above or below it in flight, and are always above it when closed. This last rib, when shut, flaps under the upper one, and also falls down with it, before to the waist, but is not joined to the ribs below. Along the whole sidebone runs a strong, flat, broad, grisly cartilage, to which are joined several other of these ribs: all which open horizontally, and are filled in the interstices with the above hard membrane, and are jointed to the ribs of the person just where the plane of the back begins to turn toward the breast and belly; and, when shut, wrap the body round to the joints on the con­ trary side, folding neatly one side over the other.

The description given by Peter Wilkins is long and involved; he himself tells us that he found it almost impossible to express in words a thing so strange, and that we will better compre­ hend the graundee if we study the drawings he made of it, which are reproduced in most of the editions of The Adven­ tures of Peter Wilkins. “It is the most amazing thing in the world,” noted Wilkins, “to observe the large expansion of the graundee, when open.” Youwarkee spread her “sail-broad vans” and took off. The first ascent was made with some difficulty: "She stooped for­ ward, moving with a heavy wriggling motion at first, which put me into some pain for her; but after a few strokes, be­ ginning to rise a little, she cut through the air like lightning, and was soon over the edge of the rock and out of my sight.” Glums and gawries can not only fly through the air, but they can also skim over the surface of the water with amazing speed. Indeed, the graundee proves a sort of aquaplane! They were able to “swim or sail, I know not which to call it, for sometimes you should see them dart out of the air as if they would fall on their faces into the lake, when coming near the surface they would stretch their legs in an horizontal posture, and in an instant turn on their backs, and then you could see nothing from the bank, to all appearance, but a boat sailing along, the graundee rising at their head, feet, and sides, so like the sides and ends of a boat, that you could not discern the face or any part of the body.”

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Amusingly enough, Robert Paltock anticipates later biological “laws” of heredity. Seven children were born to Peter Wilkins and Youwarkee. “Pedro, my eldest, had the graundee, but too small to be useful; my second son Tommy had it complete, so had my three daughters, but Jemmy and David, the youngest sons, none at all.” As four of the children inherited their mother’s ability to fly, so they inherited her sight, for the sight of flying men and women, Wilkins discovered, was much weaker than ours. Like Domingo Gonsales they could not bear the “light season,” never visiting the other side of the world, except through some such mishap as occurred to Youwarkee. “It being now the light season, I wanted her to be more abroad; but she excused herself, telling me her people never came into these luminous parts of the country during the false glare, as she called it. ... I told her, that the light of my native country was far stronger than any I had seen since my arrival . . . and that we had a sun or ball of fire which rolled over our heads every day with such a light and such a heat, that it would sometimes almost scorch one it was so hot, and was of such brightness that the eye could not look at it without danger of blindness. She was heartily glad, she said, she was not born in so wretched a land.” The three daughters and one son who had their mother’s full graundee had also her weak sight; Jemmy and David, who could not fly, had their father’s sight; and Pedro, who was born with the graundee that did not fully develop, had sight somewhere between the extremes. With his usual ingenuity, Peter Wilkins made dark spectacles for the mother and her flying brood, so that all the Wilkins family were able to adventure together even into the “false glare.” For many years Youwarkee remained with her husband and children with no word of her own people until finally, through a series of adventures too long and tedious for repetition, relationship was again established. Great sympathy was always felt for poor Peter Wilkins who had no graundee and seemed destined forever to remain in his own little district of the world in which fate had placed him. But again human ingenuity triumphed, and Peter Wilkins—worthy descendant of John Wilkins—invented a flying machine reminiscent both of

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

1. Cyrano’s First Flight by Vials of Dew 2. Cyrano's Voyage to the Sun

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Domingo’s “harness” and of Samuel Brunt’s palanquin. Upon a strong board, again provided by that inexhaustible ship, he firmly secured a chair, then by use of a series of ropes of different lengths, arranged to divide the weight of himself and his “machine” among eight glums. Before making an ascent, Wilkins cannily ordered one of the glums to try out his flying machine; “and the man rode with so much state and com­ posure,” he said, “that I longed to try it myself.” On his curious flying machine, Peter Wilkins journeyed to the other side of his subterranean world, where his adventures continued, but we may take leave of him as he sets out, en­ throned on a kitchen chair, conveyed through the air by eight glums—a modern variant, perhaps, of the old tale of Kai Koos and Alexander with their eagles and gryphons. The later Travels of Hildebrand Bowman, Esquire—which led their author “into Carnovirria, Taupiniera, Olfactaria, and Auditante,” not to mention other strange places—is a debased and on the whole dull tale of adventure on the part of a mariner who was presumably the sole survivor of Captain Cook’s com­ panion ship upon his second voyage. Like the travelers before him, Bowman set down his observations upon strange men and stranger customs of various lands. In the strange country of “Luxo-Volupto” Bowman discov­ ered a people who, ordinarily unwinged, developed wings under certain curious conditions:

The women in general seemed handsome, but one particularity of theirs drew very much my attention; they appeared to have wings on their heads. Good God 1 said I, to Bonaris; have the women wings in this country? Those on the women’s heads, are of little importance, replied he with a smile, but many of both sexes have others of the greatest consequence, and from a cause which you cannot possibly form any idea of. . . . About a century ago, when they became very loose, from the bad example of one of our Kings, a very surprising phenomenon made its appearance, the cause of which has never been accounted for in a natural way, by our greatest Philosophers, and must therefore be deemed super­ natural. . . . This phenomenon is a pair of wings sprouting from

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every woman’s shoulders, immediately after a failure in chastity; and from every man’s, who has seduced a young maiden, or married woman. As these are repeated, or according to the strength of their desires, the wings increase in size, till they become in full proportion to the body; and if the vice is left off from a sincere repentance, they gradually decrease till they entirely vanish. You see both men and women endeavour to hide them under their clothes, but it is in vain, unless they are very small indeed.

For one woman in Luxo-Volupto who by sincere repentance rid herself of her wings there seem to have been a dozen “Alaeputas” or flying prostitutes, who not only felt no embarrass­ ment about their wings but gloried in their shame, and made good use of their wings in hurrying to assignations. Yet so lazy were some of the more aristocratic ladies that they would not even bother to fly with their well-fledged wings, but had “little Cars provided, to which they harness Pigeons, Cuckows, Pheasants, or other birds, which they secretly keep for that purpose. ... I have even heard of some men who were guilty of that piece of effeminacy.” In spite of Hildebrand Bowman’s highly moral strictures— and indeed his own danger when he was literally carried off his feet by an Alae-puta—he was forced to confess that he found much interest in these brazen hussies. “In the Theatre ... I was not a little diverted with the pretty flutterings of the Alae-putas, who occupied principally some of the upper lodges, and frequently took wing from one side of the house to the other, when they saw a spark they wanted to draw into their snares.” A lover of horse racing, he begged to be taken to the downs, where he found that each horse was attended by his mistress who flew above him in the air with her “carr and six.” The most spectacular of the flying women appeared that day with “six trained Falcons for her equipage.” Calamity almost occurred when the falcons caught sight of another flying prostitute drawn by pigeons, with the result that the bird race in the air became far more spectacular than the horse race on the ground, each flying lady attempting with the greatest agita­ tion to restrain her untrusty steeds. But of all the entertain-

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ments, Bowman most enjoyed a spectacular masked ball, held in a magnificent rotunda. Here “all the different species of human flyers were in great plenty, and made at least four-fifths of the whole company. ... It was very ridiculous to observe the different growths of [wings]. . . . Some were only of a size for Genii or Cupids, and they increased gradually to that of Angels or Devils. The greatest number of them were of the last. . . . They were all dressed in imitation of different birds, with proper masks resembling their heads, and very well imitated.” The climax of the romantic conception of flight by artificial wings is found not in an English but in a French romance. Indeed, Restif de la Bretonne’s La Découverte australe Par un Homme-volant, ou Le Dédale français might have been written according to Rousseau’s prescription, for here Leander seeks his Hero on wings, and a fearless lover is joined by an equally intrepid lady. Victorin, hero of this tale, spent many years trying to discover the secret of flight, not to further science, not even because the spirit of adventure led him to seek far corners of this earth or new worlds in the moon and planets. “Le motif qui lui donna un désir si vif de voler,” says his creator, “ce fut l’amour.” We have seen social and economic ideas reflected in our tales of flight, but we have so far found nothing quite like this tale of an Inaccessible Mount, a land of “Nature” to which a romantic youth carried off his lady, in order that they might at last breathe “Fair de la liberté, de l’antique & douce égalité des Hommes.” Romantically in love with Christine—a lady of high degree— our hero Victorin violently resented the aristocratic system which prohibited his ever paying his addresses to the lady he loved so well. He brooded over old tales told him by servants in his childhood, such tales as that of Fortunatus who, by his wishing cap, transported himself and his love wherever he would. But wishing caps belonged to the old world of the supernatural, and Victorin was a son of the scientific age. Was there no way in which he might at last succeed where scientists had failed—make artificial wings by which he might rescue his lady from the false social standards to which convention

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doomed them? Although he loved her only from afar, Victorin was convinced that Christine too resented the barriers of social caste, and that, once removed from them, she would be as contented with the life according to nature as would he—no false surmise, as time and experience were to prove. With the help of a trusted servant, Victorin achieved his first wings, constructed on the analogy of those of a bat. Disappointment waited him, for while the servant succeeded in his attempt to raise himself from earth, he found that he had not yet lighted upon the secret of “un mouvement progressif,” and time and labor must be spent in achieving “un mouvement horizontal, progressif, et même rétrograde.” Even the death of this faithful servant—another martyr in the long history of aviation—did not daunt Victorin, though it delayed him. Romantic he may have been, but Victorin’s was the patience of the true scientist—a patience of which his modern reader also has need! Nearly one-third of the three volumes of this romance is devoted to careful accounts of Victorin’s study of every kind of bird and insect, fly and butterfly. Never did ornithologist more carefully pore over the anatomy of flying and creeping things than do we as we study with Victorin. Two years of labor produced no fruitful results; ingenious as were Victorin’s models, he had yet constructed nothing comparable to the perfection of nature he found in the wings or the antennae of insects. Of one thing alone he must have been completely persuaded—at least so the reader hopes—that his true love was in no more haste than he, that she would wait indefinitely for a rescue, the possibility of which she apparently did not know ! Time creeps withal with both Victorin and the reader, and yet this romance was once a favorite with “the ladies, God bless them,” familiar in Germany and Italy as in France. Patience, like virtue, proved its own reward, and the day came when Victorin at last had not only solved the theoretical problems, but had made a pair of artificial wings that seemed beyond criticism. On the summit of a little hill, secure from observation, he adjusted those wings, the combined principles of which the reader may see at a glance from the illustrations.

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If he would study those principles in more detail, here is their description in Restif’s words: Arrivé sur une colline isolée, Victorin s’ajusta ses ailes : Une large & forte courroie qu’il avait fait préparer au Bourrelier, lui ceignait les reins ; deux autres plus petites, attachées à des brode­ quins, lui garnissaient latéralement chaque jambe & chaque cuisse, puis venaient passer dans une boucle-de-cuir, fixée à la ceinture des reins : deux bandes fort-larges se continuaient le long des côtes, & joignaient un chaperon, qui garnissait les épaules par quatre bandes, entre lesquelles passaient des bras. Deux fortes baleines mobiles, dont la base était appuyée sur les brodequins, pour que le piéds pussent les mettre en jeu, se continuaient sur les côtés. His wings were successful, but Victorin’s tasks had only begun. He found the ideal place for his future home on the Inaccessible Mount which could be reached by none but birds, whether natural or human. Here in an exotic land he prepared for a life according to nature—with some assistance, to be sure, from such mundane beings as servants whom he carried off, to their terror. As we see from his picture, since he must use both arms and legs in order to swim through the air, he had added the basket that swings free from his waist; in that he carried up seed with which he planted his garden, carried up cocks and hens, a lamb or so—again those happy flying lambs !—and stocked his farm. On the penultimate trip, he kidnaped a priest, for he desired no mating without benefit of clergy ! Finally the day came to which he had looked forward so long. It was a Sunday, when the bells were ringing in the church to which Christine, chaperoned by her parents, took her placid way. Suddenly a great eagle, a roc, an enormous vulture—the terrified villagers were never to agree in their descriptions—swooped down upon the placid village, seized the fair Christine, tore her from her family and made off with her to the hills, becoming, before the horrified gaze of the impotent watchers, a mere speck in the distance. Off they went to the Inaccessible Mountain, to their cocks

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and hens, garden and farm, to their priest and the life accord­ ing to nature. Here the romance should cease; but Restif de la Bretonne, like all these writers, has only got his second wind. In the rest of the work he piled Pelion upon Ossa. The remain­ ing volumes are leisurely, though the life of Victorin and Christine was not. Christine, I am glad to report, proved as hardy a pioneer and as intrepid a flyer as her lawful wedded spouse, and as much a child of nature as he could wish. Two children were born to them, and father, mother and children took to their wings and flew all over the world. It is some time since I first read this long tale of the Hommevolant, Le Dédale français and I have no hesitation in acknowl­ edging that my first reading was also my last, for life is short and time is fleeting. Let the Restif scholars correct me if I am wrong, but I have an impression that both children of Victorin and Christine were born natural flyers; if so, this is certainly an early and remarkable example of the inheritance of acquired characteristics ! While I shall not read the tale again, I cannot quite forget those graphic pictures of Victorin with his basket, Victorin with his priest, Victorin with Christine and the happy family who made such grand tours to all the unreal countries in an unreal world. They did not fly to the moon—a fact which I have always selfishly regretted—yet the lands they visited were as strange as any of the countries we have found in that “planet,” and the description of their flights shows that Restif was working quite consciously in the long tradition of cosmic voyages. Their later adventures are now very vague in my mind, though the author has given us a profusion of pictures: I seem to remember an Elephant Land, a Land of Monkeys, a Land of Horses, a Land of Serpents, in all of which the flyers discovered creatures like “gorgons and hydras and chimaeras dire.” Ultimately, I believe, Victorin and Christine became King and Queen of the Patagonians, and while their adventures still continued, much of the last part of the saga was devoted to the adventures of their children, particularly of their son, who as he had inherited his parents’ love of flying, showed

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himself in every respect a worthy offspring of the hardy flying man and his intrepid mate, Christine, the flying woman. Another of Wilkins’ themes has come to its climax. We of the twentieth century do not yet fly on “wanton wings,” yet as I recall these romances of “glums and gawries,” of Victorin and his Christine on the Inaccessible Mount, or Doro­ thy Osborne’s letter to her lover, I wish we might.

CHAPTER - FIVE

Flying Chariots I

ou will say,” wrote Wilkins in his Discovery of a New World, “there can be no sailing thither. ... We have not now any Drake, or Columbus, to undertake this voyage, or any Daedalus to invent a conveyance through the air. I answer, though we have not, yet why may not succeeding times raise up some spirits as eminent for new attempts, and strange inventions, as any that were before them? ... I do seriously, and upon good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying-chariot; in which a man may sit, and give such motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and commodities for traffic.” Again Wilkins turned back to the past before he looked to the future. From earliest time legend had told of men who had flown on some sort of magic carpet. The translation of Elijah, miraculous though it was, involved a “chariot,” as did the flight of Astolfo in his “wondrous car.” But Wilkins was much more interested in authenticated accounts of actual inventions. There was, for instance, a “chariot” operated by sails, which was said to be in common use on the plains of China. Report—which Wilkins could not verify—was also made of its use in Spain. If Wilkins had ever read Campanella’s City of the Sun he might have remembered that the Utopians used “wagons fitted with sails which are borne along by the wind even when it is contrary, by the marvellous contrivance of wheels within wheels.” Wilkins did know about the “sailing-chariot” exhibited in 1606 by the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevinus, a great carriage, operated by sails, designed to carry twenty-six passengers. One of the first horseless vehicles, it went at seeming incredible speed over the flat, hard sands of the Dutch seacoast. “In two hours space it would pass from Scevling to Putten, which are distant from one 150

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another above 14 horaria militaries that is, more than two and forty miles.” One who had made the passage reported a de­ lightful trip; no matter how strong the wind, the passengers did not feel it since they traveled at the same speed as the wind. Immortalized in verse by no less a person than the great jurist, Hugo Grotius, the fame of that early “sailing­ chariot” spread through Europe. The inventive Wilkins, who discussed it at length, proposed to improve upon the original by making a chariot with movable sails, “whose force may be imprest from their motion, equivalent to those in a wind­ mill.” The illustration with which Wilkins accompanied his suggestion in Daedalus momentarily startles the modern reader, who seems to be looking at an Autogiro invented in 1648! But there were lesser things than the “sailing-chariot” that offered clues to the ingenious Wilkins. Consider, he urged, “Archytas his dove, and Regiomontanus his eagle.” Perhaps these were only toys, intended to amuse and delight, yet they were heavier than the air through which they flew. And as Wilkins always insisted, “It is not the bigness of any thing in this kind, that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat.” Let experimenters not neglect such trifles, he warned; even “toys” might have their place in the history of human flight. “Who admires not Regiomontanus his Flie before his Eagle?” asked Sir Thomas Browne, who loved the exquisite­ ness of the small rather than the majesty of the grand. Since Browne’s contemporaries among both scientists and men of letters were equally interested in both fly and eagle as well as in the “dove of Archytas” we may pause for a moment over a description of these elegant trifles included among the “learned, curious, pleasant, marvailous, and more then humane inventions of mans wit,” related by Du Bartas, translated for the English by Sylvester:

But th’ Art of Man, not onely can compack Features and formes that life and motion lack;

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But also fill the Aire with painted shoals Of flying Creatures (Artificiall Fowles) ; The Tarentines valiant and learned Lord Archytas, made a wooden Dove, that soar’d About the Welkin, by th’ accorded sleights And counterpoize of sundry little weights. Why should I not that wooden Eagle mention (A learned Germane’s late-admired invention) Which mounting from his fist that framed her, Flew far to meet an Almain Emperour ; And having met him, with her nimble Traine, And weary wings, turning about again, Follow’d him close unto the Castle Gate Of Noremberg; whom all the Showes of State, Streets hang’d with Arras, Arches curious built, Loud-thundring Canons, Columns richly guilt, Gray-headed Senate, and Youth’s gallantise, Grac’d not so much, as onely This Devise. Once, as this Artist (more with mirth then meat) Feasted some friends that he esteemed great, From under’s hand an Iron Flie flew out: Which having flowne a perfect Round-about, With weary wings, return’d unto her Master, And (as judicious) on his arme she plac’t her, O divine wit! that in the narrow womb Of a small Flie, could finde sufficient room For all those Springs, wheeles, counterpoiz, & chains, Which stood in stead of life, and spur, and rains.

Even the alert and curious Wilkins did not seem to realize the significance of another “toy,” which offered a different kind of analogy for the flying chariot. If Wilkins had ever watched the flying of a kite from the common, he might well have pondered that possible means of flight and wondered whether it should be classed with flight by “fowls” or by “machines.” But kites, while not unknown, were still not common in England when Wilkins wrote. Invented very early and put to practical use in China, the kite seems to have been introduced much later into India. We hear nothing of it in Europe until the sixteenth century, when it was familiar in

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Italy at least. By the seventeenth century kites had become fairly common on the continent both as children’s toys and as devices for setting off holiday fireworks. In England, how­ ever, no picture of a kite appeared in a printed book until 1635 when John Bate included two in his Mysteries of Nature and Art, speaking as if kites were still rare and novel. Their chief purpose, according to Bate, was for the display of fireworks, a hint Samuel Butler was quick to use in Hudibras for one of his many satires upon the “amazing” discoveries of contem­ porary astronomers:

It happened as a boy, one night, Did fly his tarsel of a kite, The strangest long-wing’d hawk that flies, ’ That, like a bird of Paradise, , Or herald’s martlet, has no legs, Nor hatches young ones, nor lays eggs; His train was six yards long, milk white, At th’ end of which there hung a light, Enclos’d in lanthorn made of paper, That far off like a star did appear: This Sidrophel by chance espy’d, And with amazement staring wide: Bless us, quoth he, what dreadful wonder Is that appears in heaven yonder ? A comet, and without a beard ! Or star, that ne’er before appear’d! . . . It must be supernatural, Unless it be that cannon-ball That, shot i’ the air, point-blank upright, Was borne to that prodigious height, That, learn’d philosophers maintain, It ne’er came backwards down again, But in the airy regions yet Hangs, like the body o’ Mahomet.

The amazed astronomer sped to his telescope. Raising his tube “till it levell’d right Against the glow-worm tail of kite,” he discovered that this extraordinary phenomenon was not only a planet, but the odd-shaped Saturn, in some remarkable way changed in its place in the heavens:

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He’s got between the Dragon’s tail, And farther leg behind o’ th’ Whale; Pray heav’n divert the fatal omen, For ’tis a prodigy not common, And can no less than the world’s end, Or nature’s funeral, portend.

Again Butler’s Galileo leveled his optic tube to behold a still more extraordinary celestial phenomenon :

he fell again to pry, Thro’ perspective more wistfully, When by mischance, the fatal string, That kept the tow’ring fowl on wing, Breaking, down fell the star. Well shot, Quoth Whachum, who right wisely thought He ’ad levell’d at a star, and hit it. Since those mariners of mine, the cosmic voyagers, made use of every conceivable device to reach the moon, I thought it strange that for a long time I could discover no one of them who used a kite for his means of transportation. But I might have known they would not disappoint me. Ultimately I found in the British Museum a manuscript kite voyage to the moon. It is not worth publishing, I know, but to a collector of curiosi­ ties like myself it has the virtue of being unique. And it is not without its amusing moments. The author called it Seleno­ graphic/,, with the subtitle: The Lunarian, or Newes from the World in the Moon to the Lunaticks of This World. Who that author was I neither know nor care. On one occasion he tells us that the discovery of the world in the moon was made by “Cornelius van Drebble of Aleman in Holland,” on another that the more exact description of the new world was written by “ye Tudeskin Vertuoso, Lucas Lunanimus of Lunenbergi, & originally writ by the same hand in the Lunick Language; and now transproged out of old Babelonick meeter into plain English.” The date of composition of the manuscript is no more certain than the authorship. Authorities of the British Museum merely say, “Eighteenth century.” With the trepida­

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tion I always feel when I venture to differ with these experts, I insist that it was written, as it pretends to be, in the last part of the seventeenth century. The unknown author was one of many disciples of Samuel Butler, writing in Hudibrastic prose at the time, I imagine, that the influence of Hudibras was at its height. His point of departure, indeed, was the passage from Hudibras which I have just quoted. After a learned introduction, in which our Lunatic repeated all the conventional ideas about the possibility of reaching the moon-world, he expressed dissatisfaction with methods of flight so far proposed, and proposed his own alterna­ tive. “Our Author . . . observing likewise with an attentive eye & serious Rumination the admirable Invention of Paper Kites, which the Politick Boyes raised to a wonderfull height by ye help of a little gale of wind, which heightened likewise his fancy to this great enterprise. But when he saw how some ty Lanthorns to their tailes, which at night resemble Comets : and have ye like effects; and as some Authors say, was one of those blazing and prodigious Fire-drakes, which so much affrighted Sir Sidrophell. These so enlightened his fancy, & so enflamed his desires, that he thought he saw ye accomplishment of his designs, as clear as Batts by night. . . .” So begins still another curious voyage to the moon. We watch our traveler making “himselfe a kite of ye height of a large sheet, and fixing himself to the tayle of it by the help of some trusty friends, to whom he promised Mountains of Land in his new-found World.” He embarked, fittingly enough, “the first of Aprill, stylo veteri: a day alwaies esteemed prosperous for such adventures.” “Bestriding ye taile of his Pegasus, as Millers mount their Asses on ye Rump,” our hero mounted into the upper air, passing clouds on which he discussed ruins of old castles in the air, “formerly built for ye entertainment of ye speculative surveyers of ye Heavenly Motions.” Disappointed that he had discovered nothing beside the ruins of these ethereal castles, which he found unfit for habitation, he decided to return to earth and make a fresh start on the basis of celestial observations he had made with his “Tube, Horoscope, and other Instruments.” Two weeks later he set

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off anew, his friends holding the rope of the kite until, by prearranged signal, he informed them that he had reached his destination, the moon. He had set his route this time, he tells us, over the Via Lactea, which he found to be a hard paved causeway, distinctly reminiscent of the bridge from Hell to earth built by Milton’s Sin and Death. The adventures of this mariner in the moon need not detain us. They are tedious in the extreme, filled with satire upon the contemporary scene, in which Presbyterians, Fifth Monarchy Men, Papists are jumbled together with reminiscences of old beast fables and much other matter. Only at the beginning is there any originality in this rightly neglected tale, which chief merit in the history of my genre is the unknown author’s adaptation of the kite motif. As such a “toy” as the kite played its small part in the history of aviation, so too did some of those artificial fireworks for which it was often a vehicle. The modern reader may not realize how popular were fireworks in the seventeenth century and how prodigal the invention shown by our forefathers in their displays on gala occasions. Like Bacon’s Fathers of Salomon’s House they had invented “new mixtures and com­ positions of gunpowder, wild-fires burning in water and un­ quenchable, also fire-works of all variety, both for pleasure and use.” John Bate has left us specific directions for the construc­ tion of the most popular varieties. Some operated on the ground —hissing serpents, crackers, “Tumblingbals, Saucissons, Towers, Castles, Pyramids.” Some burned as they moved upon water—“Rockets, Dolphins, Ships, Tumblingbals, Mermaids.” Some operated in the air—“Rockets, Serpents, Raining fire, Stars, Petards, Dragons, Fire drakes, Fiends, Gyronels, Fire­ wheels, or Balloons.” Among them were many that must have stirred imagination to seek analogies with flying chariots, as by artificial means men produced at least a momentary illusion of flight and as fire-rockets suggested the propulsive force scientists were seeking. There was, for instance, the rocket “that shall burne a good while in the water, and then mount up into the ayre,” and the fire drake, much like the kite flown by Butler’s boy, “a peece of linnen cloth, of a yard or more in

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length . . . but after the forme of a pane of glasse,” fastened upon two cross-sticks smeared with linseed oil and liquid varnish. To the tail were fastened “divers crackers, or Saucissons.” A match prepared with saltpeter water was fired, and the kite raised against the wind in an open field: “as the match burneth, it will fire the crackers, and Saucissons, which will give divers blows in the ayre; and when the fire is once more come unto the stoupell, that will fire the cloth, which will shew very strangely and fearfully.” “Balloones,” * too, were described by these early authorities on fireworks, and although their analogy with the balloon of the Brothers Montgolfier was slight, even these may have caught the attention of those interested in any object which, even for a few moments, flew in the air. “A Balloone,” said Bate, “must be made of canvasse rowled eight or nine times upon a Forme, it must be made so, that it will easily go into the morter peece; into this Balloone you may put Rockets, Serpents, Starres, Fiends, Petards, and one or two Saucissions to breake the Balloone.” Most spectacular of all early fireworks was the “flying dragon,” which was not native to England but borrowed from Germany where the drachen was known as early as the four­ teenth century. Weird and horrible even in the illustrations left to us, it both fascinated and terrified those who saw it for the first time, as it did certain “Indian barbarians” of whom Athanasius Kircher told a tale in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. A group of Germans who had fallen into the hands of these savages realized that their days were numbered unless they could find some means more impressive than the futile strength of the outnumbered with which to terrify their captors. They threatened the superstitious barbarians with dire portents that would appear in the night sky unless the prisoners were released, but threats were not enough. Secretly one of them * According to the New English Dictionary, the word “balloon” was first used in 1598 by Florio who applied it to a ball something like a football. During the seventeenth century it was chiefly used in connection with pyro­ technics, implying a ball of pasteboard or cloth, stuffed with combustible matter, intended for firing from a mortar.

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constructed a long-tailed flying dragon, and, with a mixture of sulphur, pitch, and wax, made it ready for illumination. To it he added in great letters the words, Ira Dei. Night came, and before the astonished eyes of the barbarians this visible symbol of the wrath of God flew through the air, breathing fire from its nostrils, until the terrified Indians only too rapidly released their prisoners, begging mercy from the judgment of God. And so, as Wilkins suggested, even “toys” like the eagle and the fly, and “amusements” such as fireworks played their minor roles in the great drama of human flight. Trifles though they were, they should not be forgotten by historians of aviation, for as heavier-than-air mechanical insects flew, and as flying dragons mounted up with a hissing sound, they were affording clues for speculation to that inordinately curious seventeenth­ century mind, always alert for hints. Yet during Wilkins’ own lifetime, there seemed little reason to think that his obstinate belief in a flying chariot was justified. In an age when the scientific mind was dominated by artificial wings, Wilkins’ vision of a voyage to the moon in a chariot large enough to carry several men with food for their viaticum seemed to scien­ tists as fantastic as anything proposed by literary cosmic voy­ agers. Indeed, for a time the science of aviation lagged behind literature. Men of letters, more radical, because less deterred by practical considerations, were quick to pick up Wilkins’ hints and suggestions, quick to anticipate the airship. Long before the first precarious ascent of a balloon, literary Cyranos of the seventeenth century were winging their way to the moon by means of remarkable flying chariots.

II

Cyrano de Bergerac was not the first romancer to suggest the use of some kind of machine for cosmic voyaging, but the “Engines” of his predecessors were so vaguely described that they suggest little stirring of the scientific imagination. In that “Romance, which is better than all Histories,” told by Cyrano’s predecessor “Hortensius” in Charles Sorel’s Comical History

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of Francion, there is talk of a curious “Engine” designed by “a new Archimedes.” It would require a wisdom as great as Athena’s—and certainly greater than mine—to explain its mechanism. “Some men have affirmed,” wrote Sorel, “that there are many Worlds, which some have placed in the Planets, and others in the fixt Starrs; For my part, I believe there is a world in the moon.” Sorel proposes to “do that which hath yet never entred into the thoughts of mortal man”—he flattered his originality, as did so many of these men of letters—and take his readers on a voyage to the moon. Cryptically—these earlier authors all delight to speak in mysterious terms—he tells of “a Prince as ambitious as Alexander, who shall come to conquer this world.” The modern Alexander “shall make great provision of Engins, either to descend, or to ascend (for to speak the truth, I do not yet know whether we are above that world, or beneath).” There is much talk of the new Archi­ medes, who “shall make all manner of structures, and ladders, by the means whereof he shall enter into the Epicycle of the Moon, and there it shall be where he shall find some place habitable, where shall be Nations unknown, whom he shall overcome.” The Comical History of Francion would not detain me even briefly were it not that it was read by Cyrano and other later cosmic voyagers, and that Sorel introduced “Engins” even though he never defined his term. Some modern critics have considered the lunar and solar voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac as fantastic and meaningless as those of Sorel’s Pilgrim. If they had read them in their proper genre and against the background of Cyrano’s own learning, they would have recognized them for what they are— the most brilliant of all seventeenth-century parodies of the cosmic voyage. Sorel harked back to the old world of fantasy; Cyrano had his feet firmly on the new ground of science. Not for nothing was he the friend and associate of Pierre Gassendi, Jacques Rohault, and other contemporary philosophers, scien­ tists, mathematicians. Only one who had followed the “new philosophy” closely could have had as much fun in satirizing and parodying it as did Cyrano. The voyages begin in a fashion that was already becoming

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conventional. Strolling with a group of friends in the moonlight, Cyrano found himself pondering theories of the moon. To his unlearned companions, it seemed only “a garret Window of Heaven,” or perhaps “the Sun himself, who putting his Locks up under his Cap at Night, peeped through a hole to observe what was doing in the World.” When Cyrano expressed his opinion that “the Moone is a World like ours, to which this of ours serves likewise for a Moon,” he roused the general laughter of the company. Alone in this chamber, Cyrano, stubbornly persuaded of the truth of his belief, resolved to find some method of voyaging to the moon in order to persuade the doubting Thomases of the truth of his opinion. So began his series of cosmic voyages, in which he combined many of the themes we have already detected, exaggerating and parodying, yet still relying upon contemporary scientific theory. Cyrano’s first attempt to reach the moon was made by a device quite different from anything we have so far encountered. The sun, he reasoned, sucks up dew. If, then, a man should fasten about himself vials filled with dew, would not he too be sucked up through the air? Why not? So Cyrano prepared his first curious “machine.” In a contemporary illustration, unfortunately omitted from modern editions, we may see him— rings on his fingers and bells on his toes—lavishly surrounded with dew vials, “a great many Glasses full of Dew, tied fast about me; upon which the Sun so violently darted his Rays, that the Heat, which attracted them, as it does the thickest Clouds, carried me up so high, that at length I found myself above the middle Region of the Air.” So strong was the “Attraction,” which “hurried me up with so much rapidity,” that Cyrano, fearing he might by-pass the moon, began to break his vials, adjusting the forces of attraction and gravity in order that he might be able to make a safe landing in a new world. So, indeed, he did, though not in the world of the moon. Alas! he had broken so many of his bottles that earth’s gravity proved stronger than moon “attraction.” He landed in a strange world indeed, inhabited by “savages,” who, to his surprise—and relief —spoke French, though rather of “Stratford atte Bowe” than of Paris. During his flight, the earth had turned upon its “Axle­

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tree,” and when gravity brought Cyrano to land, he discovered that he had fallen upon the other side of his own world, New France in Canada. Nothing daunted, he proceeded to invent still another kind of flying machine. Whether or not he reached the moon, he might at least escape the Canadian barbarians. “I had made a Machine,” he tells us, “which I fancied might carry me as high as I pleased, so that nothing seemed to be wanting to it.” Unfortunately for us, he said little about the appearance of that machine or about the principles by which it operated, though in passing he did mention that he had used some sort of wings as well as a “spring”—“l’invention du ressort.” His first trial proved a failure. “I placed my self within,” he said, “and from the Top of a Rock, threw my self in the Air. But because I had not taken my measures aright, I fell with a sosh into the Valley below. Bruised as I was, however, I returned to my Chamber, and with Beef-Marrow I anointed my Body, so I was all over mortified from Head to Foot.” Perhaps because he delayed still longer to “fortify my Heart with a Bottle of cordial Essence,” Cyrano inadvertently became the first flyer in literary history to reach the moon by means of a rocket ship! * When he returned to the valley in which he * It seems to me curious that Cyrano’s idea of using firecrackers or some other form of gunpowder was not used more often by cosmic voyagers. I have found it in a French romance of 1708, Furetiriana (see Bibliography) where it is an obvious imitation of Cyrano, but there seems no suggestion of it in English voyages before Murtagh McDermot described a more elaborate plan in his Trip to the Moon, 1728. That voyage itself is so derivative that I have not discussed it in the text, yet I quote the passage in which McDermot describes his method of getting back to the earth from the moon, since it is the closest approach I have found in early literature to Jules Verne’s “Columbiad”: “We already know, said I, the Height of the Moon’s Atmos­ phere, and know how Gun-powder will raise a Ball of any Weight to any Height. Now I design to place myself in the Middle of ten wooden Vessels, placed one within another, with the Outermost strongly hooped with Iron, to prevent its breaking. This I will place over 7000 Barrels of Powder, which I know will raise me to the Top of the Atmosphere. . . . But before I blow myself up, I’ll provide myself with a large pair of Wings, which I will fasten to my Arms in my Resting-Place, by the help of which I will fly down to the Earth.” McDermot tells us that the lunarians helped him to dig a great hole in the earth for the gunpowder and describes “a Train laid of about a Mile long.”

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had left his flying chariot, he was horrified to discover a group of soldiers amusing themselves with the machine, fastening to it bunches of fireworks, “because their Force carrying them up so high, and the Machine plying its large Wings, no Body but would take it for a Fiery Dragon.” “Transported with Grief, to find the Work of my Hands in so great Peril,” Cyrano ran to a soldier, “pluckt the Match out of his Hand, and in great Rage threw my self into my Machine, that I might undo the Fire Works that they had stuck about it; but I came too late, for hardly were both my Feet within, then whip, away went I up in a Cloud.” Off went the firecrackers, and off went Cyrano, who had unwittingly discovered the principle of an initial force sufficient to send a rocket ship into the strato­ sphere. On he flew, crackers exploding on all sides of him, his machine rising higher and higher, until at last, “all the com­ bustible Matter being spent,” the speed of the flying chariot slackened. “Adieu, Machine,” lamented its inventor. Did we not know him well, we might expect to add, “Adieu, Cyrano.” But since we have already sailed with so many mariners be­ tween two worlds, we experience no more astonishment than did Cyrano when he found “my elevation continuing,” even while his ship fell to the distant earth. He had an explanation, of course: “I perceiv’d my flesh blown up, and still greasy with the Marrow, that I had daubed my self over with, for the Bruises of my fall; I knew that the Moon being then in the Wain, and that it being usual for her in that Quarter, to suck up the Marrow of Animals; she drank up that wherewith I was anointed, with so much the more force, that her Globe was nearer to me, that no interposition of Clouds weakened her Attraction.” Three-quarters of the way to the moon, Cyrano found him­ self making a somersault dive: “I found my feet turn over of a sudden, without any apparent jerk; nay, I had not per­ ceived it, if I had not found my head loaden with the rest of my body.” Even in this grotesque position, Cyrano’s savoir faire did not desert him, nor did his scientific curiosity. Peering between his legs, he looked back at the earth he had left, which now “appeared to me like a large Holland-Cheese gilded.” The

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attractive power of the moon, while proportionately less than that of earth, proved too much for the flyer, who made a crash landing. Like an unfortunate paratrooper, he landed in a tree, almost insensible, and in a new Garden of Eden recovered con­ sciousness to find—symbolically—“my face plaistered with an Apple.” Over the world Cyrano discovered in the moon I must not linger as long as I might wish. This was no such scientific world as was Kepler’s. There are memories of Godwin’s fantasy, and indeed it is with reminiscent pleasure rather than surprise that we meet “a little Man almost of my Built ... a native of old Castile,” our old friend Domingo Gonsales, who became Cyrano’s guide and mentor in the new world. “He then in­ treated me to tell him,” Cyrano commented, “how I durst be so bold as to Scale the Moon with the Machine I told him of? I answered, That it was because he had carried away the Birds, which I had intended to have made use of.” But on the whole Cyrano’s experiences in the moon were very different from those of Gonsales in that pleasant world of romance. Never did Cyrano de Bergerac show more clearly his wide reading and his impish imagination. Here are elements drawn from earlier literature from Lucian to Rabelais, Kepler, Godwin; fantastic adventures in a world of birds, scenes of warfare between opposed parties of the lunarians, which afforded fuel to such later British romancers as D’Ur fey, Aphra Behn, Defoe, Brunt, Swift. Here, too, are many evidences of Cyrano’s acquaintance with Gassendi and Rohault, as well as his wide reading in philosophy, ancient and modern. The profound argu­ ments of the “philosophers” who weigh and balance Aristotelianism and Cartesianism, in an attempt to prove by old logic and new science whether Cyrano is or is not a human being, is one of the most brilliant chapters in the “Battle of the Books.” And Cyrano’s trial for “heresy”—because he who on earth had dared affirm that the moon was an inhabited world now attempted to prove to the lunarians that their moon, our earth, is also an inhabited world—set a fashion that was to be fol­ lowed by nearly all writers of cosmic voyages down to modern times.

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Cyrano’s lunarians, as so often in these tales, prove a com­ bination of “ancients” and “moderns,” in some ways far behind their neighbors on earth, in others so much in advance that they have made discoveries and inventions of which terrestrials never dreamed, for Cyrano followed Campanella in The City of the Sun and Bacon in the New Atlantis in prophesying all sorts of inventions “for the benefit and use of man,” some of which twentieth-century man has actually known and used. * It is curious that these lunarians, so fertile in invention, did not provide Cyrano with a flying chariot in which to make his journey back to earth. To be sure, there was some talk in the moon of inventing “a Machine that may hold three or four,” and perhaps it was from the lunarians that Cyrano picked up hints for the elaborate airship he was later to design. How­ ever, his actual descent from the moon to earth took place by supernatural rather than by natural means. His attendant spirit “rose like a Whirl-wind, and holding me between his Arms, without the least Uneasiness, he made me pass that vast dis­ tance, which Astronomers reckon betwixt the Moon and us, in a day and a halfs time; which convinced me that they tell a Lye, who say that a Mill-stone would be Three Hundred Threescore, and I know not how many years more, in falling from Heaven, since I was so short a while in dropping down from the Globe of the Moon upon this. At length, about the beginning of the Second day, I perceived I was drawing near our World.” As on his arrival in the moon, Cyrano conveniently suffered a brief period of unconsciousness, so that he had little remembrance of his arrival on earth and of the departure of his attendant spirit. But of all that had passed in the world of the moon, he retailed the most vivid recollections. * In one of the lunar inventions Cyrano anticipated our modern recordings of books for the blind in “a Book made wholly for the Ears, and not the Eyes. So that when any Body has a mind to read in it, he winds up that Machine with a great many little Strings; then he turns the Hand to a Chapter which he desires to hear, and straight as from the Mouth of a Man, or a Musical Instrument, proceed all the distinct and different Sounds." Cyrano adds: “I no longer wondred, that the Young Men of that Country, were more knowing at Sixteen, or Eighteen years Old, than the Gray-Beards of our Climate.”

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So clear were these memories, indeed, that Cyrano would seem to have shared the failing of too many returned travelers and made a nuisance of himself among his acquaintance. As in the world of the moon he had pleaded for belief in an inhabited earth, now on earth he pestered men to believe in an inhabited moon, until again he became a “heretic.” Even imprisonment could not daunt his reckless spirit nor dampen his desire to make another interplanetary voyage to discover whether there were mortals in the planets also, and particularly whether there was a world in the sun. Secretly he worked upon a much more elaborate flying machine, which he fortu­ nately described in some detail:

It was a large, very light Box, that shut tight and close: of about six Foot high, and three Foot Square. This Box had a hole in it below; and over the Cover, which had likewise a hole in it, I placed a Vessel of Christal, bored through it in the same manner, made in a Globular Figure, but very large, the Orifice whereof joyn’d exactly to and was enchaced, in the hole I had made in the head. The Vessel was purposely made with many Angles, and in form of an Icosaedron, to the end that every Facet being convex and concave, my Boul might produce the effect of a Burning-Glass. . . . It shut so close, that a grain of Air could not enter it, except by the two openings; and I had placed a little very light Board within for my self to sit upon. The principle of flight of the machine is thus explained by Cyrano as he finds himself rising from the tower of his prison: When the Sun breaking out from under the Clouds, began to shine upon my Machine, that transparent Icosaedron, which through its Facets received the Treasures of the Sun, diffused by it’s Orifice the light of them into my Cell. ... I foresaw very well, that the Vacuity that would happen in the Icosaedron, by reason of the Sun-beams, united by the concave Glasses, would, to fill up the space, attract a great abundance of Air, whereby my Box would be carried up; and that proportionable as I mounted, the rushing wind that should force it through the Hole, could not rise to

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the roof, but that furiously penetrating the Machine, it must needs force it upon high. Originally Cyrano had planned for his machine “a little Sail, easie to be turned, with a Line that passed through the Orifice of the Vessel; and which I held by the End.” The sail, how­ ever, proved useless, since Cyrano had failed to compute the force of the wind he would encounter in the higher regions of the air. To his amazement he found that the voyage, designed to take him only to Colignac, became a violent ascent into the “Middle Region of the air.” But as always his scientific mind had an explanation:

I have told you, that the Sun which beat vigorously upon my concave Glasses, uniting his Rayes in the middle of the Vessel, by his heat drove out the Air it was full of through the upper Con­ duit; and that so the Vessel being void, Nature, which abhors Vacuity, made it suck in, by the opening below, other Air to fill it again: If it lost much, it regained as much; and so one is not to wonder, that in a Region above the middle where the winds are, I continued to mount up; because the Aether became wind, by the furious Rapidity wherewith it forced it to hinder a Vacuity, and by consequence ought incessantly push up my Machine.

In less than an hour he “was got above the Middle Region” and realized that he had builded better than he knew, as his machine continued to rise. For a moment he felt some trepida­ tion : “I have no time to lose, I must look to my self; I am like Phaeton in the middle of a Career, where I cannot turn back again; and where if I make but one false step, all Nature is not able to save me.” Like our other voyagers, he experienced neither hunger nor thirst, though he was candid enough to suggest that such lack of desire might be less the result of the absence of gravity than of his dependence upon a “little Bottle of Spirits which I carried always with me.” A miraculous “little Bottle” this must have been if it lasted Cyrano all the way, for this was no such short journey as he had made to Canada or to the moon. Human imagination was expanding with the growing

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feeling for space. No longer did a Domingo fly to the moon in eleven days harnessed to his gansas. It was four months before Cyrano reached even the outermost of “those little Earths that wheel about the Sun,” and nearly two years before he safely arrived at his goal. But Cyrano was never bored. Every day he found new matter to ponder. Initial terror soon gave way to scientific curiosity, first about the principle of his flight, then about the cosmic universe. As on his first voyage, he verified the Copernician hypothesis and watched the daily revolution of his terrestrial world. At first he could clearly see the Occi­ dent giving way to the Orient, as France, Italy, and Greece were replaced by India, China, and Japan. After some hours these in turn gave way to the Americas, and a little later Europe appeared again, though Cyrano was now too far away to distinguish individual countries. As he rose higher and higher, he watched his earth decrease. At first it “appeared to me as a Planet, much about the bigness of the Moon, as she appears to us: Nay, it grew less and less, still proportionably as I ascended, insomuch that it became a Star, then a Spark, and then nothing at all.” The moon which had once been his goal he passed by on his later journey with hardly a glance, finding himself much more interested in the phases of Venus and in Mercury. Like Milton’s Satan and Emanuel Sweden­ borg, he perceived on every hand other worlds, “sometimes on the right, and sometimes on the left, several Earths like ours.” He observed besides that “all these Worlds have other little Worlds about them. . . . And therefore Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, have been constrained to whirlegig it, and move both at once around the Sun.” Once again as on his voyage to the moon, Cyrano was destined to lose his flying chariot. For a long time the force of air had been sufficient both to support and propel it, but as time went on, he found the air growing more and more rarefied until at last he felt his “Box” beginning to fall. Remembering his earlier experience, he threw himself out to continue his journey by means to which he vaguely refers as “an ardour of Will.” Far below him he saw his “Char-volant . . . long a-falling through those vast plains of the World.” Like Cyrano, we are

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glad to know that it made a safe landing, and was later found in Poland by another intrepid flyer who made full use of the flying chariot. On went Cyrano to the sun, though whether he flew “up” or “down” he never knew. “I’ll only tell you in general,” he concluded, “that at the end of 22 Months, I at length happily arrived at the great plains of Day,” in a land that looked “like flakes of burning Snow, so luminous it was.” There we may leave the most amusing and most charming of all moon voyagers, another mysterious spot on the radiant face of the sun, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the Sun’s lucent orb Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw.

Ill Kepler and Wilkins, Godwin and Cyrano aroused popular imagination and led to other literary suggestions of flying machines, as we shall see. But the great stimulus to both science and literature, so far as the flying chariot is concerned, came about through the novel airship proposed in 1670 by Francesco Lana, an invention that marked a real epoch in the history of aerostatics. Lana’s little canoe, in the diagrams which have been repro­ duced so often, is as captivating to lay imagination as Godwin’s gansas or Cyrano’s rocket. Yet here was no Lucianic fantasy. This was straightforward science, written by an Italian philoso­ pher-scientist, who like Bacon, Leibniz, Spinoza, took all knowl­ edge for his province, and later in his Magisterium Naturae et Artis made a magnificent beginning upon that impossible task all these philosophers had set themselves, the revision of the whole body of human knowledge. In his earlier Prodromo, however, he was concerning himself less with a reformation of philosophy than with practical problems of certain inven­ tions of “benefit and use” to man, among them the flying ship. And indeed, although his ship never flew, it is no exaggeration to say that in the idea Lana had in mind lay the principle of

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the later balloon in which man was to conquer the air, for Lana’s was a “lighter-than-air” machine. In so far as an invention may be said to have sprung fullgrown from the brain of an inventor, Lana’s airship deserves the adjectives “novel” and “original” so frequently used about it. Its principle was simple enough that even the layman could easily understand it. The aerial ship consisted of “a wooden car . . . fashioned like a boat,” a canoe-shaped vessel, as the diagram shows. It was fitted with a sail and with oars made of leather, which would cleave the air as wooden oars the water, for Lana was persuaded that the air was of much the same “nature” as water. “It has weight owing to the vapours and halations which ascend from the earth and seas to a height of many miles and surround the whole of our terraqueous globe.” As a boat is rowed against the “resistance” of water, why may not an airship be rowed against the “resistance” of air? The real novelty of Lana’s airship, however, lay not in the sail and oars, but in four evacuated globes the sizes of which Lana carefully demonstrated, attached to the ship by four ropes of equal length. There is nothing mysterious here; the principle of the vacuum is familiar to any layman. Indeed, even Cyrano had been trying to get at something of this sort, though there is one great difference between his scientific ideas and Lana’s. Cyrano still believed in that old adage which had done so much to retard science: “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Lana was familiar with the experimentation that had led to the Torricellian barom­ eter of 1643, the air pump of Otto von Guericke in 1650, and with the work of Francesco de Mendoza, Gaspar Schott, Robert Boyle, all of whom in the period around 1660 were experiment­ ing on principles of specific gravity. Their discoveries, by Lana’s time, had banished from science the long-accepted horror vacui of nature. Lana was quick to acknowledge his debt to these “moderns” though he never forgot the “ancients.” He had as much to say of the dove of Archytas as of the eagle of Regiomontanus. Of all his ancestors, two “ancients” were most important for Lana’s airship: Euclid, who had proved by “infallible demon­

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stration . . . that the superficial area of globes increases in the proportion of the square of the diameter, whilst the volume increases in the proportion of the cube of the same diameter,” and Archimedes, whose “ancient law” was always in Lana’s mind—“when a body is lighter or has less density, as they describe it, than another, the lighter one will ascend in the heavier one if the heavier is a liquid body.” Archimedes, Euclid, or Archytas; Regiomontanus, von Guericke, or Boyle—all were seekers after truth. From ancient and modern truths Lana made a new combination in order to invent a flying chariot. Throughout Europe scientists discussed Lana’s theories with interest and enthusiasm, believing at first that the Italian had solved the long mystery. In 1672 J. H. Sturm published at Altdorf a Latin translation of the sections on the flying machine, indicating his general agreement with Lana’s theories. In 1676 Lohmeier republished the original work at Rinteln, suggesting six rather than four evacuated globes. In England the critique of Robert Hooke, our busy old friend of the Royal Society, was the most important pronouncement upon Lana’s proposal. After careful analysis of the principles involved, he reported to the Society that he did not consider Lana’s airship feasible. His specific criticism was one that became increasingly familiar. Lana’s evacuated globes, if made as he suggested of glass or copper or any other “thin metal,” and if increased to the size necessary to carry the weight of men, would burst under at­ mospheric pressure. Leibniz, Borelli, and others on the continent raised the same valid objection. Yet for all that, Lana’s globes continued to point the way to the future, and Lana became throughout Europe the great prophet of a new age when “modern” man should conquer the air as he had conquered so much else in nature. Yet “modern” though he was in his science, Lana was far from being a thoroughgoing optimist. More clearly than any other inventor or experimenter we have met so far, he echoed that ancient warning to proud man not to aspire too high. At the end of his chapter on the flying canoe, Lana the inventor, Lana the “modern,” faced, more poignantly than any man

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before him, the ultimate implications of such an invention. Wilkins and many others had stressed “the pleasure and profit to man” of the airship, had believed that such an invention “would be of such excellent use, that it were enough, not only to make a man famous, but the age also in which hee lives.” Lana believed that he had succeeded where all men previously had failed; he had solved the problem of human flight. There is nothing in the “laws of nature” man cannot grasp, nothing in “nature” to prohibit man’s becoming a bird. Yet for all his scientific enthusiasm, Francesco Lana did not believe that man would ever fly by means of his little canoe with its evacuated metal balls. “Other difficulties I do not foresee that could prevail against this invention,” wrote this man who was both scientist and reverent son of the Church, “save one only, which to me seems the greatest of them all, and that is that God would never surely allow such a machine to be successful.” “Two voices are there”; here for the first time in many years we hear that “dread voice.” Man proposes, but God still disposes. Man has conquered nature; he has not yet bested—or worsted—God. Lana wrote in a period when men were almost obsessed by belief in man’s potentialities, when the paean of praise was often that of Swinburne’s, “Hymn to Man” with the refrain, “Glory to Man in the highest, for Man is the Master of things.” The scientist Lana for the first time brought squarely before men, not the “benefit and use,” but the danger and terror of human conquest of the air. The airship, Lana realized, if it were ever actually realized, “would create many disturbances in the civil and political governments of mankind”:

Where is the man who can fail to see that no city would be proof against surprise, as the ship could at any time be steered over its squares, or even over the courtyards of dwelling-houses, and brought to earth for the landing of its crew? And in the case of ships that sail the seas, by allowing the aerial ship to descend from the high air to the level of their sails, their cordage would be cut, or even without descending so low iron weights could be hurled to wreck the ships and kill their crews, or they could be set on fire by fireballs and bombs; not ships alone, but houses, fortresses, and cities could be thus destroyed.

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So the seventeenth-century Italian inventor anticipated what we may live to see—the possible destruction of civilization through the ingenuity of man. Only in one small part of his prophecy did Lana not foresee the whole danger. Vehicle of destruction though his flying chariot might be, in Lana’s mind the machine itself continued to fly aloft, above and beyond danger. Houses, cities, fortresses, civilization might be de­ stroyed, but the airship, modern emissary of the wrath of God, “the airship could come to no harm.” Whatever may be the conclusion of historians of aviation upon the importance of Lana’s Prodromo in the history of science, Lana’s influence upon literature is indisputable. Poets, satirists, writers of fantasy made use of his aerial ship. Phi­ losophers attacked and defended Lana’s prophecy of the dangers of flight. I have no intention of compiling a bibliography of the literary descendants of Lana, since his influence was slighter in England than upon the continent. Yet casually browsing in continental literature, I have run across the little ship often enough to have some idea of its appeal to literary imagination. In one instance at least that flying ship—with the addition of two more metal balls proposed by Lohmeier—carried a daring group of five German mariners not only to the moon but to all the planets. This was a German tale by Eberhard Christian Kindermann, Die Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach den obern Welt. The purpose of the travelers was “to find out whether it is true that on July 10 of this year [1744], the planet Mars appeared with a satellite or moon for the first time since the world has been in existence.” In the illustration to that little planetary voyage, we see our mariners as they take off from our world—on which their friends are watching them through telescopes and sending up last messages—and pass the orb of the moon on the beginning of their grand tour of the universe. And I was amused to discover that in a reprint of Lana’s Prodromo published at Rome in 1784, shortly after the successful flight of the Brothers Montgolfier in their balloon, the illustration shows Lana’s ship unchanged so far as the boat is concerned, but the metal balls have now been replaced by

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four hydrogen balloons. Later, in another connection, I shall tell you of other Lana sequels. Over one imaginary voyage made in a Lana airship I de­ liberately intend to linger for a few moments, since now that it is available in English, I think it would interest many modern readers. Those of us who remember the breathless day when Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and recall, too, the first flight around the world of that majestic descendant of Lana’s canoe, the Graf Zeppelin, will appreciate this poem more than will a younger generation that takes flight for granted. An Italian, Bernard Zamagna, was the first poet to describe, if only imaginatively, a voyage around the world in an airplane. Nearly a century after Lana’s invention, his countryman trans­ lated his theories into epic poetry in the Navis Aeria. “There shall be another Tiphys and another Argo to carry chosen heroes.” With these prophetic Virgilian words begins the first epic poem of modern times describing a flight around the world. It was as characteristic of his age and of himself that Zamagna should have turned back to the classical past for his motto, his style, his allusions, as that he should have glorified in hexameters not the art of Virgil nor the grandeur of Rome, but a highly technical flying machine produced by another kind of human “art.” Far from avoiding technicalities and mathe­ matics, the poet seemed to delight in turning such details into the stuff of a new kind of poetry. As Caesar built a bridge and made it literature, so Zamagna built a flying machine. The first canto of the Navis Aeria is devoted to a description of the con­ struction of Lana’s machine, to celebration of Euclid and Archi­ medes as well as of those modern scientists and mathematicians who had built upon them. That first canto ends dramatically, when the ship is ready to take off, with a panegyric to pioneers of the past who set sail in frail barks to discover new lands and those of the future who may ascend in even more precarious ships to expand the “intellectual globe” as their fathers had expanded the geographical. In the second canto, the aerial ship takes off. “The ignorant crowd stand stupefied, silently marvelling as they gaze upward.”

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A later Puck, this flying chariot put a girdle round the earth if not in forty minutes, at least in twenty-four hours. Over Italy from which it starts, the vessel flies, then across Germany, France, above the channel. For a moment the British Isles come into view. So swift is the flight, however, that we catch only momentary glimpses of these familiar lands as we accompany Zamagna’s mariners. Suddenly “far off in the west, a new land begins to rise beyond the confines of Europe and the remote shores of Thule . . . largest of earth’s tracts, discovered after so long a time.” In turn the flyers see those districts of the new world that send home richest tribute to the old: the golden country of New Castile, the kingdoms of Peru, the land of the Amazons, the Canadian wilds. Diverse people of many races have landed on these shores, with numberless others yet to come. Yet as the flyers can see, there are vast regions still unsubdued, where tribes of savage name yield obedience only to their own regions and their own customs. Almost before we realize it, another great ocean is passed. The shores of the Orient rise steeply from the sea, China and the lands of Persia; then we see the broad plains of Egypt, the ruined walls of once proud Carthage. Over the Pacific and the Orient Zamagna passes rapidly, since these were regions still so remote from his knowledge that he could sketch them only lightly on his broad canvas. Finally we come home to Europe. Greece appears, and here the aerial ship seems to check its course, while its author looks down wistfully at a land so familiar in litera­ ture and art. “O Country dear to me, farewell! having ranged victoriously over the whole world, I am borne through the uncharted air to Latium, hastening to bring you a gift, if not of Elean olive, at least a garland of ivy intertwined with laurel from Parnassus.” So for a moment the most modern of inventions pauses over the greatest of classical civilizations in a symbolic con­ clusion. In the poem are merged two great contributions to the history of civilization: the old classics and the new science. The art of the Italian poet—and it was no mean art—has welded into still another whole the “ancient” and the “modern.” In often flawless hexameters, with a deftness and sureness of

FRANCESCO LANA’S FLYING MACHINE From Bernard Zamagna, Navis Aena

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touch not inferior to any but the greatest of Latin poets since the revival of learning, Zamagna unites old classical traditions, new scientific discoveries. In his mind there was no conflict between science and literary imagination, for science had become as true a stuff of poetry as were the wanderings of Odysseus, the tragedies of the house of Atreus. As Lucretius wove into a unified poem the philosophy and science of his period, so Zamagna passed inevitably from Urania and Phoebus to the Copernican theory, from Daedalus and Icarus to the chariots of John Wilkins, from Tiphys and Argo to the flying ship of Francesco Lana. Each age produces its heroes; each age has had its poets to preserve those heroes for posterity. Tiphys or Argo, flying chariot or moon rocket, later discoverers con­ tinued to read new meaning into old proverbs. No matter how changed the vehicle of man, sic itur ad astra.

IV From the point of view of actual invention, a fallow period followed upon the publication of Lana’s Prodromo. Yet, while the science of aerostatics was temporarily quiescent, experi­ ments seemingly far removed from human flight were laying the basis for man’s ultimate conquest of the air. From 1659 Robert Boyle had been working on “the spring of the air” and the weight of air—that “weighing of the air” at which Samuel Pepys once laughed with the King and nobility in the privacy of the royal closet. Much of this experimentation, carried on with bladders and with the air pump—which in itself offered clues to human birds—might have led Boyle, Hooke, and their various associates to findings of great importance in aerostatics. Boyle had noted the effect of heat in causing the expansion of air, and was close to discoveries later to be made by Cavendish. “It was experiments such as these,” as J. E. Hodgson says, “that led to the assertion, met with after the invention of the balloon, that Boyle’s investigations on the weight of the air gave birth to the new discovery of Montgolfier.” But Mr. Hodgson adds: “Perhaps it would be more true to suggest that when in 1739 John Clayton made experiments with what he

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called ‘spirit of coal,’ he must [in filling thick bladders with gas] have been very near to witnessing the phenomenon of the bal­ loon.” Yet for all the work of Boyle, Hooke, Clayton, and many another, the discovery of hydrogen remained for Henry Caven­ dish, who in 1766 stated the relative density of “inflammable air” in comparison with that of “common or atmospheric air.” Man now knew the specific gravity of hydrogen. It was only a matter of time before this knowledge would be adapted to some such “globes” as Lana had presupposed, but globes made of a substance more yielding than “thin metal.” The ascension of the first hydrogen balloon marked the end of a long period of conjecture, imagination, trial and error, a climax in the history of aerostatics, a prelude to major events in the history of aeronautics. While the world was waiting for a Cavendish, and while avia­ tion seemed to make time, scientific proposals for many kinds of flying chariots continued to pour forth. These you may find described in many histories of aeronautics, and I shall not linger over them, since so far as practicability was concerned, they made no advance on Lana. Indeed, to modern technological ears they seem as antiquated as “a most surprising Engine” invented by one Jacob Daniel and used with the greatest suc­ cess by both Jacob and his father, “John Daniel, a Smith at Royston in Hertfordshire” whose account, set down by Ralph Morris in 1751, describes not only the “Engine” but the “aston­ ishing Adventures” of that hardy old gentleman who appar­ ently thrived on excitement, since he survived his son and “died in 1711, aged 97.” In all our wanderings we have never flown to the moon on a stranger or cruder instrument than the “Eagle” Jacob Daniel displayed before his astonished father:

Jacob growing impatient of delay; come, father, now I am mounted on my Eagle (as he called his machine) says he, you shall see me fly. I would fain have dissuaded him; but he began with his pump handle, and rising gently from the posts, away he went, almost two miles; then working the contrary handle, as he told me, he returned again, and passed by me to the other end of the moun­ tain; then soaring a little as he came near me again; Father, says he, I can keep her up, if you can guide her to the posts. I did so,

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and he seemed so rejoiced at his flight, and so alert upon it, that perceiving with what ease it was managed, and how readily it went and returned, and he entreating me to take a turn with him, I at last consented. Jacob having brought me to his wish, opened his trap door in great joy and let me up; then making all fast; Father, says he, lie you or sit close to the pump on that side, whilst I work it on this; and seeing me somewhat fearful, don’t be afraid, says he, hold by the pump irons, you are as safe here as on the solid earth; then plying his handle, we rose, and away we went. One journey in the “Eagle” was enough to whet the appetite of John Daniel, whose “surprising Adeventures” included a trip to the moon over which I shall not linger, since, wherever Daniel got his flying chariot, his moon voyage came to him from his betters in the seventeenth century. Daniel’s flying machine is much more interesting than his moon voyage, but the opposite is true of the tale of one of his followers, “Israel Jobson” who in the mid-eighteenth century set out on one of the most far-flung of all cosmic tours “con­ ducted by a Guardian Angel”—we are back to one of our earlier themes—in a chariot reminiscent of Elijah’s in which he visited not only the moon and planets but even other worlds in other solar systems, in all of which he found “miraculous Globes . . . like Suns and Planets dancing Minuets to the Musick of the Spheres.” Conventional as are many of the adventures of Israel Jobson, which later lead him to Muscovy and China (as a result of which he writes his cosmic voyage in Chinese, from which he is forced to translate it for his own countrymen—a work of supererogation, perhaps!) his author has given us two variants upon our perennial theme: the char­ acter to whom the author has attached the old conventions, and some few unusual details of planetary worlds, which look both before and after. The first of these variations upon our theme is the most striking—for our hero Israel Jobson is the “Wandering Jew” who has wandered for so many centuries throughout litera­ ture, finding no rest for the soles of his feet, and who now for the first time pursues his wanderings through interstellar space. The History of Israel Jobson, the Wandering Jew, pub­

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lished in 1757, was written by Miles Wilson, curate of the Yorkshire village of Halton Gill for forty years. Presumably earlier, Wilson had also written a shorter Man in the Moon which perhaps served as a preview of the more extensive His­ tory. While the work itself has been lost, we know something about it from a later writer who collected the lore of the north­ west Yorkshire highlands. It evidently told of Jobson’s first attempt to scale the heavens by means of an invention which seems a cross between the strange “Engins” of The Comical History of Francion (one of which was a ladder) and the remarkable “Moon-spring” of David Russen of Hythe you will presently discover in a footnote—just where it belongs, so far as the history of science is concerned! Jobson, we are told, having purchased “an enormous quantity of rope and timber,” after many years of patient labor made an immense ladder on which he climbed laboriously to the moon. Apparently, like most cosmic voyagers, he had not eaten on the way, but when he reached the moon he found himself voraciously hungry and looked about him for food, only to discover that the Selenites “who were made of a kind of pot-metal” fed only on common clay, a diet that even the famished Jobson politely declined. He “lost no time in descending to mother Earth, and to a more appetizing fare of his wife’s home-made bread and good old-fashioned Yorkshire ham and eggs.” So much for the little work that has been lost in the Lethe of oblivion where I have not attempted to seek it out. Perhaps the Israel Jobson of the History, remembering that long climb to the moon, categorically refused to make another ascent by muscles; at all events, his author permitted him to make the second trip in Elijah’s, chariot. Again in the moon he finds the strange lunarians made of pot metal, who at the moment of his arrival are returning from one of those lunarian battles that had already become standard in such literature, and are being patched up by the coppersmiths who are the local doctors and surgeons... Some of Wilson’s details, I suspect, came to him from D’Urfey’s Wonders in the Sim, for that spectacle included a battle and, at least in passing, D’Ur fey suggested that in the cosmic worlds Domingo Gonsales found all sorts of “artificial”

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objects made of brittle glass and metals. Yet there are some details in this curious tale of the Wandering Jew that are differ­ ent from those in any of Wilson’s predecessors, and seem to look forward rather than back. The men of Mars who have two sets of eyes, with one of which they sleep, with the other of which they rapturously survey the works of all creation, are little more than gigantic parodies of the old Janus legend; but the immense Saturnians with one eye in front, another in the back, are grotesque enough to anticipate in some slight degree the horrible Selenites of H. G. Wells, whose eyes grow where their ears ought to be. Derivative though he is, the curate of Halton Gill had an imagination of his own, never more so than when he ingeniously welded together two old tales—as his lunar coppersmiths welded their metal men—and laid upon the bowed back of the Wandering Jew the burden of the most extensive of eighteenth-century cosmic voyages. John Daniel’s “Eagle,” operated by pump handles, has found a place among the curiosa collected by historians of aviation, who naturally never mention either the ladder or the chariot of the Wandering Jew. But from the point of view of pseudo science, a much more interesting group of ascents to the moon and planets concerned themselves with a proposal for human flight to which the textbooks pay little or no attention. Scien­ tifically it proved abortive, yet in the history of literature this idea produced important results, as we shall see, for the literary mind was captivated by the belief that somehow man might adapt to his flying chariots the principle vaguely called “mag­ netism.” Of all the discoveries made by English scientists, the Royal Society, with some justice, proudly pointed out that from the time of Gilbert England had been famous for con­ clusions made in connection with magnetism and the magnetic needle. Yet the earliest literary “magnetic flights” which I have found were not British. They were satires by Cyrano de Bergerac on the great enthusiasm of his century for the load­ stone. Most amusing and most irreverent of all Cyrano’s many parodies were passages in which he interpreted scriptural miracles in terms of his own contemporary science. When Adam

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was “translated” to the empyreal regions, Cyrano informs us, Eve accompanied him by that “Sympathy, which still united the half to its whole, ... as the Amber attracts the Straw, the Load-stone turns towards the North.” In that translation the suggestion of magnetism was only an analogy, but the translation of Elijah proceeded according to laws of nature, for Elijah went to heaven on a “Flying Horse,” which Cyrano describes thus: “He took a piece of Load-stone about two Foot square,” which was melted in a furnace until it became the size of a bowl. “After the Preparations, I got a very light Machine of Iron made, into which I went, and when I was well seated in my place, I threw this Magnetick Bowl as high as I could up into the Air. Now the Iron Machine, which I had purposely made more massive in the middle than at the ends, was presently elevated, and in a just Poise; because the middle received the greatest force of Attraction. So then as I arrived at the place whither my Load-stone had attracted me, I presently threw my Bowl in the Air over me.” At this point the scientific Cyrano interrupts Elijah in order to explain care­ fully to the uninitiated reader how the prophet was always able to steer a straight course by means of his remarkable invention! The laws of magnetism, it will be found, held with nearly all Cyrano’s “translations” of biblical characters. Only in the case of St. John the Evangelist did nature give way to miracle. God, suddenly realizing that the prophesied hour of translation was at hand and indeed almost past, and “having no time to get him a Machine made ready for coming, He was constrained to make him suddenly be there, without having time to bring him.” Cyrano was having his irreverent fun, but more than one of his followers took his suggestions gravely and seriously. Never was that more true than in the case of one of Cyrano’s chief English disciples, David Russen of Hythe, who devoted most of his Iter Lunare: or, A Voyage to the Moon to solemn exegesis of his French master. He had read Cyrano’s voyages, he declared, “not without abundance of Delight,” but he ob­ jected to the subtitle, “A Comical History.” The work should rather be considered, he felt, as “A most rational History.”

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One by one he analyzed passages which he insisted were cryptic, reading into Cyrano double and triple meanings that would have vastly amused that ribald wit. The passages on magnetism Russen found not blasphemous but prophetic, and in a long section of his own moon voyage he labored to prove them true. * Scientists, too, pondered the possibility of adapting Gilbert’s magnetic discoveries to aviation. In Portugal Bartholomeu Louren^o de Gusmao, who after renouncing the ecclesiastical life, had turned his attention to the natural sciences, invented a curious flying machine he called the “Passarola,” which was so seriously accepted by many that its inventor received honor and financial reward from Juan V when a small model of the machine maintained itself in the air of the royal audience chamber before an astonished company on August 8, 1709. Modern historians of aviation disagree over the validity of Gusmao’s claims, some insisting that he actually discovered a principle of heavier-than-air flight, others dismissing him as a mere charlatan. There is general agreement, however, that Gusmao was working upon some adaptation of magnetic princi­ ples. A curious yet beautiful machine, this Passarola, with the lovely lines of the swallow for which it was named, combining both wings and tail, motivated some said, by fire, others by hot air; elevated perhaps by rockets or fireworks; yet preserv­ ing its essential secret in two large amber balls which sup­ posedly operated by magnetism, for amber was held to be the magnetic stone, one of the “chief electrics.” Whether the mag­ netism resided in the mineral itself or was caused by friction produced by rubbing, no one was sure. But the amber that * The disciple was as ingenious as his master in proposing a novel cata­ pult to the moon, a curious “machine” to be set up on a high mountain: “Since Springiness is a cause of forcible motion, and a Spring will, when bended and let loose, extend itself to its length; could a Spring of welltempered Steel be framed, whose Basis being fastned to the Earth and on the other end placed a Frame or Seat, wherein a Man, with other necessaries, could abide with safety, this Spring being with Cords, Pullies, or other Engins bent and then let loose by degrees by those who manage the Pullies, the other end would reach the Moon, where the Person ascended landing, might continue there, and according to a time appointed, might again enter into his Seat, and with Pullies the Engin may again be bent, till the end touching the Earth should discharge the Passenger again in safety.”

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attracted the straw as inevitably as the loadstone turned to the north offered to Gusmao as to many others a logical, if not a scientific possibility for the ascent of flying chariots. Most ingenious of all the poets who picked up the theme of an amber flying machine was Pier Jacopo Martello in his long poem Gli Occhi di Gesu, in which he described a voyage to the Earthly Paradise under the guidance of the prophet Elijah. In a dream the poet is translated to the moon, where, welcomed by the prophet, he is urged to sing of a new kind of chariot, different from that of Elijah’s former “translation.” Behold and see! bids the prophet, and before the astonished eyes of the poet appears one of the strangest and most amusing of all the chariots I have discovered, which Martello derived in part from Lana and in part from Gusmao. Lana’s machine offered certain possibilities, and indeed I think it was from Lana that Martello drew the oars he exaggerated. But, like others before him, Martello was persuaded that the Lana globes, if large enough to support the necessary weight, would break, and indeed in one illustration we may see the Lana airship falling into the sea. I think the other airship described in the poem is essentially the Passarola, even though it has undergone many a change. Both in text and picture it is a swallow-shaped boat; its prow is a beak, its rudder a retractable tail, the one serving for elevation, the other for depression. Here again are the amber globes, though elsewhere in his text Gusmao seems lavishly to have spread his amber everywhere over the iron surface of the ship. But we need not try to determine how that ship flew, since even its inventor was not sure. The ingenuity of Martello’s adaptation is shown as the boat draws near the world in the moon and both we and the poet may see how it is manned and operated. As it circles before making a landing, it puts out landing gear consisting of a score of hooked feet which catch the earth as the boat settles. Now we begin to realize that the ship is powered by a hundred wings attached to oars, “manned,” extraordinarily enough, by a hundred apes, some dressed in yellow, some in blue, harnessed by means of collars of thin metal around their necks. Evidently Martello was not persuaded, as have been many of our mariners,

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that fatigue would play no part in long-distance flight, for each of the apes has its “opposite number” who rests while his partner works and is ready to take over when simian strength begins to fail. Most of the apes are only galley slaves, but upon the boat are also specialists who work the tail and prow, pilots who chart the course of the vessel, using both the mariner’s compass and the polestar. In long passages of both prose and poetry Martello learnedly discourses on the “scientific” princi­ ples involved. We may forget Martello’s Earthly Paradise, but we are likely to remember those hundred blue and yellow apes who rowed a flying chariot to the moon by means which even the “ingenious Wilkins” never anticipated. We shall find nothing quite so fantastic as this among our English writers, who, however, brought to a literary climax the theme of cosmic flight by means of magnetism. V

No English writer played more frequently with the theme of a world in the moon than did Daniel Defoe. In 1705 he sent forth into the world his Consolidator, a full-length “novel” or “romance”—you may call it what you will—and a group of ephemeral pamphlets in which, as one might expect, he adapted the theme to his own economic, social, and political enthusiasms and prejudices. Later, when he was editing the Review, he returned to the subject again in various papers in which he used his earlier lunarian pilgrimage as a point of departure for the kind of “parable” he loved to preach. In the brief papers Defoe was not concerned with pseudo­ scientific devices for flight and usually treated the moon voyage only with passing satire: “Having liv’d a great while in a Country where abundance of Castles are daily built in the Air, I at last getting to the top of the highest of ’em, by a strange and sudden Accident; one Day as I was Gazing about, in order to find out some new Discovery, I fell down directly upon the World in the Moon.” Meeting with “an old Man of that Coun­ try,” the author “desired him to show me some of the Choicest of their Rarities,” chief among which was a remarkable per­

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spective glass, through which it was possible to see “what was Transacted and now Transacting in our own World.” Through the glass, the traveler viewed the world he had left, first “a strange Country,” England, and then the rest of Europe. Look­ ing upon “that vast Map,” Defoe the economist and reformer set down his unflattering observations and conclusions on his native land. Defoe’s Consolidator, while not the most brilliant, is one of the most interesting English voyages to the moon, because of the complexity of themes the author wove into an elaborate pattern. Here are most of the literary conventions that had become standard during the seventeenth century, but here is also a “new” theme which had been growing in popularity, that vague yet glorified chinoiserie, which interested Sir William Temple earlier and Defoe and Addison not long after. Here again, as so often, we find the perennial controversy between “ancient” and “modern.” Defoe turns the tables neatly upon many “moderns” of his day by implying that all the inventions on which they prided themselves had been known to other “ancients,” if not to the Greeks. Centuries earlier than the Europeans, the Chinese had discovered everything found in Europe only during the last century, had discovered, indeed, much more that Europe was still vainly seeking, including the art and craft of flying. In the great libraries of China, the author found record of “the famous Mira-cho-cho-lasmo,” who was born in the moon, “and coming hither to make Discourses, by a strange Invention arrived to by the Virtuosoes of that Habitable World, the Emperor of China prevailed with him to stay and improve his Subjects, in the most exquisite accomplishments of those Lunar Regions.” The European author, feeling that the world in the moon “must needs be a Place of strange Perfection, in all parts of extraordinary Knowledge” was seized by an over­ whelming desire to visit it. “No Man need to wonder at my exceeding desire to go to the World in the Moon,” he declares, “having heard of such extraordinary Knowledge to be obtained there, since in the search of Knowledge and Truth, wiser Men than I have taken as unwarrantable Flights, and gone a great

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deal higher then the Moon, into a strange Abyss of dark Phenomena.” Compared with the Chinese, Defoe’s traveler finds English experimenters childlike. “All our Philosophers are Fools,” he cries impatiently, “and their Transactions a Parcel of empty Stuff.” Cavalierly he dismisses some of our old familiar friends, naive compared with the new “master of them that know” : “All our Mechanick Motions of Bishop Wilkins, or the arti­ ficial Wings of the Learned Spaniard, who could have taught God Almighty to have mended the Creation, are Fools to this Gentleman.” Again he notes: “I have heard of a World in the Moon among some of our Learned Philosophers . . . but none of the fine Pretenders, no not Bishop Wilkins, ever found Mechanick Engines, whose Motion was sufficient to attempt the Passage.” Craftily Defoe welded into his tale and improved upon old Oriental legends we have heard. He told of “HighFlyers” of the past, princes who essayed flight to the moon by wings and chariots, one of whom “brake his neck” and his engine, another of whom “used to make a great many Voyages and Flights into the Moon, and then would make his Subjects give him great Sums of Money to come down to them again.” Among the various lunarian flying machines he examined, none interested him so much as those “call’d in their Country Language, Dupekasses; and according to the Ancient Chinese, Or Tartarian, Apeolanthukanistes; in English a Consolidator.” This was “a certain Engine, in the shape of a Chariot, on the backs of two vast Bodies with extended Wings, which spread about fifty yeards in breadth, composed of Feathers so nicely put together, that no air could pass; and as the Bodies were made of lunar Earth, which would bear the Fire, the Cavities were filled with an ambient Flame, which fed on a certain Spirit, deposited in a proper quantity to last out the Voyage; and this Fire so ordered as to move about such springs and wheels as kept the wings in most exact and regular Motion, always ascendant.” Naturally I am tempted to make of Daniel Defoe the most remarkable of all my “prophets of the future,” to stress the fact that he alone, among scientists and men of letters, antici­

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pated the gasoline age, since his machine flew to the moon not by wanton wings or Lana globes, but by some sort of fuel, “an ambient Flame, which fed on a certain Spirit,” a fuel that could be stored and carried “in a proper quantity to last out the voyage.” But I shall not yield to temptation. Defoe was no more a scientist than am I, and I have no intention of “kidnaping” him from economics and literature to the history of science. I have not yet found his “source,” though source I am sure he had for this happy guess of “ambient Flame” and burning “Spirit” that motivated and actuated the “spring and wheels” of which he tells us no more. Actually Defoe was far less interested in the means by which his great ship flew than he was in those “513 Feathers” he describes in much more detail—five hundred and twelve of them equally matched in length and breadth, with “one presiding or superintendent Feather, to guide, regulate, and pilot the whole Body . . . the Rudder to the whole Machine.” I might interpret those feathers, as I cannot interpret the “Spirit” and “ambient Flame,” but I will not, for to do so would lead me to Defoe the politician and the economist, rather than to Defoe the cosmic voyager. In the room of state, in which monarchs and aristocrats took their way from the moon to China, Defoe’s European voyaged to the moon. Of his journey he remembered little, for Defoe went back to the convenient anesthetic device of Torralba and of Kepler. “The Person being placed in this airy Chariot, drinks a certain dozing Draught, that throws him into a gentle Slumber, and Dreaming all the way, never wakes till he comes to his Journey’s end.” Rousing just before journey’s end, the traveler learned—presumably from the wide-awake crew—another im­ portant fact about the structure of his flying chariot: “When this Engine, by help of these Artificial Wings, has raised it self up to a certain height, the Wings are as useful to keep it from falling into the Moon, as they were before to raise it, and keep it from falling back into this Region again. This may happen from an Alteration of Centres, and Gravity having past a certain Line, the Equipoise changes its Tendency, the

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Magnetick Quality being beyond it, it inclines its Course, and pursues a Centre, which it finds in the Lunar World, and lands us safe upon the Surface.” Over Defoe’s moon-world I need not linger long, since in its geography and climatology it reflects traditions now very familiar to us, and in its politics and economics it is only another of Defoe’s persistent attacks upon abuses in England. Its originality—so far as it has any—lies in its anticipation of scientific inventions for which England was still seeking. There are telescopes beside which our hundred-inch on Mount Wilson and even the new two-hundred inch now mounted on Palomar fade into insignificance. Through these lunarian glasses the traveler looked down on “lofty Towers and Immense Cities of China,” which he could see clearly. Even more remarkable were other optical instruments—glasses of second sight, glasses to distinguish Non-Entity, glasses to see beyond death. Peering through such “optick tubes” as were never anticipated by the “Tuscan artist” who first viewed heaven, we may leave Defoe’s lunar traveler more abruptly than he left the moon, saying good-bye to him as he discourses learnedly of heaven and earth with the Moon-Philosopher: “He was the Man in the Moon to me, and I was the Man in the Moon to him; he wrote down what I said, and made a Book of it, and call’d it, News from the World in the Moon.” A curious sequel to the Consolidator suggests, more specifi­ cally than did the original, that these strange flying machines were operated in part by some sort of terrestrial—or lunar— magnetism. A New Journey to the World in the Moon was for many years attributed to the long-suffering Defoe, though since Professor Trent’s time it has been excluded from the canon. Who wrote it and when it was written no one knows and probably few except myself really care. Perhaps the lost first edition followed closely upon the Consolidator, the un­ known author attempting to capitalize upon Defoe’s reputa­ tion as blatantly as he pirated Defoe’s ideas. The work has been saved for posterity in a second edition of 1641 and also in one of those many ragbags of fact and fancy garnered by

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our antiquarian ancestors, a collection of tracts and tales called, characteristically enough, The Diverting Jumble; or They Shall Be Saved. Only the “engine” of this anonymous New Journey need detain us, for there is no other originality in the work. Here is the Consolidator machine again, still fashioned from its constituent parts, though in this later version the feathers have become boards made from the “Collective Tree.” Here we find again Defoe’s “lunar earth” and “circumambient flame.” But in the five hundred and thirteen “Collective” boards we now discover “five hundred and thirteen Knotches, to receive the same number of Catches, of the Moon’s Attraction,” the princi­ ple of which would seem to be that its Attraction may fix on the Superficies of its Catches, by the Number of Knotches prepar’d to lay hold on the Spokes of the Chariot Wheels, whereby the Body of the Engine, or Chariot, is kept in a most regular and uniform Motion, with the Body always ascendant. ... It is, with the Persons plac’d in it, circularly drawn by a spring Screw into the Lunar World; for by the Catches of the Moon’s Attraction we are loosen’d from the Gravity we otherwise owe to our own Globe, and so are transmitted, in a regular Motion, from our own more refined Atmosphere into yours, without any Damages of want of Air, by the way for Sup­ port and Breathing, which are manifest Hindrances to your journeying thither after the same Manner. . . . Besides, our Moon being by far the greater Body, and in a continual Rotation, ’tis our World’s Center, and as it forcibly attracts our Globe itself, so by its continual turning round naturally draws those Engines before mention’d into it, with the People that embark in them.

The return journey of the voyagers in the New Journey was made with even less difficulty. The author says :

Upon our Inclination to return (thro’ the Affinity we have to our own Globe) we only loosen the Screw that was fixed to the Moon’s Attraction, and the Pressure of your Air at the Surface being much grosser than our volatile Bodies, immediately forces us back with a Vis Centrijuga, sufficient to send us out of the Attraction of the

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Moon, and throw us thro’ the vast Abyss; or Vacuum between the Moon and us. Defoe’s flying chariot, with its great room of state, is the largest flying machine we have yet encountered. But one of his infrequent rhetorical sentences arrests the reader with a presage of greater things yet to come: “It can no more be a Wonder, if exalted in the Center of this famous Engine, a whole Nation should be carried up to the World in the Moon.” From this time on imaginary flying machines will grow larger and larger, waxing with that prodigality, that fascination with the “grand,” the “immense” of the curious eighteenth-century imagination which found in “vastness” of size the “Sublime” they admired so much. This was a generation which, as Alan McKillop amusingly suggests in his study of Thomson’s Seasons, yearned for bigger and better icebergs, not to mention bigger and better thunderstorms, hurricanes, tempests, moun­ tains, deserts. Small wonder that their imaginary flying vessels grew as did their waste places and wild forces of nature. In 1755 Father Joseph Galien, no romancer but an expert on meteorology, discussing the principle of the heavier-than-air machine, seriously proposed the construction of a gigantic “Noah’s Ark”—the phrase is his—as large as his native town of Avignon, as high as a mountain, capable, he insisted,-of transporting an army to Africa.

VI Never was there a vaster—or more brilliantly conceived— flying chariot than that devised by the ingenious Jonathan Swift in the third book of Gulliver’s Travels. During the third of his remarkable voyages, you may remember, even the intrepid Captain Lemuel Gulliver was amazed to perceive “a vast opaque body between me and the sun,” which temporarily obscured the light. Gulliver’s bewilderment at this curious phenomenon was not greater than has been that of modern critics, who can find no literary source or analogue for the “Flying Island” and have been at a loss to explain both its mechanism and its sym­

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bolism. With some impatience, they have dismissed it as a purely imaginary and not particularly successful creation of fancy. Actually, as I have elsewhere attempted to show, the “Voyage to Laputa” is, of all sections of Gulliver’s Travels, the most completely dependent upon sources. This was no hap­ hazard or fortuitous piece of fancy; the “constructive and ra­ tional mind” of Swift never worked more coolly than during its composition. As accurately as in the “Voyage to Lilliput” the careful draughtsman drew to scale; there was no guess­ work here. So subtly did the designer weave the strands of his pattern that they can be separated only with some violence; yet such separation—as I hope I have proved—is not only necessary if we are to realize the brilliance of the creation, but legitimate in view of Swift’s own expressed design in writing Gulliver’s Travels. From one point of view Swift’s island of Laputa is a flying chariot, harking back to the devices of Godwin and Cyrano, to Lana’s canoe and Gusmao’s Passarola. From another angle, the “Voyage to Laputa” is a voyage to the moon, a conspicuous departure from other adventures of Gulliver, all of which take place in the terrestrial world. There is nothing in the introduc­ tion to the third voyage to warn either Gulliver or the reader that we are about to depart from the accepted pattern of ex­ traordinary voyages which Swift was parodying in the other tales. The third adventure seems at first to follow the usual outline of a real voyage: a great storm, pirates, Gulliver’s soli­ tary journey in a canoe, and the discovery of a group of islands “in the latitude of 46 N. and of longitude 183.” The sudden appearance upon this accepted scene of an extraterrestrial inhabited world is as startling to the reader as to Gulliver. We may observe the “Flying Island” as Gulliver first saw it, a vast opaque body between me and the sun, moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes, but I did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than if I had stood under the shade of a mountain. As it approached nearer over the place where I was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the bottom flat,

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smooth, and shining very bright from the reflection of the sea below. . . . The reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who are able (as it should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into a progressive motion as they pleased.

Following the example set by his predecessors, Gulliver took out his “pocket-perspective,” and discovered numbers of people moving up and down the sides of this strange world, though only gradually, as the “Flying Island” approached more closely, could he see what they were doing. There is no question in my own mind that Swift was consciously following in the tradition of the cosmic voyagers. But, with his usual irony, he has neatly turned the tables. As if wearied by the enthusiastic accounts of daring young men who had flown through the air with the greatest of ease, Swift refuses to send his traveler on a voyage through interstellar space. Always in earlier tales Mahomet had gone to the mountain; in the “Voyage to Laputa,” the mountain comes to Mahomet! Whether the island in the air, inhabited by mortals, took form in Swift’s mind originally as an inhabited moon-world, and whether his first intention had been to add to the terrestrial adventures of Gulliver a satire upon the many lunar excursions of the seventeenth century, I do not know. The third book of Gulliver’s Travels lacks the unity of the other three tales. It is a pastiche, a composite, over which Swift labored, I think, finding more difficulties than elsewhere in the romance. Perhaps it was about this particular tale that he wrote back to England that his voyages went “slowly because of want of health and humour.” However the adventure of the “Flying Island” began in Swift’s mind, his interest came to be less in the world in the moon than in an ingenious flying machine. When Gulliver had opportunity to observe the great body with more care, he found it “exactly circular, its diameter 7837 yards, or about four miles and a half, and consequently con­ tains ten thousand acres. It is three hundred yards thick. The bottom or under surface, which appears to those who view it from below, is one even regular plate of adamant, shooting up to the height of about two hundred yards. Above it lie the

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several minerals in their usual order.” Swift was less concerned, however, with the external features of his Flying Island and the “minerals in their usual order” than with the principle that made it fly. In part that operation depended upon one of the “minerals”—adamant, in Swift’s time one of the chief “magnetics.” Important as was the magnetic adamant in the construction of the Floating Island, it alone was not sufficient to explain the operation of that curious floating and flying world. In the Astronomer’s Cave Gulliver was shown “a loadstone of pro­ digious size,” resembling in its shape a weaver’s shuttle, upon which the fate of the island depended. “By means of this load­ stone, the island is made to rise and fall, and move from one place to another. . . . The stone is endued at one of its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive. Upon placing the magnet erect with its attracting end towards the earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too. For in this magnet the forces always act in lines parallel to its direction.” I shall not here repeat arguments offered by my former colleague, Miss Nora Mohler, and myself to prove that Swift’s loadstone was merely a magnification and adaptation of Gilbert’s famous dipping needle. Accurate as always, Swift follows Gilbert with deliberate care, in his dimensions merely changing Gilbert’s “finger’s breadth” to “yard,” instead of Gilbert’s “iron and brass” reading—for his own perverse purpose—“iron and adamant,” in mixture of which he went his master one better! Even the dimensions Swift offers—six by three yards—are in the right proportion. Swift’s Flying Island could not fly free or wild; it was con­ stantly governed by the mainland of Balnibarbi below, as is shown by both Gulliver’s observation and his map, which charts the course of Laputa. The concentration of magnetic influence in the island of Balnibarbi is simply exaggeration of Gilbertian theory. Gilbert had shown that islands are more magnetic than seas. Upon his visit to the Royal Society, which Swift reported

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with his usual satire, he must have seen a Gilbertian terrella always exhibited to visitors, described in the catalogue as “A Terrella, or an orbicular Loadstone, about four inches and % in Diametre.” Perhaps as he stood looking at that little sphere Jonathan Swift remembered “Mr. Gilbert’s Notion of the Earth’s whole Body being but one great Magnet; and lesser Magnets being so many Terrella’s.” Perhaps even at that time he made careful notes upon the measurement of the loadstone. But whether then or later, Swift went back to that terrella which was about four and a half inches in diameter and from it created his own “little world” of Laputa “four and one-half miles in diameter.” Here we find reason for those apparently casual measurements Gulliver had earlier noted—figures which, as always in Swift, are pregnant with meaning. “The Flying or Floating Island is exactly circular, its diameter 7837 yards, or about four miles and a half.” As everyone knows, in the “Voyage to Lilliput” the reader need only substitute “feet” for “inches” to find the simple trick by which Swift achieved such perfection in his details of the relative size of Lilliputian men and objects. In the “Voyage to Laputa,” we find the same easy and simple kind of proportion. The terrella was about four and one-half inches in diameter; the island of Laputa four and one-half miles or 7837 yards. Let us go one step farther. By substituting for the “7837 yards” “7837 miles,” we find the diameter of another world—our own. Swift’s figures here are so close to those given in his time for our terrestrial globe by both Newton and Cassini that this cannot be mere coincidence. The slight variation of nine miles between Newton’s figure and Swift’s can be explained in many ways; indeed, my colleague and I have elsewhere offered a number of possibilities, though I still suspect the ironic Swift of merely slyly splitting the difference of Newton’s average and least diameters of the earth —which happens to work out at exactly 7837 miles! Gilbert’s dipping needle and Gilbert’s terrella, expanded in size and hence in power—by means of these Swift’s “little world” of Laputa rose, flew, descended, constantly governed by the magnetic attraction of the larger world of Balnibarbi, which at the same time it governed. Great world and lesser world,

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each obeying natural law, each dependent upon the other, all combined into a whole which again reflects the part—such is the Newtonian cosmic philosophy of the third book of Gulliver’s Travels. But herein also lies the irony of the “Voyage to Laputa,” an irony more immediately apparent in its own New­ tonian day than in ours. By physical laws each part is related to the whole, the “whole Body” one magnet, and lesser bodies “so many Terrella’s sympathizing with the whole.” These are laws which man may detect, yet laws which he cannot always control. The loadstone is “prodigious” as a magnet, yet a tiny and a fragile power to govern the Flying Island, which never­ theless is dependent upon it for safety. The Flying Island is, in turn, a macrocosm when compared to the loadstone, but a microcosm when contrasted with the greater world of Balnibarbi which yet in turn it governs, since the “little world” has the power of shutting out light and rain from the great main­ land. In the “Voyage to Laputa” Swift pondered less—as in the other travels—the relation of man to his fellows than relation­ ships in the universe: planets, stars, feathers, great and small inevitably obeying the same simple yet inevitable laws of motion and attraction. As always he surveyed ironically, and from his vision of the cosmos deduced both an ethical and political lesson. But in addition Swift perceived another irony. Science was exulting in the fact that man, by learning the secrets of nature, could govern nature. Always consistent in his attitude toward science, Swift reflected in the lesson of Laputa not the optimism and enthusiasm of Godwin and Wilkins but that other “not very tuneful echo.” His distrust for the temper of his age gleams through the scientific and political parable of the Lindalinian insurrection, with its implications of the limitations rather than the greatness of man’s supposed conquest of nature. , Whatever the “lesson” of the Flying Island, there is no question of its pre-eminence in the tradition of moon voyages and flying machines. Sources it had in plenty, for Swift was always a snapper-up of trifles, but the combination of elements is his alone. Swift’s flying chariot remains unique in the history of literature and of pseudoscience both for its vast size—

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here “exalted in the Center of this famous Engine a whole Nation” was actually carried in the air—and for the plausibility of its principle of motivation. Historians of aviation have ad­ mitted to the ranks of pioneers much less ingenious and cer­ tainly far less brilliant inventions than this—the first and last flying machine that successfully operated upon the principle of terrestrial magnetism!

VII For a century and a half, we have seen science and literature traveling hand in hand. Each new suggestion of human flight has found its place in fiction, drama, poetry. Man has flown by gansas, by wanton wings, by flying chariots motivated by springs, ambient fluid, moon-catches, amber balls, terrestrial magnetism. What more natural than that man should at last fly by electricity? When I could find nothing of the sort in the seventeenth century I was not surprised, for that century did little more in the history of electrical science than repeat experiments of Gilbert, adding occasionally to his list of “electric” substances, arranging them in the order of their attractive power when rubbed. Even the work of Robert Boyle and Otto von Guericke added comparatively little to facts already known about frictional electricity, although I have always been surprised that von Guericke’s “electrical machine,” an “excited sphere of sulphur,” over pictures of which I myself have pored with fascination, did not stir the imagination of men of letters. Convinced that the rapid advance of popular interest in the growing knowledge of electrical power during the eighteenth century must have been reflected by some cosmic voyager, I continued to hunt, persuaded as in the case of the kite that my ingenious romancers would not let me down. Nor did they. Shortly before the first successful ascension of a balloon, I found, an imaginary voyager flew among the planets in the first “electrical” flying machine, invented, I regret to say, not on this earth but in the planet Mercury. With even more regret I must confess that the romance was written not in England but in France.

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Le Philosophe sans Pretention orc I’Homme Rare was pub­ lished in 1775 by Louis-Guillaume de La Follie, a scientist of broad interests, a specialist in industrial chemistry. The volume, in which the short cosmic voyage appeared, was one of the many “encyclopedias” of popular science the century read so often. In turn the author dealt with many interests current in his day, interspersing technical discussions with such tales and romances as this. Like most cosmic voyages, this is a descendant of the picaresque tale, relating adventures of an Oriental hero, Nadir. In the section dealing with the “electrical” flying chariot, the author employs again the old device, “Endymion’s way, by rapture in sleep or in a dream.” To Nadir, poring upon a volume of cosmography and mystical philosophy, appeared a visitor from the planet Mercury, “un homme qui lisoit un Ouvrage scientifique,” and who declared that he was “Philosophe, mais Philosophe par gout et non par ostentation.” Learning of Nadir’s interest in cosmography, he introduced himself as Ormisais, an inhabitant of Mercury who had recently arrived upon our earth. In answer to excited questions, he described the world from which he had come, a world in many ways superior to ours, yet nevertheless showing remarkable similarities. In Mercury, as in most European countries, there had de­ veloped as the center of intellectual life an “Academy,” known in the other planet as “Luminacie.” Although it bears a striking resemblance to the British Royal Society and to the French Academy, its membership was much more jealously guarded, only a dozen members making up the “Luminaciens,” each of whom must have contributed something of surpassing value to either science or letters. Upon the announcement of a vacancy in the assembly, sixteen aspirants presented themselves, Ormisais among them, each with his offering to the history of civilization. Among the contenders was the hero of this little tale, a young man known as Scintilla, whose previous discov­ eries and inventions had already attracted the attention of the Luminaciens. With him came slaves who carried to the plat­ form a remarkable machine, the purpose of which none could guess. Jealously Ormisais and the other aspirants observed this

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strange vehicle, like nothing ever seen on their planet. They whispered among themselves, and at the announcement that this was a flying chariot, did not hesitate to express the utmost incredulity, Ormisais laughing aloud at the preposterous idea that such a ponderous machine might fly. But the older Luminaciens, whose eyes had beheld miracles in their genera­ tion, silenced the laughter. Nothing daunted, the skeptic Ormisais continued to scoff, even going so far as to declare publicly that if the machine of Scintilla proved all its inventor boasted, Ormisais himself would offer to undertake a journey in the chariot to “Hermi­ one,” the little earth that twinkled in the distance. As Ormisais followed the others to watch the demonstration, he found himself stubbornly repeating truisms of the past: it is im­ possible that man will ever fly; the weight of the machine and of the human body, the force of gravity, the lack of possible motive power, all are against it. He remembered legends of supposed flight in the past, recalled the many unsuccessful and even fatal attempts, comforted himself with the assurance that this would prove only another fantastic machine, foredoomed to failure. Arrived at the platform, however, he saw to his amazement no mere adaptation of the winged vehicle familiar in legend and tale, but a machine such as man had never seen before—and such as this historian certainly has not previously discovered—an elaborate combination of wheels, globes of glass, springs, wires, glass-covered wooden uprights, a plate rubbed with camphor and covered with gold leaf—altogether an in­ tricate contrivance, worthy the fertile imagination of Scintilla. As he studied this complex machine, so different from the flying chariots of the past—and different it was, even though we have met with all its elements before—Ormisais began to believe that, after all, there may be something new under the sun. Reluctantly he cast his mind back to earlier theories and inventions of Scintilla and grudgingly confessed to himself that this curious machine was an inevitable development of those theories and inventions. Actual demonstration put an end to the last possible doubt. Scintilla seated himself in his machine. The globes and wheels

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began to move with amazing velocity. The machine rose sud­ denly, turned in a swift, luminous circle, rose again with in­ credible speed above the heads of the enthralled spectators. For a moment it seemed to rest in the air; then Scintilla, like many a later youthful aviator, proudly exhibited his maneuvers: he soared, he dipped, he circled. Suddenly he rose to a great height and, seeming to move with the speed of light, was lost to view. The modern reader' feels again the excitement and consternation of those Mercurians who waited, fascinated and fearful, as their brilliant young companion winged his way on an aerial journey that seemed to presage a fatal result. An hour passed—a long hour in Mercury to the Luminaciens intent upon the genius of this young man on whom their mantle was to fall, an even longer hour to Ormisais, vacillating between hope for his friend and fear for himself. But at the end of the appointed time, Scintilla nonchalantly descended, his flying machine still intact. With the acclaim of the whole Academy, the young inventor won the laurel crown. But the tale is not yet finished. Scintilla had declared that his machine was capable of sailing between worlds and worlds, like Milton’s Satan so long before. Lives such as Scintilla’s must not be sacrificed to such adventure; someone else must seek our little planet Hermione. True to the vow he had made so glibly, Ormisais, realizing that he was only a man of talent, not of such genius as Scintilla, took the expedition upon him­ self. Off he went on his journey into interplanetary space, taking with him only “une forte provision de poudre nutritive . . . ausi plusieurs de nos pierres phosphoriques.” The voyage itself was not spectacular. We ourselves have taken such journeys often enough to become supercilious. The flyer turns his machine toward another planet; his speed quickens; he comments on the nature of gravity and interstellar ether. Mid­ way between the two planets, he pauses as usual to survey each in turn, to compare their size, their brightness, their spots indicating the presence of mountains, valleys, water. Later he finds himself falling more rapidly than he had expected, and feels the sharp pull of earth. He lands at last, though not without disaster, for the globes break into pieces, and he is

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left, a lonely Mercurian, upon an inhospitable and unfamiliar earth. I shall leave him there, not following his travels in search of materials for new globes, for those later adventures of Ormisais follow a conventional pattern. The tale itself is a heritage from the past; the flying chariot alone is unique. I cannot here stop to analyze all the elements that went to make up the complexity of Scintilla’s machine, since with the colleague on whom I have depended so frequently, I have done that in detail elsewhere. Suffice it to say that behind the inven­ tion in Mercury there lay more than a century of discovery here on our earth, a gradually growing familiarity with certain principles, some known from the time of Archimedes, some discovered by Otto von Guericke and Robert Boyle, others the contribution of lesser men who, important in their generation, have been forgotten. Scintilla had kept himself well abreast of science in England, France, and Germany—as well as in Mer­ cury—with the result that he invented the only flying machine I have discovered that made use of the percussion of light and the first plane to fly by means of what he called “electricity.” As Swift’s Flying Island marks the literary climax of cosmic voyages by means of flying chariots, La Follie’s marks the “scientific” climax. Nothing further seemed left for restless human imagination. And, indeed, nothing was left to stimulate the kind of imagination with which I have concerned myself. We have reached the end of a chapter, in more senses than one. For hundreds, even thousands of years man had longed for the wings of a dove, had let his fancy play with means of flight both credible and incredible, had sent his imagination into unplumbed space to discover worlds in the ether by plausible or fantastic devices. Those soaring souls that sailed among the spheres had recognized no barriers of time or space, no limita­ tions of plausibility. They had flown with spirits and angels, harnessed themselves to birds, invented artificial wings and flying chariots, their imaginations, uncribbed, uncabined, un­ confined, always seeking something beyond and still beyond human experience. But the future—which today seems the dead past—is upon us, a future in which no such untrammeled voy­ ages of imagination as we have seen will continue to be possible.

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Throughout the century scientists and laymen, too, had been experimenting with that descendant of Lana’s airship, the balloon. Flights had been attempted, but so far had proved abortive. Even the first ascent of the Brothers Montgolfier in 1783 resulted in disaster. But later in the same year, before an awed crowd gathered near the Palace of Versailles, another Montgolfier balloon rose slowly but safely into the air, carrying with it the descendant of Domingo’s “happy lamb,” the first living creature to fly. That ascension is the prelude to our modern conquest of the air, with all its “benefit and use” to man, all its dire threats to civilization. Yet as the balloons of the Montgolfiers, Lunardi, Charles, Blanchard, and others symbolize a beginning, so they mark the end of a long period of trial and error, of conjecture, of oc­ casional happy guesses. They mark the end too of a peculiar form of literature. The cosmic voyage will go on, but after the invention of the balloon it suffers a change into some­ thing, I think, less rich and strange. Science has conquered fancy. Man, having learned the laws of nature, has mastered nature and harnessed her forces to his will. “Glory to Man in the highest, for Man is the Master of things!”

CHAPTER - SIX

Variations on a Theme Wilkins has proved himself a good prophet. His “four several ways whereby this flying in the air hath been or may be attempted” have served us well, since nearly all the important cosmic voyages of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have fitted neatly into his patterns for human flight. Yet Wilkins was not infallible, or rather, let us say, even Wilkins, who anticipated so much, could not have foreseen directions in which his literary descendants would strike out new lines for themselves, nor, in spite of his own vivid imagina­ tion, did he guess at curious embroideries with which other types of imagination would decorate and embellish his themes. If I am to complete my story, I must leave his categories— which on the whole, you may have noticed, have appealed to the “prose mind”—and try to show what certain fanciful, whimsical, sometimes poetic minds made of the planetary voyage. ohn

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Most popular of all the minor eighteenth-century devices for cosmic travel was “Endymion’s way, by rapture in sleep, or a dream.” Sometimes the use of dream was the inheritance of the age from Kepler’s Somnium, yet curiously enough, the eighteenth-century writers more frequently made use of “rap­ ture,” “trance” and “ecstasy.” I say “curiously enough,” be­ cause at first thought nothing seems further removed from the supposedly cool, calm, rational mind of the “Enlightenment” than the mystic experience. To be sure, some writers employed the idea satirically, as was natural enough in the great Age of Satire. Cyrano before them had so interpreted the “transla­ tion” of Adam: “His Body becoming light through the Heat of this Inspiration, he was carried thither in the same manner, as some Philosophers, who having fixed their Imagination upon the contemplation of a certain Object have sprung up in the Air by Ravishments, which you call Exstasies.” 201

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There is enough and to spare in the eighteenth century of satire upon the “Exstasies” of cosmic voyagers who sent their souls into the infinite. I pause for only a moment over the bombastic nonsense Samuel Johnson of Cheshire—neither the Great Bear nor the founder of King’s College—used in his play Hurlothrombo, in which the hero, King Soarethereal, proves a “high-born soul” who, though his body is confined to earth, finds his spiritual home above the sublunary world. Here “he reigns, he rides in the clouds, and keeps his court in the horizon; he’s emperor of the superlative heights, and lives in pleasure among the Gods; he plays at boots with the stars, and makes a football of the globe.” With his subjects he yearns for the great open spaces of the empyrean, and sends his imagination to “climb amaz’d up to the stars ... to taste the sweets of every orb.” Usually the cosmic flights of Soarethereal take place through “ecstasy,” but occasionally his soul is released from the body rather through music, which turns the keys of Paradise and wafts him from orb to orb among “the radiant splendor of bright shining worlds.” The idea of the separation of soul from body, reflected in eighteenth-century “trance” and “ecstasy” often went back to the Cartesian separation of “mind” and “matter.” On this theme Gabriel Daniel wrote a full-length cosmic voyage, as well known in England as it was in France. “It fares with the world of Monsieur Descartes,” said the author in the preface to A Voyage to the World of Cartesius, “as with so many other lately discovered Lands, whereof such different Accounts are given, as often contradict one another. Scarce mention was made of the New World, but an infinite Number of French, English and Dutchmen resolve to go to it.” Des­ cartes, his disciple learned, was not dead, but, separated from the matter he had separated from mind, dwelt aloft in an intellectual world of his own creation. Perhaps the French, English, and Dutch might reach their worlds in the moons or planets by artificial wings or flying chariots, but no such obvious devices would convey the yearning disciple to the world of his French master. Descartes had reached the new sphere, by an “Act of Will,” but since unfortunately the “Will” of his disciple

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was less potent, he depended for motive power upon a peculiar kind of snuff, symbolically enough concocted by Descartes himself. One violent sneeze, and soul was separated from earthbound body. In a state of pure thought, he “steered toward the Globe of the Moon; My Soul perceived an unspeakable Pleasure to scud it through the Air, and to wander in those vast Spaces, she could only travel with the Eye before.” On went this disembodied spirit, gaily flying off to explore the indefinite Cartesian universe, after many adventures to arrive at outer space where he found M. Descartes still busily engaged in correcting the mistakes of the Almighty! If all the “raptures” of the ethereal voyagers had been of this sort, they would be comprehensible enough, for an age that denied the very basis of mysticism might readily laugh at mystics. But there was no theme more loved by minor versifiers of the Restoration and eighteenth century than the theme of “Ecstasy.” Imitative as they were, they looked back to the past here as elsewhere, picking up from their long poetic heritage an old vocabulary. The change from an older to a newer kind of celestial voyage in poetry may be seen by comparing two of Cowley’s poems. His “Dream of Elysium” is still entirely in the old tradition; the poet, rising on his “winged Pegasus” flies to an Elysium such as Cowley had found in many of the classical writers. In his “Exstasy,” however, the poet, rising in whirlwind, takes off on a little cosmic voyage, using briefly many of the devices with which we have grown familiar. As he ascends, he looks down upon the world he has left, watching Britain becoming smaller and smaller in his view; then he travels “through several orbs which one fair planet bear,” Where I behold distinctly, as I pass, The hints of Galileo’s glass. I touch at last the spangled sphere ; Here all th’ extended sky Is but one galaxy, , ’Tis all so bright and gay, And the joint eyes of night make up a perfect day.

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The old Muse of Poetry, while still with us, undergoes a change. Conventional in some respects, she becomes a muse whose flight is much more rapid—often she travels with the speed of light—whose interstellar space is much vaster, who is called upon by the poet not only to bear him aloft, but to aid him in discovering new worlds, As if the Muse, with angel’s wings, Had soar’d beyond our utmost sphere And other worlds discover’d there.

The muse of John Hughes, in his “Temple of Peace,” made a brief ethereal journey which was less celestial than merely extraterrestrial, but in his “Ecstasy,” Hughes took off on a much more extensive cosmic voyage: I leave Mortality’s low sphere. Ye Winds and Clouds, come lift me high, And on your airy pinions bear Swift through the regions of the sky. What lofty mountains downward fly! And lo! how wide a space of air Extends new prospects to my eye! . . . Haste, Clouds and Whirlwinds, haste a raptur’d soul to raise; Mount me sublime along the shining way, Where planets, in pure streams of ether driv’n Swim through the blue expanse of Heaven. The soaring souls of the eighteenth century, we are given to understand, waited impatiently for

Learn’d death! that in one hour informs me more Than all the academic aids could do. . . . Than chronics, books, and contemplations too. . . . Death! that exalts me strait to high’st degree! Commenc’d a more than Newton in abstruse philosophy! Death to them was not an end but a beginning, a passport for a grand tour of the heavens, during which they might prove by experience the truth of those cosmic theories, to study of

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which they had devoted their terrestrial days and nights. Christopher Pitt described the passing of the soul of the Earl of Stanhope:

Thence through the vast profound of heaven she flies, And measures all the concave of the skies : Sees where the planetary worlds advance, Orb above orb, and lead the starry dance. Nor rests she then, but with a bolder flight Explores the undiscover’d realms of night.

Souls of poets dead and gone, souls of statesmen, of philoso­ phers, of scientists, each of them must make his cosmic voyage: Immortal Halley I thy unwearied soul On Wisdom’s pinion flew from pole to pole, Th’ uncertain compass to its task restor’d, Each ocean fathom’d, and each wind explor’d.

So too with the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, whose spirit flew, with sails unfurl’d Through each vast empire of th’ ideal world, Pierc’d through the mystic shades, o’er Nature thrown, And made the world’s immensity his own.

Never was there such an outpouring of these versified rhap­ sodies as when the “great soul’’ of Newton departed for those realms of light, the nature of which he had determined, and began his cosmic voyage among the planetary bodies, the funda­ mental law of which he had discovered:

The god-like man now mounts the sky, Exploring all yon radiant spheres; And in one view can more descry Than here below in eighty years. Amid the applause of angels, Newton sailed between worlds and worlds, delighting to find by immediate observation how correct had been his hypotheses and surmises, while the “sons

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of light, In strains high warbled to seraphic lyre” hailed his arrival at “the coast of bliss.” Much of this “poetry,” of course, is not poetry at all. The words “trance,” “rapture,” “ecstasy” are there but the music is mute. And yet I believe that other eighteenth-century poets, particularly those we loosely call the pre-Romanticists, gained something from the conventions of the cosmic voyage. Like Milton they responded to the vastness of the new space discov­ ered by the telescope, finding release for their imaginations that could now fly with the speed of light to

fields of radiance, whose unfading light Has travell’d the profound six thousand years, Nor yet arriv’d in sight of mortal things. Many of the best passages of both Thomson and Akenside are little cosmic voyages. In The Seasons, as I have said else­ where, James Thomson was less a cosmic voyager than an “excursion” poet. His real concern was with this earth. He was most himself when he climbed an English or Welsh hill to see a British landscape. Yet he would not have been of his generation had he not occasionally sent his soul into the infinite to prove that God is to be found everywhere in the universe he has made. Thomson’s imagination was not “to this evanes­ cent speck of earth Poorly confined.” The “radiant tracks on high” were her “exalted range.” He was a poet of “Nature,” but “Nature” was to him no limited term:

O Nature! all-sufficient! over all Enrich me with a knowledge of thy works; Snatch me to heaven; thy rolling wonders there, World beyond world, in infinite extent Profusely scattered o’er the blue immense Show me; their motions, periods and their laws Give me to scan . . . These ever open to my ravished eye, A search, the flight of time can ne’er exhaust!

Akenside, too, delighted in the release of imagination his spirit felt in contemplation of the vastness of space. He had

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THE F1RST “ELECTKICAL ” FLYING MACHINE From La Polie, Le Philosophe sans Prétention

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much to say of Beauty which he found here upon earth, but he had even more to say of the Sublime which in his mind was usually associated with the cosmic reaches:

The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heav’n aspiring wings Beneath its native quarry. Tir’d of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft Thro’s fields of air; pursues the flying storm, Rides on the volley’d lightning thro’ the heav’ns ; Or yok’d with whirlwinds and the northern blast, Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars The blue profound, and hovering o’er the sun Beholds him pouring the redundant stream Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway Bend the reluctant planets to absolve The stated rounds of time. Thence far effus’d She darts her swiftness up the long career Of devious comets; and looks back on all the stars Whose blended light, as with a milky zone Invests the orient. Now amaz’d she views Th’ empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold, Beyond this concave heav’n, their calm abode.

Thomson, Akenside, and many of their contemporaries traveled in the realms of gold, but never was there such a cosmic tourist as Edward Young! Throughout eight long and tedious books of the Night Thoughts, Young’s despondent Lorenzo sought meaning in a world in which there seemed no rational plan or design, sought certitude through systems of philosophy and theology that offered nothing in the way of faith to his doubting mind. Then came the Ninth Night when he turned his eyes from theological systems to the “mathematic glories of the skies.” “O for a telescope His throne to reach!” cried his mentor and friend; surely no man who sees the uni­ verse as does the astronomer can doubt the existence of deity. “Devotion! daughter of astronomy! An undevout astronomer is mad!” Let Lorenzo consider the firmament, God’s handiwork, ponder the heavens that show forth his praise. Let him send his mind into the empyreal reaches and try to comprehend

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the vastness, grandeur, majesty not only of our own cosmic universe but of those “swarms of worlds that laugh at earth! immensely great!” Come! says the poet; let us join those soaring souls that sail among the spheres; let us take off in imagination upon a celestial journey: Lorenzo! come and warm thee; thou whose heart Whose little heart, is moor’d within a nook Of this obscure terrestrial, anchor weigh. Another ocean calls, a nobler port ; I am thy pilot, I thy prosperous gale. . . . Thy travels dost thou boast o’er foreign realms ? Thou stranger to the world! thy tour begin, Thy tour through Nature’s universal orb. Nature delineates her whole chart at large, On soaring souls that sail among the sphere; And man how purblind if unknown the whole! Who circles spacious earth, then travels here, Shall own he never was from home before! One cosmic voyage succeeds another in the “Ninth Night.” Sometimes Young merely translates into his own idiom and meter the conventional planetary voyage which we have read so often: In ardent Contemplation’s rapid car, From earth, as from my barrier, I set out. How swift I mount; diminish’d earth recedes ; I pass the moon; and from her farther side, Pierce Heaven’s blue curtain; strike into remote; Where, with his lifted tube, the subtile sage His artificial, airy journey takes, And to celestial lengthens human sight. I pause at ev’ry planet on my road, And ask for Him who gives their orbs to roll, Their foreheads fair to shine. From Saturn’s ring, In which, of earths an army might be lost, With the bold comet, take my bolder flight, Amid those sov’reign glories of the skies.

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As they fly, they ponder, as did Milton’s Satan and so many other predecessors, that question of the inhabitability of other worlds than ours: What read we here ?—Th’ existence of a God ? Yes; and of other beings, Man above; Native of aether! sons of higher climes! . . . ’Tis thus the skies Inform us of superiors numberless, As much in excellence above mankind, As above earth, in magnitude, the spheres.

“Thro’ worlds unnumbered though the God be known,” Pope had written, “ ’tis ours to seek Him only in our own.” Not so Young, who on this point as on so many others was replying to the dictator. Through all those other “worlds” of our cosmic universe, and far beyond to infinite worlds stretch­ ing infinitely in time and space, the poet conducted the once doubting Lorenzo on cosmic tours so extensive that any voyage we have hitherto found in prose seems but a day-excursion in comparison with a grand tour! Young’s is a universe—or rather a series of universes—“in disdain of limit built.” Young ponders the persistent idea of “relativity,” that ironic “modern” position of man, once the sole creature of God, now, so far as man can see, only a mite, a mote, an insect:

Why has the mighty Builder thrown aside All measure in his work; stretch’d out his line So far, and spread amazement o’er the whole ? Then (as he took delight in wide extremes) Deep in the bosom of his universe, Dropt down that reas’ning mite, that insect, Man, To crawl, and gaze, and wonder at the scene? But his ponderings upon man in the universe led Young to no such ironic conclusions as those of Swift and Pope. As Pascal’s man proved a reed yet a “reed which thinks,” Young’s man, limited though he might be physically, still possessed reason and an imagination that enabled him not only to “grasp

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at something great” but to grow with the greatness at which he grasped:

Thy soul, till now contracted, wither’d, shrunk, Blighted by blasts of Earth’s unwholesome air, Will blossom there ; spread all her faculties To these bright ardours; ev’ry power unfold, And rise into sublimities of thought.

Indeed, to Young as to Traherne before him, this was the essential greatness of man—his ability to grasp at a "vast” he could not comprehend and, by his striving, to grow toward something grander than he had known before: The mind that would be happy, must be great; Great in its wishes, great in its surveys. Extended views a narrow mind extend.

Only as man’s imagination seeks to grasp the true vast, only as he attempts to comprehend the indefinite or infinite cosmos in which the Divine Architect has expressed his own overflowing goodness, will man truly realize his own poten­ tialities, for The soul of Man was made to walk the skies; Delightful outlet of her prison here! There, disincumber’d from her chains, the-ties Of toys terrestrial, she can rove at large; There freely can respire, dilate, extend, In full proportion, let loose all her pow’rs; And undeluded, grasp at something great. “Thus have we found'a true astrology,” Young declares. Thus have we found a new and nobler sense in which the stars do affect man and govern his fate.

II

We have read together the cosmic voyage in novel and romance, in drama, in satire, in poetry. We are now to see it in fairy tale. I wish I could simply show you, rather than talk

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about, the most unusual and most charming moon voyage I ever discovered, which is only a picture book engraved by Filippo Morghen in the second half of the eighteenth century. It has no text except for a long title on the first page. It tells no coherent story. According to the Italian title page this is Raccolta delle cose piu notabili vedute dal Cavaliere Wild Scull, e dal Sigr. de la Hire nel lor famoso viaggio dalla Terra alia Luna, a “collection of the most notable things seen by Cavalier Wild Scull and Signor de la Hire on their famous voyage to the moon.” Was it drawn for a child? I do not know, though a child would love it in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that it is cryptic with double meanings. But so is Alice in Wonderland. I am not entirely sure who “Cavaliere Wild Scull” was, though he may well have been William Hamilton, envoy to the Court of Naples, to whom the work was originally dedicated. “Sigr. de la Hire,” however, is an’ old friend, Phillippe de La Hire, astronomer and mathematician of the early eighteenth century who wrote widely on scientific and mathe­ matical subjects. He was also the son of Laurent de La Hire, the artist, best known for his “Descent from the Cross.” At the bottom of the title page in the earliest version—that in the Library of Congress—we may see our two travelers as they arrive in the world in the moon, having just descended from their curious flying machine, “a large light Box,” as Cyrano would say, reminiscent in a way of Swedenborg’s flying machine operated “by the Daedalus himself,” but much more reminiscent to me personally of the Noah’s Ark I owned when I was a child! Of the principle of its flight, I can only say that in the edition I used in the Library of Congress, it was equipped with a pair of wings, though how it operated I have no idea, nor, I suspect, did the engraver care. That volume in Washington, I have reason to believe, was engraved about 1767; in the third “edition”—if I may call it so, though only the title page varies in the three issues—there is a remarkable change in the design, for to my Noah’s Ark has been added a hydrogen balloon similar to those used by Charles and the Brothers Montgolfier, which could hardly have been drawn before 1783.

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In the “second edition” still another curious change took place. Sigr. de La Hire disappeared. I have a theory about this. In his first drawing Morghen apparently associated the idea of an inhabited moon-world with La Hire, not aware that La Hire himself vehemently opposed the theory that the moon might be inhabited. In this second “edition,” the voyager to the moon has become no less a person than “Giovanni Wilkins erudito Vescuvo Inglese.” And so John Wilkins, scientist and romancer-in-chief of seventeenth-century England, returned in the eighteenth to revisit in Italy the glimpses of that moon he had discovered for his generation. The moon-world of the Raccolta is a “Never-Never Land.” Indeed I have often wondered whether James Barrie saw a copy of this picture book before he wrote Peter Pan. Here are people who live in trees, sometimes in houseboats, sometimes in gigantic melons growing upon spectral lunar trees, which with their lighted windows and doors and chimneys smoking placidly as the evening meal is prepared, seem like the celebration of a fantastic Halloween in a land where pumpkins grow on trees. From the treehouses, rope ladders descend to the water below, for there is water in plenty on Morghen’s moon, an hypothesis that would have outraged his earlier voyager, Sigr. de La Hire. A civilized and cleanly people, these lunarians, it would seem, since the final touch of domesticity is given their lunar world by the laundry that flutters in the breeze, on trees and on poles hung from pumpkin windows. In one instance at least the washing vies for place with a flag displayed from the same window by a patriotic lunarian. My first glance told me that it was, as I suspected, an Italian flag. Still more curious are other customs on this remarkable island in the moon, wh'ich must have interested Cavaliere Wild Scull, not to mention “Giovanni Wilkins, erudito Vescuvo Inglese.” In one picture I discovered what seems to be a lunar variant of the old tale of St. George and the dragon, though in this paradoxical country the doughty cavalier’s fierce ad­ versary looks rather like a porcupine or anteater, while the knight rides upon a dragonfly—if in enchanted lands dragon­ flies possess serpentine bodies. This is indeed a world of “all

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monstrous, all prodigious things which fables yet have feigned,” where, without terror we may on any page expect to meet Milton’s “Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire” or Kepler’s strange creatures of a day with their “serpentine nature.” Of all the curious customs of the lunar world, one must have been as interesting to the adventures from Europe as it was to me—their method of propelling their ships. I take it that on this arcadian island the breezes that flutter the laundry do not reach the velocity of wind, since one ship is driven along a lunar canal by means of a mighty bellows which, operated by a man in a tender, forces air against the sail. In another picture lunar ingenuity reaches a climax: a great harnessed bird, per­ haps Wilkins’ “ruck in Madagascar,” takes the place of a sail, his far from “ineffectual wings” beating the “luminous void” as he strives to reach the giant snails that are evidently his favorite food. In place of the coal or oil of later vessels, this one carries in its tender a complete supply of snails, which the lunar “firemen” perpetually dangle before the giant beak of their great “engine.” Did Morghen’s memory, I wonder, go back as did mine when I saw his picture, to that old Iranian tale of Emperor Kai Koos which, when it passed over to the European Alexander, added those tempting “rods with meat on the tops thereof,” that a modern scholar has found so widely diffused in European art? In this curious paradoxical century, in which wings, chariots, magnetism, and electricity combined to show men the way to the moon, it would be pleasant to discover—as one modern observer of these pictures thought he had discovered—evidence that steam, too, was used for lunar voyages. Unfortunately, no matter how much I personally should like to prove that all discoveries of modern science were anticipated by my flyers, I must say, in words of an old seventeenth-century friend of mine, “I have sworn more faithfull fealty to truth than to myself.” Reluctantly I have given up my earlier belief that one of my cosmic mariners anticipated James Watt and his teakettle. At first glance, it does seem as if one of these boats was operated by steam, yet I am sure it is only smoke coming from the galley where the cook is preparing dinner. On Mor-

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ghen’s moon, it would seem, mortals must eat, even though on their voyage thither our adventurers may have lived, as did Sir Thomas Browne’s maid in Germany, without meat on the smell of a rose! What Cavaliere Wild Scull, Sigr. de La Hire, or John Wilkins thought of this strange world in the moon, how they came, how they departed, we are never to know. We see them only on the title page, as they step from their Noah’s Ark. There they remain eternally, two eighteenth-century gentlemen most correctly garbed in European dress, hats in hand, sweeping low in greeting before the astonished inhabitants of a world in the moon.

Ill

As if deliberately to put an end to the fantasy and romance which had run rampant for a century and a half, Voltaire in the mid-eighteenth century published his Mier omegas. There are few earlier themes that he did not weave into this greatest of satires on the cosmic voyage and that he did not reduce to nonsense by devastating exaggeration. With Swift he turned the tables on tradition; as the mountain came to Mohamet in the “Voyage to Laputa” so a Sirian came to the earth in Micromegas. Micromegas is no puny dweller upon our terrestrial sphere, appalled before the eternal silences of the new infinite spaces. He is a native of Sirius, whose measurements we can compute only as did Gulliver’s tailors—by geometry. The circumference of Sirius, we are told, is 21,600,000 times that of earth and since all things there exist in proportion, it is no surprise to find that our hero is 120,000 royal feet in height. Micromegas is a cultured and highly educated young gentleman. When still a youth, only two hundred and fifty years of age—for time is as relative as size in Sirius—he had learned more propositions of Euclid than had Pascal at the age of thirty-two. At the early age of four hundred and fifty, Micromegas, using only an ordinary Sirian microscope, dissected animalcules barely one hundred feet in diameter. As a result of his telescopic and

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microscopic study, the young radical wrote a book in which the Governor suspected heresy, since Micromegas posited the existence of inhabitants in other worlds than his. Found guilty, he was condemned to exile for eight hundred years—a sentence that undoubtedly seemed to him little more drastic than the period of “rustication” to which Milton was condemned by his Cambridge tutor. How better use his time than in making a brief grand tour of the universe? * He who had learned so much in the schools by logic might now discover through ex­ perience how much of his theory was true. So Micromegas set off on a cosmic journey for which he needed neither wings nor flying chariots. Since he was “a wonderful adept in the laws of gravitation” and well versed in the forces of attraction and repulsion, he was able to make such practical use of his knowledge that, sometimes by the aid of a sunbeam and sometimes by the convenience of a comet, he and his retinue glided from sphere to sphere as birds hop from one bough to another. He set out over the Milky Way, presumably stepping lightly from star to star, though his author was careful to say that Micromegas found in that “broad and ample path” none of the “appearances” upon which a cer­ tain English astronomer had dwelt at length. “Not that I pretend to say that the Doctor was mistaken,” declared Voltaire. “God forbid! but Micromegas was upon the spot, an exceeding good observer.” * I have already suggested that among the sources of the eclectic Voltaire may have been the Itinerarium Exstaticum of Athanasius Kircher, in which Theodidactus made a grand tour of the cosmic universe as a part of his educa­ tion. Perhaps, too, he picked up a hint from the “Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,” that amusing work on which the “Scriblerians,” Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, had been engaged just before the death of Queen Anne, an event that put an end to the Scriblerus Club as to so many other things. Young Martin Scriblerus was to be a great inventor; according to his doting authors, “His were the Projects of Perpetuwm Mobiles, Flying Engines, and Pacing Saddles”; more important, according to the plans of his doting father, Martin was to make an extensive cosmic tour as part of his education: “To perambulate this terraqueous Globe is too small a Range; were it permitted, he should at least make the Tour of the whole System of the Sun.” The “Memoirs” had circulated in manuscript in the period preceding Voltaire’s visit to England; they were finally published in the 1741 edition of Pope’s Prose Works.

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To the mighty Sirian the planet Saturn of which he had read so much proved an acute disappointment. That planet whose immense size had amazed Huygens and other terrestrial astronomers—who estimated it as nine hundred times the size of our earth—seemed to Micromégas little more than an ant­ hill. At first he refused to believe that the dwarfs who in­ habited it were rational beings such as he had known in Sirius, though as time went on he was grudgingly forced to grant them a certain amount of reason. Indeed, he went so far as to strike up a close acquaintanceship with the Secretary of the Grand Academy of Saturn—in whom we might detect traits of our old friend Robert Hooke or of the Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, were it not that Voltaire’s satire is clearly directed against that popularizer of science, his coun­ tryman Fontenelle, “a man of good understanding, who though in truth he had invented nothing of his own, gave a very good account of the inventions of others.” As so often in these tales, the Secretary becomes the plane­ tary “Philosopher” who interprets for a traveler the customs and beliefs of his own world, challenging meanwhile those of the visitor. In spite of all the arguments of his mentor, Micro­ mégas cannot accustom himself to a world in which men live only fifteen thousand years, dying—it seems to Micromégas, accustomed as he was to a life span seven hundred times greater —as quickly as did those ephemeral creatures of Kepler’s Somnium, in the morning like grass that groweth up, in the evening cut down and withering. Even the Saturnian is led to lamentation over man’s brief day: “Notre existence est un point, notre durée un instant, notre globe un atome. ... Je me trouve comme une goutte d’eau dans un océan immense.” A long argument over the persistent question whether nature has expressed herself everywhere in life on stars and planets leads the Sirian and the Saturnian to set out upon a “philo­ sophical journey.” Again they need no birds nor wings nor flying chariots. First they leaped upon the ring of Saturn, which they found “pretty flat,” as our terrestrial Christian Huygens had anticipated. From the ring they slipped from moon to moon of Saturn. At a most opportune moment a comet

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passed, “faithful to his time,” and they sprang upon it with their followers, traveling by means of this novel char volant for one hundred and fifty millions of leagues, until they reached the satellites of Jupiter, from which it was an easy jump to that planet. A year passed in Jupiter—but what is a mere year to a Sirian and a Saturnian? From Jupiter they proceeded to Mars, so insignificant a spot that after a single glance they passed it by. On they went, traveling at immense speed for immense distances, until far off they saw a little star that proved to be the planet Earth. (Our satellite, the moon, I may say, they did not even notice in passing!) Why these two lofty travelers bothered to pause at our insignificant planet is hard to say. Perhaps the exhilaration of travel had worn off; perhaps like modern air-travelers, they experienced an Antaeus-like desire to feel earth beneath their feet again even briefly. No matter. For reasons of their own they descended upon what seemed to them not only an infinitesimal but a barren and unpopulated land. Bored with their flights above the strato­ sphere, they decided to stretch their legs in a constitutional around the earth. After lunch—for which they gobbled up two mountains—they started out to circumambulate our globe, a mere stroll that they accomplished in thirty-six hours. So far as they could tell, ours was an unpopulated world, devoid of life of any sort, since the mites that crawl upon it are so infinitesimal as to be invisible to grosser optics of travelers from Saturn and Sirius. Had it not been for an accident, Micromegas and the Satur­ nian Secretary might well have gone back to their great worlds persuaded of our nonexistence. By chance, however, Micro­ megas broke the chain of diamonds he wore about his neck. Stooping to recover them, he idly used one as a microscope, turning it upon the petty sea that overspreads much of our globe but over which the giants had stepped as if it had been a mud puddle in their path. Through his glass Micromegas saw first a whale—far smaller to him than those animalcules he had once detected through a Sirian microscope—then what seemed to be still another aquatic creature, which was actually, however, a shipload of terrestrial scientists returning from a

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tour of exploration to the polar circle. As Leeuwenhoek once peered incredulously at “little animals” in a drop of water, so our great philosophers were only reluctantly persuaded that these wriggling mites possessed not only life but even reason of a sort. They astounded the Sirian philosopher by their ability to compute accurately his gigantic measurements—using means, it happened, by which terrestrial natural philosophers estimated the height of mountains in the moon. “Insects in­ visible!” marveled the amazed Micromégas, “insects which the hand of the Creator has brought to life in the abyss of minute being!” Amazing as was the existence of these tiny rational crea­ tures—whose rationality even Micromégas was forced to con­ fess once he had established communication with them by vari­ ous ingenious means—more amazing still was the tale they told the interplanetary giants about still another realm of life, of “animalcules” as invisible and insignificant to them as dwellers on earth to the Sirian and the Saturnian, yet “animal­ cules” which, seen through their tiny microscopes, moved and lived as did the terrestrial philosophers returning from the poles. “Undoubtedly,” reflected Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver, “philoso­ phers are in the right when they tell us, that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.” Voltaire has said nothing new, but he has driven home a lesson man had always known, the ultimate meaning of which he was beginning to grasp as never before in this period when, “plac’d on the isthmus of a middle state” he was becoming, indeed, the “glory, jest, and riddle of the world.” I need not labor Voltaire’s analogies; they are clear enough, as they had been in Swift. As in the tales of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, so in Voltaire’s satire in Micromcgas, eighteenth-century man found himself suspended between the vastness of a new cosmic universe, discovered by the telescope, and that other “new infinity” of the minute, the gift or curse to man of the microscope : Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great,

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With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much; Chaos of thought and passion, all confused,. Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise or half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Voltaire’s Micromegas was, I suspect, a cosmic voyage to end all cosmic voyages. So indeed it might have done, for the spell was wound up and the “first fine careless rapture” had ceased. But, as I have said before, the belief that somewhere in other worlds are men and women like ourselves has proved a theme the world will not willingly let die. Swift and Voltaire laughed, yet even the ironic mirth of the Olympians could not conquer the yearning of more romantic mortals for other worlds than this.

IV The cosmic voyage, as I have tried to trace it, was both an “imaginary” and an “extraordinary” voyage, yet it differed from both. If you will think back to my definition at the begin­ ning of these pages, you will see that I was anticipating with some care a final variation upon my theme when I said: “I prefer to call the travels of my mariners ‘cosmic voyages’ since they lead not to outposts of civilization upon our maps, but away from earth to another world, usually in the moon or planets. Uusually, but not always and not inevitably. As time went on, and more and more cosmic voyages were written, the pattern became only too familiar. Less imaginative writers were content merely to imitate their predecessors, with the

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result that their attemps became feeble, their devices so stereo­ typed that I have deliberately omitted a number of them. Swift and Voltaire might satirize the type; other writers, fascinated by its possibilities, sought to ring the changes by inventing a cosmic voyage which, while it involved two worlds, did not necessarily locate the other worlds in the moon or the planets. The first of my “innovators” was a woman, Charles Lamb’s “old friend of the last century but one, Mad Madge of New­ castle,” who crossed our pages once before when she was challenged by Wilkins to lend some of her many castles in the air to his moon mariners. Perhaps it was that conversa­ tion with the lion of the day, perhaps the reading of his Dis­ covery of a Nezv World in the Moon that set the Duchess of Newcastle to composing a voyage to a new world. To be sure, she never needed much provocation. Was the fashion of the day for drama? The Duchess wrote drama. Was it for phi­ losophy? She wrote that too, and sent her “philosophical works” to all the leading philosophers of the day, who replied in flatter­ ing but guarded letters—usually before they had read her works—after which the Duchess printed their letters, thus— like modern “quantitative” scholars—having still another “pub­ lication” to her credit. “The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does is romantic,” Pepys wrote in his Diary on April 11, 1667. “Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in an antique dress, as they say; and was the other day at her own play, ‘The Humourous Lovers’; the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but yet she and her Lord mightily pleased with it; and she, at the end, made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them thanks. There is as much expectation of her coming to Court * that so people may come to see her, as if it were the Queen of Sheba.” Pepys might scoff; yet he himself went to Whitehall, hoping to see the celebrity, and not long after, he joined a throng that followed her through the park, boys and girls running after her as if she had been a modern Hollywood star. “Met my Lady Newcastle,” Pepys finally noted with satisfaction, “going with her coachmen and footmen all in velvet: herself, whom I never saw before, as

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I have heard her often described, for all the town-talk is now-a-days of her extravagancies, with her velvet-cap, her hair about her ears; many black patches, because of pimples about her mouth; naked-necked, without any thing about it, and a black just-au-corps. She seemed to me a very comely woman; but I hope to see more of her on May-day.” When the fashion of the day was for science the unconven­ tional Duchess astounded London by inviting herself to attend a meeting of the Royal Society. At least she must have forced an invitation, for certainly no woman had ever entered those sacred precincts. Pepys tells us that that visit was the talk of London. “We do believe the town will be full of ballads of it.” He describes the many “fine experiments” shown her, all, as we learn from the records, prepared by that martyr Robert Hooke. She came, she saw, but this time the overenthusiastic lady failed to conquer Samuel Pepys. “She was full of nothing but admiration, all admiration,” he noted. I suspect that her cosmic voyage—the one piece of fiction she ever wrote—may have been the result of the fact that on the occasion of her visit the subject of “new worlds” was discussed by the virtuosi, for The Description of a New World, called The Blazing World, written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Duchess of Newcastle appeared in 1666, as an appendage to her Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, a work motivated by her visit to the Royal Society. Here, indeed, is God’s plenty! This “Description of a New World,” the author herself declares, is “not such as Lucian’s, or the French-man’s World in the Moon: but a World of my own Creating, which I call the Blazing-World: The first part whereof is Romancical; the second Philosophical; and the third is merely Fancy, or (as I may call it) Fantastical.” Other ele­ ments than those picked up at the Royal Society went to the making of this romance, for the Duchess had obviously been reading widely in literature dealing with La Terre Australe, that vast, mysterious continent which for years had lured men to discover a Northwest Passage believed to lie beyond the haunted frozen seas. There are memories here of Sir Francis Drake and of Purchas his Pilgrimage; memories too, I think,

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-of Joseph Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem. The world discovered by Mad Madge was indeed both another and the same world as that in which she lived, a world both “Romancical” and ■“Fantastical.” The most remarkable feature of The Description of a New World is that the perennial wandering hero has become a heroine—a variation upon my theme I have not found before. The young Lady is kidnaped by a merchant who is in love with her and by him carried off in a ship—there are reminis­ cences here of Kepler’s S omnium which the Duchess seems to have known at second hand, since she was no Latinist. After a series of such adventures as we have come to consider standard in such tales, the ship reaches the North Pole, where merchant and crew are conveniently frozen to death, “the young Lady onely, by the light of her Beauty, the heat of her youth, and Protection of the Gods, remaining alive.” Alone, alone, all all alone, alone on a wide wide sea, the Lady drifted on in her ship, though how she did I cannot tell for The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around : It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!

Was not the lonely Lady on her ship of ice, I have often wondered, another of those many “scattered images of memory which flash like sudden stars and coalesce” to become “sheer Coleridge”? How did that eagle eye of Professor Lowes miss this Ancient Mariness, whose adventures in the Fields of Ice offer so many parallels for those of her romantic descendant? At all events our heroine arrived at last “not onely ... to the very end or point of the Pole of that World, but even to another Pole of another World; for it is impossible to round this World’s Globe from Pole to Pole, so as we do from East to West; because the Poles of the other World, joining to the Poles of this, do not allow any further passage to surround the World that Way; but if any one arrives to either of these Poles, he is either forced to return, or to enter another World.”

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This may not be clear to you, but it was clear enough to the Duchess, and I imagine to her generation also. Never think that our heroine sought to return; she entered “into another World,” where her adventures ran true to form. She perceived strange creatures and employed all her academic logic in attempts to decide whether they were human or not. She discovered, as did other cosmic mariners, bear-men, bird­ men, fly-men, ape-men. Ultimately she married an emperor and became a remarkably versatile empress—created, who can doubt, by the Duchess in her own image?—whose chief inter­ est lay in stimulating the scientific and philosophical interests of her subjects. Indeed, so far as I can see, she became an absolute dictator, for the Emperor remains throughout a vague and nebulous figure in whom perhaps a psychological searcher for “sources” might detect shadows of the Duke of Newcastle. I shall not stop over chapters in which the Empress founded an “Academy” in her new world, nor over the long astronomical debates which occupy a whole section of the tale. Suffice it to say that the Empress found reason for disillusion. Logic, experimental philosophy, and astronomical observation all proved equally fallacious. Sadly disappointed in philosophy, whether “natural” or “metaphysical,” the Empress now had recourse to the world of spirits, and talked with several souls from her own world, among others with the soul of a remarkable duchess in whom we recognize without surprise—albeit with some confusion since we seem inadvertently to have arrived in Looking Glass Land—the soul of the Duchess of Newcastle. Envious of the good fortune of her terrestrial friend, she too desired new worlds to conquer. The Empress summoned her spirit-counselor only to learn, to the disappointment of both ladies, that though “there were more numerous Worlds than Stars . . . numerous, nay infinite Worlds . . . yet none is without Government.” For a time the Empress played with the idea of securing for her friend “Lucians World of Lights” which had been “for some time in a snuff,” but changed her plans when a spirit­ courtier suggested a bolder plan: “We wonder, proceeded the Spirits, that you desire to be Empress of a Terrestrial World,

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when as you can create your self a Celestial World as you please. What, said the Empress, can any Mortal be a Creator? Yes, answered the spirits.” Such a suggestion was all that was needed for the brilliant Empress and her friend the Duchess, who with amazing rapidity proceeded to “make and dissolve many worlds,” peopling them with inhabitants, visiting them in spiritual chariots. So far I have been your willing guide and mentor on many a cosmic voyage, never protesting the distance, the time, or the discomfort of the vehicle. This time I refuse. If you wish to journey to the celestial worlds of Margaret of Newcastle, you must go alone with her in the pages of her ponderous tome. I have made those journeys once, and my head—not too good for heights, in spite of my long training—still spins. Sweden­ borg’s journeys to the right and left are simple in comparison. I have forgotten those celestial journeys and I have no inten­ tion of reading that book again in order to bring order out of their chaos. The long-suffering Duke of Newcastle in the dedicatory poem he wrote for The Description of a New World —acting, I suspect, under the same kind of orders frequently given to the Emperor of that New World—has said all that can be said on the subject: Our Elder World, with all their skill and arts, Could but divide the World into three Parts; Columbus then for Navigation fam’d Found a new world, America ’tis named. Now this new world was found, it was not made, Onely discovered lying in time’s shade. Than what are you, having no chaos found To make a world, or any such lost ground. But your creating fancy, though it fit To make your world of nothing, but pure wit ? Your blazing world, beyond the stars much higher Enlightens all with a celestial fire. V

One final variation upon my theme and I shall have finished with my search for voyages to the moon and planets in those

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earlier periods when man might still believe the incredible. I am not sure who, if anyone, may be said to have invented the “subterraneous voyage”—an example of which we have seen in The Romance of Peter Wilkins—in which mariners, instead of taking off into the empyrean, descended into our earth to find a new world. Here too were classical reminiscences. Homer and Virgil had sent their heroes to the world of Hades, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead had as great a literary influence as did his voyages to the moon. But if the subterranean voyage of the eighteenth century had an “onlie begetter,” my own choice would lie between Robert Burton and Athanasius Kircher. The most familiar of all “digressions” in the Anatomy of Melancholy is in its way the most extensive of cosmic voyages, for in “A Digression of the Air” Burton sent the “long-winged hawk” of his imagination into ether where he let his mind play with the heights, pondering all those astronomical problems that concerned his generation. “As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher till he be come to his full pitch, and in the end, when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden; so will I, having now come at last into these ample fields of air, wherein I may freely expatiate and exercise myself for my recreation, awhile rove, wander round about the world, mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and so descend to my former elements again.” His ethereal journey ended, Burton’s imagination descended from those ample fields of ether in which he had roved and expatiated to seek a sub­ terranean world as strange: “I would have a convenient place to go down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Lucian’s Menippus . . . to descend and see what is done in the bowels of the earth.” As the growing “geological imagination” of the century began to supplement the “astronomical,” men like Athanasius Kircher began to write of the mysteries within the earth, of places as remote and strange as the worlds in the moon and planets. I know of few old volumes more fascinating to the layman than the Mundus Subterraneus of Kircher, that far-traveler who, more than any other man of his age, had actually gone

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down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Hercules into mines, volcanoes, grottoes, and who left us diagrams and pictures of mysterious places he visited and still stranger regions in the internals of the earth he imagined. Even if one cannot read the Latin text he can pore over those pictures until he feels that he himself has made a journey to the center of the earth. Again I am persuaded that the “falcon’s eye” of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which had lighted upon a less entrancing book of Kircher’s, had seen those plates and diagrams of undeground rivers running, like Alph, the sacred river, through caverns measureless to man on their way to sunless seas from which all rivers flow and to which they all return. There are other possible sources, too, for the eighteenth­ century subterranean voyage—among them Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth—but I shall not labor them. Suffice it to say that various writers had tried their hand at subterranean voyages in both prose and poetry before the Danish Ludwig Holberg picked up the theme and wrote a world classic about the adventures of Nils Klim in the world in the center of the earth. Originally written in Latin, translated into nearly all European languages, Holberg’s tale, I am sorry to say, is less familiar to English readers. I have not forgotten that when I myself first “discovered” Holberg many years ago I took the book enthusiastically to a Scandinavian friend. “Did you ever read Holberg’s journey to the world underground?” I asked. He looked at me with pity and scorn. “Yes,” he replied; then with ironical courtesy, “By the way, did you ever happen to read a book called Alice in Wonderland?” The reason that we of English-speaking countries know Holberg’s great classic so much less well than do the continentals is, I think, that English translations -are far inferior to those of other Euro­ pean countries. I have found none that carries over into our idiom the satire, the fun, the rich humor one feels in the original. Holberg published his book in 1741, though the adventures took place nearly a century earlier. It was in 1664 that Nicholas Klimius, having finished his examinations at the University of Copenhagen, where he had devoted himself to the study of natural philosophy, determined to find out by experiment some

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facts about the topography of his native region. Not far from his home was a strangely formed mountain, in the center of which was a deep cave. With some companions, Nils Klim climbed the mountain and was lowered into the cave by ropes. Perhaps he was too energetic or perhaps his friends on the mountaintop were careless. At all events Klim suddenly found himself falling through the abyss with startling velocity. But he would deserve no place among my venturesome mariners had he not, as usual, taken his sudden descent with philosophic detachment and calm, his intellectual curiosity as usual over­ coming any possible fright. On he went, down, down, down. “After the maturest Consideration,” he says thoughtfully, “I fell to imagining that I was sunk into the subterraneous World, and that the Conjectures of those Men are right who hold the Earth to be concave, and that within the Shell or outward Crust there is another lesser Globe, and another Firmament adorn’d with lesser Sun, Stars, and Planets. And the Event discover’d that this Conjecture was right.” The first part of the descent had been made in the dark, but at length, like Milton’s Satan in Chaos, Klim began to see light far off, “a thin small Light, like twilight,” as it seemed at first, then “a bright serene Firmament.” As he approached more closely to the new world, he felt his headlong pace slacken, and falling now more slowly, could observe not far off a new world like his own, smaller, to be sure, but showing mountains, valleys, seas. All this is familiar enough; Holberg, satirist as he was, was having his fun parodying the long tradition of the cosmic voyage. Nowhere in the earlier literature of that voyage, I think, is there a scene so amusing as that when Klim neared the little world of Nazar, and nowhere except in Voltaire is there more pungent satire upon the obsession of two centuries with the ideas of the new astronomy. As Nils Klim fell toward the new planet he discovered by experience facts about laws of gravity and motion that until that time had been to him only theories in books. He felt his perpendicular motion alter into a circular one and found himself revolving about the new planet. Temporarily he became a satellite, constrained to “whirlegig it” round the new earth. Not only that. While, like

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cosmic mariners in general, he had suffered neither hunger nor thirst, he decided to occupy himself by eating a round biscuit he had carried in his pocket. Finding it nauseous in this ex­ hilarating air that took from him all desire for mundane food, he threw it away, only to discover that while he himself was describing a circle about the planet, the biscuit described a circle around him. “And from thence I learnt the true Laws of motion, by which it comes to pass, that all Bodies plac’d in Aequilibrium naturally affect a circular Motion.” Around the planet Nazar went Nils Klim, and around Nils Klim went his round biscuit, while down below in the new world astrono­ mers rushed to their telescopes plotting the period of this new satellite or, some said—for Klim’s rope was falling with him—a comet with a tail! If for a moment his dignity was threatened by his ignominious position, the disturbance was only momen­ tary. After all, he pondered, he had become a heavenly body, or if not quite that, at least an attendant upon a heavenly body, a planet that in turn had its own perpetual attendant. Perhaps in the new world he might even be reckoned among stars of the first magnitude! Yet his descent into the new planet, after the space of three days of satellitehood, proved ignominious. He made no such spectacular figure as had many of his predecessors when they came to lunar land, but whirled into Nazar, “arm’d with a Harpoon and dragging a mighty Length of Rope after me, knowing full well, that a Man just going to Paradise has no Occasion for a Rope or Harpoon, and that the celestial In­ habitants cou’d not possibly be pleas’d with a Dress, which look’d as if I intended, after the example of the Titans, to take Heaven by Violence, and to expel them from their divine Abodes.” He had the dubious pleasure of finding himself in­ famous, if not famous; for, observing him in the sky, the local “philosophers” had prognosticated dire fate to their nation; like the early novae, he had become a symbol of plague, of famine. He had been delineated, engraved—only too accurately, he discovered—degradingly pictured while yet hanging between Heaven and Hell. Klim’s long tale of adventure in the subterranean world with

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its strange inhabitants and customs, which culminated in his founding of a Fifth Monarchy, I shall not rehearse in detail. His experience on the little planet Nazar was on the whole conventional. As so often in these tales he visited the metropolis where, as usual, he found a Grand Academy, which gave him a chance to say a good deal about the state of culture in this new world. More interesting is the story of his banishment from Nazar to the firmament, an exile to Nazarites the worst of punishments. Once a year, great birds called “Cupac, that is to say Birds of Post” made their appearance on the planet Nazar, later flying back to the firmament to which they car­ ried all criminals who had been banished from Nazar. Here is still another variant of our earlier “flight by harnessing of birds,” for the cupacs, like Godwin’s gansas, spent one part of the year in one planet and hibernated in another. Tragedy to the banished dwellers on Nazar, to the eager Klim the voyage was only another aerial adventure, during the course of which, I may add, he showed himself as much a “projector” as did Defoe and Brunt before him, evolving schemes that I suspect were no more ethical than theirs—albeit somewhat more amus­ ing. His final return to his native country took place by a device rather like that of his descent. Beset by enemies he made his way to another “great hole” in another mountain, down which he tumbled, preferring the force of gravity to arrows of outrageous fortune. Again he was precipitated “with the velocity of lightning through impenetrable Darkness” until, as on his first descent, “a glimmering light” dawned through the blackness. Again his pace imperceptibly slackened, as he en­ tered “our Atmosphere, which is much denser and consequently resists more than the subterranean Atmosphere.” So after a long absence Nils Klim found himself once more upon his native soil. If I have done less than justice to Holberg’s classic, it is in part because our English translations lack the charm of the original, in part I confess because, in spite of the brilliance of his satire, Holberg had snapped up so many details from his English predecessors that the journey as a whole does not seem to me as original as it has sometimes seemed to his Continental

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critics. I think there was no earlier tale I have discussed that Holberg did not know at either first or second hand. From them he made a composite which, were I to analyze it at length, would show both Holberg’s eclecticism and the persistence throughout European literature of the conventions and tradi­ tions of the cosmic voyage.

VI Leaping over time and space, and deliberately violating the chronological limits I originally set myself, I shall end, for my own pleasure and I hope for yours, with the cosmic voyage you and I know best of all, even though you may never have realized that it is a cosmic voyage. Am I wrong in thinking that Alice in Wonderland brings my travels to their climax? Like his great predecessor, the creator of Gulliver, Lewis Carroll wrote a tale that has been a joy of childhood and a delight of maturity. Peculiarly British, both artists worked upon chaos with that “mathematical logic” they shared and both brought forth new order less by originality than by bril­ liant reordering of old literary traditions. “I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story,” its author wrote in his later preface to Sylvie and Bruno. “I was at least no conscious imitator in writing it.” There is no question that Sylvie and Bruno shows Carroll’s knowledge of the pattern long established by his predecessors who told their tales of men in the moon. Here, as in many of our earlier stories, “Mein Herr” is, if not the Man in the Moon (“I am not in the Moon, my child,” he answered evasively), at least one of our many travelers from the moon. Mein Herr spoke with a German accent, to be sure, but you may remember how relieved rather than surprised Cyrano de Bergerac was when he heard the supposed lunarians speaking French. The account of that distant mysterious country, as given by Mein Herr, is in ac­ cordance with long-established patterns we have followed here. It is filled with broad and beautiful generalities about another world. Like many another of our lunarians, Mein Herr finds it almost impossible to explain matters in his world to an audi-

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ence from another world, “because you have no words in your language, to convey the ideas that are needed.” In this country there is no wasted time; “they store it up and it comes in very useful, years afterwards.” There, too, strange things have happened to the laws of gravity: “They run their railway trains without any engines; nothing is needed but machinery to stop them with.” Otherworldly beings are not governed by laws of gravity, because, by a process of artificial selection, they are already lighter than water, and in a thousand years, “selec­ tion” will have made them also lighter than air. There is more than a suggestion, I think, of Holberg’s visit to the little world of Nazar and of Micromegas when Mein Herr tells of a friend who on balloon voyages had visited a world so small that he could circumnavigate it in twenty minutes. In Mein Herr’s long account of life in his planet, we hear again, as so often in the past, about strange customs: for example, we are told of warfare and of the peculiar method by which men learn to shoot backward in order that, shooting round the world, they may hit the enemy in the back—though we learn with relief that the soft bullets do not kill, but only mark the clothing of the victim who is “dead” as in a child­ hood game. We hear, too, of the government of this little world, a place in which all the people are kings and only one a subject. We follow—probably with more patience than the children for whom the tale was officially intended—the account of educa­ tion in this little planet in which the universities bear a striking resemblance to the Oxford Charles Dodgson knew. Sylvie and Bruno is obviously in the tradition of cosmic voyages, showing its heritage from legends and tales of the preceding centuries. But Alice wears her rue with a difference. Her journey into Looking Glass Land occurred by a simple device, one that had become common enough among more serious writers of the preceding centuries. As Christian Huygens said in Cosmotheoros: “Since there’s no hopes of our going such a journey, . . . we must suppose ourselves there.” So Alice, dreaming on a dull day, took refuge in that phrase be­ loved of childhood, “Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend things there are the same as on earth—but contrariwise.” Alice’s first descent

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down the rabbit hole is, of course, immediately reminiscent of Nils Klim’s journey, but it is more than that. It is her creator’s inheritance from all those cosmic mariners who, whether they flew up or down, always carried themselves nonchalantly on their journeys to another world, their intellectual interests and insatiable curiosity overcoming any fear they might legitimately have felt. Domingo, Cyrano, Nils Klim, and many another mariner had occupied themselves as they rose or fell with recall­ ing their reading in natural philosophy. Alice on her journey down the rabbit hole sent her mind back to “lessons”:

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? “I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?” she said aloud. “I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think—” (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still, it was good practice to say it over) “—yes, that’s about the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to.” So had the cosmic voyagers before her. While they knew a little more than did Alice about latitude—though some of them were pretty shaky on longitude—they were as capable as the child of repeating to themselves facts about which they actu­ ally knew little or nothing! “The Antipathies,” for instance— about the remote Antipodes many great flyers of the past had known as little as did Alice! Like her predecessors, Alice fell down the rabbit hole so slowly that she had plenty of time to look about her with that ’satiable curiosity of the Elephant’s Child she shared with her ancestors. “Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again”—as had those mariners, the cosmic voyagers. It was almost as dark in the rabbit hole as in Peter Wilkins’ subterraneous river, yet Alice realized as she fell that there were cupboards there with bookshelves, maps, and pictures. So the minds of cosmic voyagers had turned during their travels to the maps and charts by means of

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which they had so often traveled in imagination. Like some of those who had preceded her, Alice made an easy landing: “Suddenly, thump, thump! down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.” The fall was over, but the adventures in a new world were just beginning. In the adventures of Alice both in Wonderland and in Look­ ing Glass Land there are so many similarities with those of earlier cosmic voyagers that we feel as much at home in Alice’s “other worlds” as Alice, I am sure, would have felt had she flown to the moon or fallen to Nazar. Mad Hatter or March Hare, all seem mad in lunar world or Wonderland— unless perhaps in Wonderland they are sane and it is we “humans” who are mad! “Once,” said the Mock Turtle with a deep sigh, “I was a real Turtle.” Many men our travelers discovered upon the moon had once been real turtles—real men, at least—in another world before their strange “translations.” Anything can happen in Wonderland or in the moon; anything does happen in either brave new world. Alice’s is a country of animals and fantastic beings, as were the worlds of Cyrano, of Margaret of Newcastle, of Holberg, of Restif de la Bretonne. In Wonderland the supernatural seems entirely natural, as it always does on cosmic voyages, for in all of them, as Carroll wisely says, things are “much of a muchness.” Why should there not be Frog Footmen and queens who turn into sheep and duchesses who put too much pepper in the soup— not to mention babies that become pigs, as indeed too many babies do, though they justify their transformations if, as Alice noticed, they make handsome pigs rather than ugly children? All this is as old as can be, and even more Carroll’s heritage from the cosmic voyage than from fairy tale. Like the cosmic mariners, after Cyrano established the con­ vention, Alice meets a philosopher in her new world. Indeed, she met many philosophers, but I shall arbitrarily choose the Caterpillar, with his “obstinate questionings,” “Why? Why not?” “Who are you?” said the Caterpillar—hardly an en­ couraging opening. Much more mature and seasoned travelers had felt the same confusion and embarrassment as did Alice when she tried to explain—and found herself lacking a vocabu­

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lary—that she was only a little girl, a “human being” from another inhabited world, as strange to the inhabitants of Wonderland as Cyrano to the men in the moon or Brunt to the Cacklogallinians. The Caterpillar did not think it queer that he could turn into a chrysalis and thence into a butterfly. “Not a bit!” said he. Why, then, the sense of strangeness and unreality Alice felt in her transformations? Why, indeed? And again, why not? Alice’s experience of “relativity” was her heritage from those ancestors whose adventures we have followed. Like Cyrano, Swift, Voltaire, and so many others, Alice faced the problem of ultimate reality. She alone was human, though to be human had ceased to be real. She shared with Gulliver a nightmare of changing values, standards, sizes; yet her pre­ dicament was even more confusing than that of Gulliver, for at least he remained the same, a norm against which all other life was measured. But Alice now grew with amazing rapidity, now shrank until her teeth chattered against her shoes. She who should have been the standard, the norm, found herself at one time with her head among the leafy branches of the trees, mistaken for a hissing serpent, again with her chin down to her boots, so paltry that she could not reach the key with which she might unlock the door to the garden of Paradise. It is all great fun to us; but it is all very poignant, this tale of a little girl lost in a changing world of dream with night­ mare touches. Perhaps with Alice as with Kepler in the Somnium we should be glad to wake from a haunted dream. Yet even when we wake we find, as did Alice and so many other cosmic mariners, that the feeling of unreality still persists. Which was the dreamer, whose the dream? The Red King is still snoring: “He’s dreaming,” said Tweedledum . . . And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be? . . . You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!” Which was the dreamer, whose the dream? Is this Domingo Gonsales, for a moment crying out against the “wife and children” who called him back to earth from a more per­ fect lunarian world? Is this Gulliver, returning reluctantly to

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England after each of his voyages, adjusting to the “reality” of his English life and family until that time when, after his period of residence among the rational horses and the detest­ able Yahoos, he could bear humanity no longer, and abruptly leaving his wife and children could only “turn and live with the animals?” Who is Alice—Gonsales, Cyrano, Micromegas, or a little girl in nineteenth-century England? Lightly at the end of each tale Lewis Carroll raises the prob­ lem our far-travelers have pondered so often: “He was the Man in the Moon to me, as I was the Man in the Moon to him.” Which world is the real world? From our long wanderings through space, from our questioning, “What worlds be there, fields or inhabitants?” we return to earth to remember, as Alice must always have remembered, other worlds of fantasy and romance where life seemed for a time more normal and natural, more real and inevitable than that we have known before or since. From a world of lions and unicorns, of Humpty Dumpty and those gemini, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, we shake ourselves awake. Like Alice, we still hold in our hands the Red Queen of our dreams, and gazing in surprise we say with the waking child: “And it really was a kitten after all!” But was it? In our modern scientific world the cosmic voyage has not ceased to flourish, yet something is lost that was the essence of these early romances. That something, I think, is enchant­ ment, an enchantment felt even by learned men in the seven­ teenth century who lived in a world that was still “so new and all” that they could believe as sincerely as did Alice in other inhabited worlds than this. “It is the peculiar power of certain works of art (not always the most ambitious or grandilo­ quent),” writes a modern critic, * “to touch off to us, to suggest in themselves, a real that transcends the diurnal world of common sense and of common logic, the conventional geog­ raphy of things in verifiable relations and objects in their lesser connections.” Such a work of art was Alice in Wonder­ land. Such, if often in lesser degree, were, I think, the voyages * Irwin Edman, Arts and the Man, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1939, p. 145.

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of my cosmic mariners. In our modern imaginary journeys to the planets men sail in great space ships constructed upon sound technological principles. They discover worlds in which scien­ tific warfare has gone even farther than among us, in which cosmic rays and atom bombs have become instruments of uni­ versal destruction. Their devices for flight are far more plausible and realistic than any I have related to you. They have gained verisimilitude, but they have lost the excitement of breathless discovery. The poetry of true belief is mute.

Whither has fled the visionary gleam ? Where is it now—the glory and the dream ?

Most of all is gone something else that made these earlier tales, from Lucian to Alice in Wonderland, a rich literary heritage. Our modern pulp and movie and comics writers who deal with the theme have lost the delicacy and the subtlety of humor, conscious and unconscious. If you and I laugh at the quaintness and naïveté of those earlier cosmic voyagers, our laughter is still touched with mystery and dream, with affection for those men who possessed, as did Alice, the charm of be­ lieving youth. Travelers to realms of gold, we who have voyaged together may still believe in gansas and wanton wings and flying chariots, in lands of birds or pools of tears, in Collective Trees and Cheshire cats. While we can still believe, something price­ less is left to us from our common past. For although Wonder­ land may have faded and the Cheshire cat has vanished from before our eyes—a smile remains.

EPILOGUE

The cosmic voyage has never died and will not, I imagine, until the day when the whole celestial universe has been mapped and charted, and even then there will be universes beyond to tempt human imagination. While the first balloon ascensions marked the end of the spirit of those early mariners, from Lucian to Scintilla, they did not fundamentally change the form of the moon voyage, and increased rather than decreased its popularity, since at first there was every reason to believe that what had seemed only possible might now be probable. Never was there such an outpouring of ephemeral literature of flight as during the first era of the balloon. Casually browsing in such libraries as the Huntington and the British Museum, I have turned over much of that “literature”—if it may be dignified by that word. There are serious essays dis­ cussing the machines of the Montgolfiers, Lunardi, Blanchard, pre­ dicting the rapid advance of aerostatics in the immediate future. There are romances and fantasies, satires and critiques, songs and band music, broadside ballads and cartoons galore. The “two voices” spoke again. Europe exulted in this spectacular accomplishment of man or predicted dire fate to the nations. In a dozen works published during the two decades after 1793 I have found the old themes. Only the flying chariot changed. Man still climbed the heavens. No matter what the vehicle, sic itur ad astra. It was no part of my original plan to discuss voyages written during the last century, when imagination has responded less to “Experiments of Light,” as Bacon called “pure science,” than to “Experiments of Fruit.” So far as the history of aviation is con­ cerned, the kind of “science” that once liberated literary imagina­ tion has given way to “technology” that too often confines it within the limits of the plausible. Yet whenever I have told these older tales to students or to lecture audiences, I have been inundated by questions and suggestions about the sources of Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and our own contemporaries. So let us go back together briefly to some of the more familiar modern interplanetary voyages and, in the light of our common knowledge, 237

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reread them to see to what extent our moderns have followed the literary conventions and traditions of the past.

I What of Poe in “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal,” first published in The Southern Literary Messenger for 1835 ? You remember the amusing opening: a vast crowd of people assembled in the great square in Rotterdam, ten thousand faces upturned, ten thousand pipes descending simultaneously from ten thousand mouths, then a shout like the roar of Niagara resounding through the city as there dropped from the clouds “a queer, hetero­ geneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below.” Like those sturdy burghers, even we who have seen so many curious flying machines may well rub our eyes. “For who, let me ask, ever heard of a balloon manufactured entirely of dirty news­ papers? No man in Holland certainly.” And, I may add, not this literary historian. And yet, as the grotesque conveyance descends closer to the crowd of Dutchmen, something teases my memory. The tinkling bells are new and so is the broad-brimmed hat, yet the impression still lingers that somewhere I have seen a paper flying chariot quite as fantastic as this one. I suppose that Poe could not possibly have read the tale of “Lucas Lunanimus of Lunenbergi . . . written in the Lunick Language” that I once deciphered in the British Museum manuscript room. It is probably only coincidence that the earlier flyer was, like Hans Pfaal, a Dutchman, that his adventures too began “on the first of Aprill ... a day alwaies esteemed prosperous for such adventures,” and that Pfaal, hurled over the side of his car and dangling head downward by a slender cord, bears a striking resemblance to his ancestor who “fixing himselfe to the tayle” of his kite went up to the moon “bestriding ye taile of his Pegasus, as Millers mount their Asses on ye Rump.” The source of Poe’s flying machine, I suspect, lay not in that forgotten manuscript but in one of the many cartoons I mentioned a moment ago. Yet I offer Poe scholars “The Lunarian, or Newes from the World in the Moon to the Lunaticks of this World,” if not as a source, at least as the only

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analogue I have found in the literature of the moon voyage for Poe’s grotesquerie. Like his predecessor, Poe began brilliantly but ended badly. Had he continued in his vein of badinage and arrant nonsense, he might have left us one of the great satiric classics of our genre. As it stands, “The Adventure of Hans Pfaal” is bald and anticlimactic and smells of the lamp. Poe had read carefully in preparation for his story, though he disparaged most of the literary sources he used. Cyrano he dismissed with contempt. “That of Bergerac,” he wrote, “is utterly meaningless.” Yet I suspect that Cyrano’s voyages to the moon and sun were more than once reflected in Poe’s tale, particularly on the occasion when Hans Pfaal, like Cyrano, made a somersault dive. The fact that “the bouleversement in itself was not only natural and inevitable, but had been long actually anticipated” had not prepared Hans any more than Cyrano for the extraordinary experience of finding his world literally upside down. Poe treated Godwin with more respect. He knew the adventure of Domingo Gonsales in the French translation of 1647 but had no idea that the original tale was English. L’Homme Dans la Lune he found “a singular and somewhat ingenious little book . . . not without claim to attention, as affording a naive specimen of the current astronomical notions of the time.” But Poe, the “modern,” who prided himself upon his reading in contemporary science, dis­ missed Domingo and all the other early moon mariners with a wave of his hand so far as their science was concerned. “In none of these,” he wrote, “is there any effort at plausibility in the details of the voyage itself. The writers seem, in each instance, to be utterly uninformed in respect of astronomy.” (As Poe, I may re­ mark parenthetically, seems to have been utterly uninformed in the history of astronomy.) “In Hans Pfaal,” he concluded with naive satisfaction, “the design is original”—how often his predecessors had used that phrase 1—“inasmuch as regards an attempt at veri­ similitude in the application of scientific principles (so far as the whimsical nature of the subject would permit) to the actual passage between the earth and the moon.” And right here the trouble begins! From this time on, writers of moon voyages will seek for verisimilitude and spend their efforts on attempts to make their planetary flights plausible. They will pride themselves on the application of scientific principles, weigh­

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ing down their imaginations and ours with technological impedi­ menta. Fortunately for the history of the genre, some of them will succeed better than did Poe, who attempted the impossible and apparently never realized how incongruous were the elements he clumsily sought to combine. If he was really seeking for “veri­ similitude in the application of scientific principles,” why on earth start off his hero in a completely fantastic newspaper balloon that might fittingly have flown to the moon on the winds of fancy but could never for a moment have weathered any of the dangers of the upper air Poe so “scientifically”—and ponderously—described ? After all, what was “original” in Poe’s “design”? With superb disregard for the nature of his flying machine, he used gunpowder for his initial force. Yet so inadvertently had Cyrano de Bergerac and so deliberately had Murtagh McDermot. Hans Pfaal took with him a telescope, compass, magnetic needle, and electrometer. His predecessors had flown to the moon with “Tubes, Horoscopes and other instruments”; indeed, they too had carried telescopes, compasses, magnetic needles, even if they did not know the elec­ trometer. The Dutchman took along for scientific observation a pair of pigeons and a cat—not to mention those unexpected kittens! But animals and fowls had flown ever since Godwin’s “happy lamb” made the first ascent. Poe knew well enough that the moon had no atmosphere and that there was no possibility of life there, yet he got around that difficulty as casuistically as his ancestors in order to people his moon with little earless men, not more than two feet tall, round as butter balls, with enormously large hands and, like the unfortunate Cyrano, long noses. Only in one section, so far as I can see, did Poe add anything to the tradition he inherited. He was more “scientific” than earlier writers in considering the effect of altitude upon flying men. Our explorers of the past always enjoyed themselves in the “intervening air,” but Hans Pfaal and his livestock—except for the newborn kittens who experienced no respiratory difficulty—gasped for breath. Pfaal found Himself bleeding at nose and ears, suffered acute headache, and was forced to let his own blood to save him­ self from complete coma. These passages are realistic, if you like, though a century earlier Captain Samuel Brunt had had some of the same experiences when he began his moon journey with the Cacklogallinians. No, I am afraid that Poe was neither so “original” nor so “scientific” as he thought, and I am certain that by his attempts at verisimilitude he spoiled a tale that might have remained,

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with those of Swift and Voltaire, a masterly parody of the romantic moon voyage. To do Poe justice, when he emphasized his scientific accuracy he was writing to defend himself against charges that he was the author of the “Moon-Hoax” that, published in The New York Sun in 1835, occasioned much the same kind of popular excitement caused a century later by the Orson Welles broadcast, “The In­ vasion from Mars.” If we may trust the publisher’s blurb included in the little volume published some years later, the Sun rose to fame and prosperity as a result of that yarn: “When it first made its appearance from day to day in one of the morning papers, the interest in the discovery was intense, so much so that the circula­ tion of the paper augmented fivefold, and in fact, was the means of giving the journal a permanent footing as a daily newspaper. Nor did the multiplied circulation of the paper satisfy the public appetite. The proprietors of the journal had an edition of 60,000 published in pamphlet form, which were sold off in less than one month.” Ours is not the first credulous generation, so far as news from a new world is concerned. Today we know, as a dillusioned generation was to discover, that The Moon-Hoax: Or, A Discovery that the Moon has a Vast Population of Human Beings was an imaginary tale made up out

of whole cloth—and not all wool and a yard wide—by one Richard Adams Locke. But when the papers appeared in August and Sep­ tember, 1835, the majority of readers believed them to be firsthand accounts of telescopic observations made in Africa by Sir John Herschel and by him submitted simultaneously to the Sun and to the Edinburgh Journal of Science. So many discoveries had been made through the high-powered telescopes of the two Herschels that an admiring public was only too willing to believe that the younger man had actually succeeded in bringing the moon—still forty miles distant through Sir Wil­ liam’s telescope—within an apparent five miles of the earth. Ad­ miration and credulity were not limited to the general public. “The account of the wonderful discoveries in the moon,” the New York Times declared editorially, “are all probable and plausible, and have an air of intense verisimilitude.” “No article, we believe,” declared the Daily Advertiser, “has appeared for years, that will command so general a perusal and publication.” “The promulgation of these discoveries has created a new era in astronomy and science generally,” sagely stated the—then—New Yorker. An amazing new world, that disclosed by the African telescope,

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more spectacular than the settings of Settle and D’Urfey and Aphra Behn, though very reminiscent of those and other theatrical settings. Lovely columns of green basalt, carved not by art but by nature, castellated rocks of marble festooned with clustering foliage, chains of hills apparently made of amethysts, mountains like sapphires and rubies, left the astronomers “speechless with admiration” or moved them to “sublime” prose of the worst possible variety. Flora and fauna were inevitably romantic, sometimes beautiful like the unicorn—if such it was—that rivaled the antelope in “elegance of symmetry,” sometimes whimsical like the “strange amphibious creature of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly shore.” In this romantic world where every prospect pleased, only man proved vile. Locke jealously refused to people our minor satellite with men and women nobler than ourselves. The “vast population” of the moon consisted of simian creatures, missing links between man and animal, yet differing from monkeys in that many of them “possessed wings of great expansion, similar in structure to those of the bat.” As you and I study those “bat-men” and “bat-women” and read the details of their curious membrane, we recognize them for what they were—the glums and gawries of Peter Wilkins, which Locke had certainly read and which he may well have seen as a spectacular operetta on the American stage. While the setting and characters were romantic, there was a vast amount of “scientific” lore in the Moon-Hoax, which, couched in technical language, fooled men who should have known better. Locke suffered from the fault of his generation. Struggling for verisimilitude, he piled one scientific detail upon another until the flimsy structure of his tale collapsed under its own weight. Yet he gave the generation what it was coming to demand—plausibility of the sort on which Poe prided himself, with a scientific jargon that temporarily impressed his readers, making them forget the obvious fact that, even .had the Herschel telescope brought the moon within an apparent five miles of the earth, no human eye could have seen the close detail Locke carefully described, of eyes of birds and animals, markings in stones and flowers that even a trained observer could hardly detect at five feet, let alone five miles. The weakness of the Moon-Hoax was that the author overplayed his hand. Yet not until 1938 did any supposed account of another world attract such widespread attention.

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II

Let us come down the century1 another thirty years and read again From the Earth to the Moon, published in 1865 by Jules Verne, who seemed to his age a prophet of the future as he wrote about submarines, automobiles, and airships that had not yet been invented, and described a tour of the world in eighty days at a time when such a record-breaking journey seemed as improbable as a voyage to the moon. Verne himself disclaimed any pretension to the second sight with which his contemporaries endowed him. Only a short time before his death in 1905, at the age of seventy­ seven, he said to a London reporter: “You might tell your readers that these books in which I have published prophecies based upon the latter-day discoveries of science have been really only a means to an end. It will perhaps surprise you to hear that I do not take especial pride in having written of the motor car, the submarine boat, and the navigable airship before they became actual realities. When I wrote about them as realities these things were already half discoveries. I simply made fiction out of what became ultimate fact . . . Every single geographical fact and every scientific one in every book I have ever written has been looked up with care, and is scrupulously correct.” Jules Verne has here suggested his peculiar contribution to nine­ teenth-century fiction: the exactness of his science. And yet in spite of the fact that he “looked up with care” every fact in the more than one hundred novels he produced during forty years, we detect in his romances no such smell of the lamp as in Poe’s and Locke’s pieces. All his life Verne read so widely and deeply in science that it became an integral part of his own thinking with the result that his stories impress the reader less as flights of fancy than as straightforward reporting on the part of a first-rate journal­ ist who had actually made voyages in submarine or airplane or who had circled the globe in the eighty days he described. Far from trying to conceal his sources, Verne made capital of them. Thus it is no surprise to find him referring to many of our familiar friends in From the Earth to the Moon. When he dis­ cussed the possible inhabitation of other worlds, he went back, as we have gone, to Plutarch and to Swedenborg. When his hero was attempting to persuade the members of the Baltimore Gun Club to sponsor a voyage to the moon, he called upon such recent “authorities” as Hans Pfaal and quoted Cyrano de Bergerac, whom

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he treated in no such cavalier fashion as did Poe. He told them, too, about Domingo Gonsales, whom Verne, like Poe, knew only in the French edition. Since Verne had read so many of our authors we find ourselves comfortably at home with him, smiling reminiscently as we recognize one detail after another—even those perennial flying animals and fowls—and listening appreciatively for variations on the old themes. Our leading character this time proves to be of a nationality we have not formerly met on our travels. As Poe cannily imposed his satire on a Dutchman, Verne chose as instigator of his moon voyage an American, Impey Barbicane, President of the Gun Club of Baltimore. By means of that attribution Verne was able to ring the changes, with good-natured irony, upon an idea long familiar to us, the conquest of the moon. “It is perhaps reserved for us,” declared the patriotic Barbicane in that first moving address to his colleagues of the Gun Club, “to become the Columbuses of this unknown world. Only enter into my plans, and second me with all your power, and I will lead you

to its conquest, and its name shall be added to those of the thirtysix States which compose this Great Union.” “Three cheers for the Moon!” roared the Gun Club with one voice.

Never was there a more enthusiastic proponent of American domination in the lunar regions than Barbicane’s companion, the French Michel Ardan, upon whom the President of the United States had conferred the proud title, “Citizen of the United States of America.” Why, someone asked, were the travelers engaged on so perilous a journey? “Why?” exclaimed Michel, jumping a yard high, “why? To take possession of the moon in the name of the United States, to add a * fortieth State to the Union; to colonize the lunar regions; to cultivate them, to people them, to transport thither all the prodigies of art, of science, and industry; and to constitute them a republic, if they are not already one.” “And if there are no Selenites?” retorted Nichol. . . . “Who said there are no Selenites?” exclaimed Michel in a threat­ ening tone. * The amusing discrepancy in the number of American states—neither figure correct for 1853—would seem to suggest that there were some “facts” Jules Verne did not “look up with care.”

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“I do,” howled Nichol. “Captain,” said Michel, “do not repeat that insolence, or I will knock your teeth down your throat!”

Michel Ardan is a cosmic voyager after my own heart, with all the optimistic enthusiasm of the earlier mariners. Having set his mind upon the goal, he pertinaciously refused to be moved by logical or scientific arguments against the inhabitability of the moon. He listened; he acknowledged his own limitations in science and philosophy, but not for a moment was he deterred. “Unfor­ tunately,” he replied ironically, “I am neither theologian, nor chemist, nor naturalist, nor philosopher.” No thinker but a doer, he belongs with Cyrano de Bergerac as he replies to logic with action: “I do not know whether the worlds are inhabited or not, and since I do not know, I am going to see\” This is not the only familiar theme in From the Earth to the Moon, for we constantly find passages that suggest the past. Yet

because Verne’s science and technology were up-to-date, we are also aware that for the first time we are journeying in a “modern” moon rocket. Indeed, even such seasoned travelers as we may ex­ perience a moment of dread when we hear that we are to be shot from a gun. Yet surely none of us who has traveled to the moon by goose power or by firecrackers will hesitate to enter that glorified cannon ball, the “Columbiad.” Don’t worry. It won’t hurt much, and indeed we shall not know the moment when the ground officer cries, “Fire!” and we shall not hear the frightful detonation any more than did Barbicane, Nichol, and Ardan, since we shall be traveling faster than sound. If Verne’s “science” has gone farther than that of any of our earlier romancers, his philosophy strikes a familiar chord. As we fly in the Columbiad we again watch our familiar earth shrinking in the distance and see it as it is, a minor body in the solar system. “What!” we exclaim with Ardan, “that little thread; that silver crescent?” We experience again the sense of relativity, of man on the “isthmus of a middle state.” On one occasion Verne’s flyers realize anew the poignant conception of macrocosm and microcosm. In the new world toward which they steer there may be human beings greater or less than those they have left behind, but in the meantime here they are, three terrestrial men, enclosed in another microcosm, their flying ship, which has temporarily become the whole world to them. “ ‘We inhabit a new world, peopled by ourselves—the projectile,’ said Michel Ardan. ‘I am Barbicane’s

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likeness, and Barbicane is Nichol’s. Beyond us, around us, human nature is at an end, and we are the only population of this micro­ cosm.’ ” In a new “sea of life enisled,” mortals live alone, yet as always each is the center of his world, whatever and wherever that world may be. In Verne’s description of the world in the moon we find no such romantic fantasies as those of Poe or Richard Locke. Topo­ graphically this is Kepler’s moon. Verne was too exact in his science to posit any sort of life on the moon. Perhaps eons ago life had existed there, but it is now a dead world, a world of two zones, one shining in light intolerable to life, the other “dark, dark, dark.” Even Kepler did not bring home to laymen as vividly as did Verne the most violent of all contrasts in the lunar world, that moment when travelers pass abruptly from a realm of intense light into darkness more profound than that of the Serbonian bog: “Suddenly the projectile passed the line of demarcation between intense light and absolute darkness, and was plunged in profound night.” So begins the most somber passage in From the Earth to the Moon, Verne’s description of “The Night of Three Hundred and Fifty-Four Hours and a Half.” Our travelers were to return to earth, but I shall leave Barbicane, Nichol, and their French companion in space after their encounter with a meteorite—no such crude description this as Poe’s, since the scientific Verne knew well enough that such a meteorite would, as it did, deflect the Columbiad from her path and send her “off the beam.” Human ingenuity was ultimately to triumph; man, having learned the laws of nature, was to command nature. Had that not been so, the Columbiad might still be today, as she became for a time, a satellite of our satellite. Caught in the toils of lunar attraction, the ship followed her inevitable course, like Nils Klim around Nazar and the round biscuit around Klim, a satellite appar­ ently sentenced forever to pursue its destined way, a rebuke less of God than of nature to presumptuous man who strove to fly too high. We may pause for a moment over Jules Verne’s last reflection. Not even the Americans had conquered the moon. Yet optimistically they continued to hope, and in spite of the partial failure of Barbicane’s venture, an American company, with a capital of one hundred million dollars, was formed to promote further attempts. “What will be the end of all this?” pondered Jules Verne. “Will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals of travel, lead to any practical

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result? Will direct communication with the moon ever be estab­ lished? Will they ever lay the foundation of a traveling service through the solar world ? Will they go from one planet to another, from Jupiter to Mercury, and after awhile from one star to an­ other, from the Polar to Sirius?” Who knows? Certainly Jules Verne did not.

Ill Still seeking an answer to that problem, raised for three hundred if not for three thousand years, we come closer to our own time and read again some of the tales of an older contemporary, who died only recently. During the last years of the nineteenth century H. G. Wells began to write his pseudoscientific fantasies dealing with the theme of other worlds. In his youth, one gathers from his autobiography and his early works, he had shared the Victorian optimism, believing in the inevitable advancement of science “for the benefit and use of man,” accepting with little more question than the majority of his contemporaries the idea of progress. So far as the conquest • of the air was concerned, the mood of that period had been that of Tennyson’s earlier “Locksley Hall”: For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.

But as a new century approached, doubt stirred. As early as 1896 Wells wrote The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, in which optimism was giving way to pessimism. Here we find his early critique against science, or rather against those who pursue science narrowly for wrong ends. In 1897 Wells published The War of the Worlds, known to many of us now as “The Invasion from Mars,” in 1899 the collected Tales of Space and Time, which included “The Crystal Egg” and “The Star,” in 1900 The First Men in the Moon. Other fantasies he wrote in abundance, then and later, but these are the closest to the themes I have been following. In all of them, but particularly in The First Men in the Moon of which alone I shall speak, I have found so many reminiscences of the past that I am convinced that Wells knew most of the stories I have retold in these pages. I feel sure that he knew Godwin, even though Domingo’s means

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of ascent and the moon he discovered would have seemed too fanciful for the purposes of this modern “scientific” writer. Yet Domingo alone had felt the amusement Cavor and Bedford ex­ perienced when, as a- result of the comparatively slight lunar attrac­ tion, they found themselves able to leap into the air with the greatest of ease. Domingo, you remember, had waved himself from town to town by means of his lunar fan. Wells’ Bedford made a hasty step to look over the verge of a cliff. “ ‘The thrust of my foot that I made in striding would have carried me a yard on earth; on the moon it carried me six. . . . For the moment the thing had something of the effect of one of those nightmares when one falls and falls. ... I floated through the air and fell down like a feather ... I made a step back, and gathered myself together, and leaped with all my might. I seemed to shoot into the air as if I should never come down. It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare to go flying off in this fashion.’ ” Memories of Cyrano, too, are frequent in the lighter passages in The First Men in the Moon, particularly in the description of the somersault dive as the ship passes from the attraction of the earth to that of the moon and Bedford ponders the old question of “up” and “down,” suggesting that the reader who wishes to understand try lying on the ground and looking at the moon through his upraised feet. I suspect, too, that in spite of all Wells’ science, the glass sphere of his sailing ship owed something to the glass sphere in which Cyrano escaped from prison and started on his journey to the sun. There are reminiscences also, I think, of Holberg’s journey to the world in the center of the earth, as well as of Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus. The subterranean river and the inhabited world within a world came to Wells, in part at least, from the adventures of both Nils Klim and Peter Wilkins. Yet the mood of The First Men in the Moon is very different from the romance and fantasy of Godwin, Cyrano, Holberg, Paltock. Wells’ real master in the tradition of the cosmic voyage was Kepler. As in the Somnium, the world in the moon discovered by Cavor and Bedford is a place of mingled beauty and terror. Wells alone among all the writers we have read so far equaled Kepler in his graphic description of lunar vegetation that grew to in­ credible heights in a single lunar day only to wither when the long night fell. On the apparently dead world of the moon Cavor and Bedford at first discovered no sign of life. Around them lay only dry, twisted sticks and what seemed tiny pebbles. Yet as they watched these, a miracle occurred:

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First one and then another had stirred, and down the crack of each of them showed a minute line of yellowish green, thrusting outward to meet the hot encouragement of the newly risen sun. For a moment that was all, and then there stirred and burst a third! “It is a seed,” said Cavor. And then I heard him whisper, very softly, “Life!” “Life!” and immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had not been made in vain, that we had come to no arid waste of minerals, but to a world that lived and moved !”

Gradually the whole slope took on life. Each seed coat ruptured, each seed sent rootlets to the earth and buds into the air, buds that swelled and strained and opened while the breathless observers watched a “slow motion” picture of the kind you and I have seen in cinemas. “The movement was slower than any animal’s, swifter than any plant’s I have ever seen before. How can I suggest it to you—the way that growth went on? . . . Have you ever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little thread of mercury creep up the tube? The moon-plants grew like that.” '

It was still early morning on the moon, yet the barren land had already become a weird combination of desert, spattered with grotesque cacti, and jungle where lush vegetation towered to in­ credible heights, as if “hurrying tumultuously to take advantage of the brief day in which it must flower and fruit and seed again and die. It was like a miracle, that growth. So, one must imagine, the trees and plants rose at the Creation, and covered the desola­ tion of the new-made earth. Imagine it! Imagine that dawn!” Keplerian terror rather than beauty reverberates through Bed­ ford’s description of the monstrous underground world where the captured travelers found themselves bound and cast into deep caverns, the possibility of which they had never anticipated. And yet they should have known! In dungeons made in part by nature and in part by hands, the more philosophical Cavor remembered his reading: “The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course . . .” His voice had the interest now of a man who had discovered a pretty sequence of reasoning.

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“Yes,” he said. “Kepler, with his subvolvani was right, after all.” “I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came,” said I. Even Wells’ moon dwellers, though peculiarly his own and “modern” in their author’s critique of technology, owe something to Kepler’s “creatures of a serpentine nature.” For all their super­ human intelligence they belong not to humanity but to the lowest orders of life that man knows. “Insects,” murmured Cavor when he first saw them, “insects.” “Some bulged and overhung, some ran about among the feet of their fellows, some twined and inter­ laced like snakes. All of them had a grotesque and disquieting suggestion of an insect that somehow contrived to mock humanity.” Kepler’s serpents, Swift’s Laputan mathematico-philosophers with their geometrical patterns, Milton’s Sin and Death are all com­ bined with something modern that neither Kepler nor Milton anticipated, though Swift had some presage. Through the grotesque and horrible Selenites, Wells utters his critique against modern man with his overemphasis upon human ingenuity, his belief in Man, the Master of Things. No one who has read those half-mad messages Cavor sent from the moon by a sort of short-wave radio can forget the mounting horror of his descriptions, culminating in the Grand Lunar in whom the development of intellect reached its climax. Like Milton’s God, the Lunar dwelt in “unapproached light”; like Satan, he “exalted sat, by merit raised to that bad eminence.” Peering into the radiating blaze, Cavor saw first the “quintessential brain very much like an opaque featureless bladder, with dim, undulating ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within.” Only as his eyes became more accustomed to the fierce light did he perceive “the little dwarfed body and its insect-jointed limbs shriveled and white.” For a moment Cavor, representative of man as he is, stared at man as he may become, and “the other shape, if shape it might be called that shape had none” gazed back at man. “It was great!” Cavor flashed back his message to our earth, then added, “It was pitiful 1” IV

Like Jules Verne before him, H. G. Wells gave new impetus to the cosmic voyage which, thanks to these authors as well as to the advancement of modern invention, has become increasingly technological. During the last two decades the theme has flourished chiefly in the pulps and comics. There was a time when, thanks

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to those “busy ants,” my students, I followed all the modern variations and could have given cards and spades to your sons and daughters by my intimate knowledge of the adventures of Dr. Doolittle, the Wizard of Oz, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Super­ man, and all the others. Perhaps some day those students will write the book I once thought of writing about the modern inter­ planetary voyage. I gladly relinquish to them any vested rights I may have had. Such a book, I think, should be written by their generation rather than by mine, for there is an idiom and a point of view among contemporary cosmic voyagers that is foreign to me. Perhaps I have lived too long with the old tales and have flown to the moon and planets too often in antiquated vehicles but in company of mariners whose imaginations were unfettered by overexact knowledge of technological possibilities of moon rockets and space ships. Something has gone that I miss. Some­ thing has entered that I do not sufficiently appreciate. Yet I still follow the themes when I find them, and pick up books and articles with titles that are reminiscent though I do not always read them through. Once in awhile I find something that recalls the old enchantment. This spring, for instance, I felt an almost proprietary pleasure at the award in a children’s-book contest to William Pene Du Bois for his Twenty-One Balloons. That little book I read through at a sitting. It is not really a cosmic voyage, of course, though the Island of Krakatoa might well be a whimsical world in the moon, and the charm and humor with which the author has treated his otherworldly theme suggests a goodly heritage in authors of the past. Before that, however, I had made a more important discovery. Just when I most despaired, believing that the kind of imagina­ tion I have been discussing was entirely lost in our generation, a novel appeared that gave the lie to my pessimism, a modern interplanetary voyage whose author need not bow before any of the masters of the past. I have read C. S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet more than once, as I have read its sequel, Perelandra, though in spite of the fact that the second world of Venus is descriptively more beautiful than the earlier world of Mars, I confess to dis­ appointment in Perelandra. * Out of the Silent Planet, however, * This, I think, is not entirely because Perelandra is a vehicle for propa­ ganda. I am quite accustomed to that in cosmic voyages, many of whose authors, seriously or satirically, upheld a “thesis.” It is rather because I feel that in Perelandra the Christian apologist has temporarily eclipsed the poet and artist.

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is to me the most beautiful of all cosmic voyages and in some ways the most moving. I do not need to puzzle over Mr. Lewis’ “sources,” since long before I knew him as novelist I was familiar with him as a scholar. He knows, I am sure, all the traditions of the cosmic voyage. Sources he has in plenty, for as a scholar he loves the conventions of the past. In his devices for flight he follows both the newest and the oldest traditions. The voyage to Malacandra—as its inhabitants call Mars—is made in a modern space ship invented by Dr. Weston, the villain of both novels, as elaborately realistic a flying chariot as you will find in any of the pseudoscientific pulps. Yet the coffin in which Ransom leaves our silent planet on his second trip to Venus, moved as it is by the mysterious power of God, goes back to the old tradition of “spirits or angels.” “That coffin affair, Ransom,” asks the traveler’s friend, as doubters had asked for centuries, “how on earth are you going to travel in that thing? What’s the motive power? What about air—and food—and water?” “The Oyarsa of Malacandra himself will be the motive power,” replied Ransom serenely. “He will simply move it to Venus. Don’t ask me how. I have no idea what organs or instruments they use. But a creature who has kept a planet in its orbit for several billions of years will be able to manage a packing-case 1”

So by natural and by supernatural means we set off on the last of our voyages to the planets, experiencing many of the old emotions, watching our little world fade from view, discovering with the surprise that has proved new in every period still other facts about the nature of the intervening spaces and the sensations of travelers into and beyond the stratosphere. We land again in new worlds, hear strange languages, visit created beings like and unlike ourselves, learning from them more than we teach. We experience again the sense of relativity, as we come to realize the insignificance of our race and of the little world that, with all its faults, must always seem “home” to human beings even if they find in other planets a civilization nobler than ours. Never did a cosmic voyager realize that more poignantly than when Ransom looked through a Martian telescope, to see through the blackness a bright disk about the size of a half crown, a disk at first quite un­ familiar until its markings showed Northern Europe and a piece of North America:

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They were upside down with the North Pole at the bottom of the picture and this somehow shocked him. But it was Earth he was seeing—even, perhaps England, though the picture shook a little and his eyes were quickly getting tired, and he could not be cer­ tain that he was not imagining it. It was all there in that little disk—London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived, and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk. “Yes,” he said dully to the sorn. “That is my world.” It was the bleakest moment of his travels.

Different as is the world of Malacandra from any we have visited, it too goes back to the long tradition stemming from Kepler and the Somnium. All is on a fantastically grand scale. Yet once our eyes have become accustomed to the strangeness, we feel none of the grotesquerie of Swift's Brobdingnagian world, none of the terror Wells’ Cavor and Bedford experienced in their exaggerated world in the moon. If at first Ransom thought it fearful, it was only be­ cause, as Mr. Lewis wisely says, he had not yet learned how to see it. “You cannot see things till you know roughly what they are.” The very intensity of his desire to grasp a whole world at once defeated his imagination. At first he could see nothing but colors, colors that refused to form themselves into familiar shapes: a mass of something huge and purple that might be a heathercovered mountain; rose-colored cloudlike masses of something for which his terrestrial mind could find no analogy, strange upright shapes of whitish green that were too jagged and irregular for buildings, too thin and steep for mountains. But gradually his eyes became adjusted to new perspective. “The purple stuff was vegetation; it was vegetables, vegetables about twice the height of English elms, but apparently soft and flimsy. . . . The whole thing corresponded roughly to his idea of a submarine forest; the plants, at once so large and frail, seemed to need water to support them, and he wondered how they could hang in the air.” Terror of strange landscape is gone once we can see, as dread of such living creatures as the “Hrossa” and the “sorns” gives way to admiration, respect, and affection once Ransom comes to understand and appreciate other levels of life than his own. As he lived among them, the primitive poets and the learned scholars of Malacandra became as familiar and admirable to Ransom as the wise horses to Gulliver, and as in the case of Gulliver his first sight of an earthly mortal was a shock. After Ransom’s return

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to earth, his fellow men could not understand any more than could Cyrano’s contemporaries when he returned from the moon. “ ‘Per­ haps the most mysterious thing he ever said about it was this,’ Lewis remarks after the return from Perelandra. ‘I was questioning him about it—which he doesn’t often allow—and had incautiously said, ‘Of course I realize it’s all rather too vague for you to put into words,’ when he took me up rather sharply, for such a patient man, by saying, ‘On the contrary, it is words that are vague. The reason why the thing can’t be expressed is that it’s too definite for language.’ ” Sources Mr. Lewis has in plenty, yet as an artist he has tran­ scended them and made a cosmic voyage that impresses by its differences even more than by its similarities. I must not spoil his central thesis for those who have yet to read him, and I could not possibly do justice to that thesis here. Perhaps it will be enough to say that he has woven into his tapestry an old problem, faced ever since the dawn of Christianity, that became important in the seventeenth century among men who reverently sought to accept the central tenet of their faith yet who eagerly desired to believe in the possibility of other inhabited worlds, a paradox brought to its height by Tom Paine in The Age of Reason in which he shocked his age by vehement denial that such dual allegiance was possible. What Mr. Lewis has done with that paradox I shall not say, except to remind you that the “silent planet’’ that has lost its original importance in the cosmic system is not Mars or Venus or Mercury, but your world and mine, the Earth that caused Ransom an acute moment of homesickness, yet a world to which the traveler returned with more somber emotion than even Gulliver felt after the last of his voyages. As C. S. Lewis, the Christian apologist, has added something to the long tradition, so C. S. Lewis, the scholar-poet, has achieved an effect in Out of the Silent Planet different from anything in the past. Earlier writers had created new worlds from legend, from mythology, from fairy tale. Mr. Lewis has created myth itself, myth woven of desires and aspirations deep-seated in some, at least, of the human race. There is mythology here, as Ransom realized when he met the dragon in Perelandra and thought of the gardens of the Hesperides, when he remembered that in the older, archaic world of Malacandra “he had met the original of the Cyclops, a giant in a cave and a shepherd.” Yet this is more than mythology, classical or primitive. “Were all the things which appeared as

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mythology on earth scattered through other worlds as realities ?” Ransom pondered on his second journey. Through Mr. Lewis’ art they seem to become so. As I journey with him into worlds at once familiar and strange, I experience, as did Ransom, “a sensation not of following an adventure but of enacting a myth.” V .

Thoughtfully looking back over the literature describing other inhabited worlds, C. S. Lewis offers a critique of such reading as I have been recommending to you. Ransom’s first sight of the sorns—those gargantuan creatures whom he afterwards respected for the scholars they were—was an experience of terror as shocking as Gulliver’s when the giants came toward him in the cornfield. Ransom’s trouble, Mr. Lewis tells us, was that he had read too widely in just such literature as we have been reading together. “His mind, like so many minds of his generation, was richly furnished with bogies. He had read his H. G. Wells and others. His universe was peopled with horrors such as ancient and mediaeval mythology could hardly rival. No insect-like, vermiculate or crustacean Abominable, no twitching feelers, rasping wings, slimy coils, curling tentacles, no monstrous union of human intelli­ gence and insatiable cruelty seemed to him anything but likely in an alien world. The sorns would be . . . would be ... he dared not think what the sorns would be.” Have I been wrong in urging upon you the imaginary voyages of the past? I do not believe it, and I am glad to read again Mr. Lewis’ prefatory apology to the spirit of H. G. Wells, in which he says that “certain slighting references to earlier stories of this type . . . have been put there for purely dramatic purposes.” But if as a result of reading any of the voyages to the moon, you find yourselves lying awake at night, with every individual hair on your heads rising like quills upon the fretful porpentine, I ask you to remember that such Dracula-like “horrors” entered into the tradi­ tion only in comparatively recent times, and that I myself wished to stop my tales with Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Lewis’ other critique upon the modern cosmic voyage is more profound. Ransom, after all, had been affected only by the literature of imagination, and it had not really hurt him. But Pro­ fessor Watson’s mind had been distorted by the kind of “tech­ nological” writing into which the cosmic voyage has developed—

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or degenerated. “He was a man obsessed with the idea, which is at this moment circulating all over our planet in obscure works of ‘scientification,’ in little interplanetary Societies and Rocketry Clubs, and between the covers of monstrous magazines, ignored or mocked by the intellectuals, but ready, if the power is ever put into its hands, to open a new chapter of misery for the universe. It is the idea that humanity, having now sufficiently corrupted the planet where it arose, must at all costs contrive to seed itself over a larger area: that the vast astronomical distances which are God’s quarantine regulations, must somehow be overcome. This for a start. But beyond this lies the sweet poison of the false infinite —the wild dream that planet after planet, system after system, in the end galaxy after galaxy, can be forced to sustain, everywhere and for ever, the sort of life which is contained in the loins of our own species—a dream begotten by the hatred of death upon the fear of true immortality, fondled in secret by thousands of ignorant men and hundreds who are not ignorant. The destruction or enslavement of other species in the universe, if such there are, is to these minds a welcome corollary.” Has Mr. Lewis said the last word about the inevitable conclusion of the theme I have pursued so long? Certainly from his vision of other worlds where all is beautiful and good and just, worlds in which the eyes of a mortal were opened so that “he saw reality and thought it was a dream,” we come back in somber mood to our Earth which seems indeed a lost and silent planet, a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

*

*

*

“Begin at the beginning, and go on until you come to the end, and then stop.” Good, enough advice to story-tellers, but how can I follow it when the beginnings of all my tales are lost in antiquity and the end is not yet? Perhaps the cosmic voyage will perish in our own time under the weight of its increasing technology. Perhaps it will take on new vitality and beauty, as it has in one of Mr. Lewis’ novels. Certainly it has proved a theme, as I warned you, that the world has not willingly let die, whether in poetry and fantasy, in satire or seriousness, in the pulps or in the comics.

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Only this morning I heard it again, when I turned on the radio to hear the most recent chapter in the “Strange Saga of the Flying Saucers” that is amusing or terrifying us today. The President of the United States, I was told, said yesterday at his press con­ ference that accounts of those flying-disks reminded him of the Moon-Hoax a century ago. The next moment I heard over the air—as I have been expecting to hear for some days—that the latest theory about the apparitions is that they come not from Russia but from Mars ! And then, as I opened a new box of break­ fast food, my eye fell upon the picture of a bold mariner in ultra­ modern flying dress, about to take off from the earth to Saturn, complete with a spectacular ring. I stopped to read the captions in Brobdingnagian letters: Beyond Rocket Power! BEYOND THE ATOMIC BOMB! BEYOND THE FUTURE! BIG NEWS! BUCK ROGERS IS ON THE AIR!

Is this the end of my long delving into the past? Or is this only a beginning? Perhaps “pure science”—the purest of all human desires for knowledge—that has led men to develop tele­ scopes to which Galileo’s seems a toy will find an answer when the two-hundred inch is in operation upon Mount Palomar. If there are other inhabited worlds, perhaps the technology that now seems to threaten imagination will make a path to the planets, and we shall know which of our romancers came closest to the truth. But if that day ever comes, it will not be the end but another beginning. One phrase of my half-forgotten poets will take on acute and poignant meaning, when terrestrial men, who seem at this moment incapable of making “One World,” face a much more profound challenge—to “make One City of the Universe.”

-BIBLIOGRAPHY

Since a complete bibliography of all primary and secondary materials used for this book would not have sufficient value for any student other than myself to warrant its length, I have arbi­ trarily made a selection. The basis for the selection from secondary materials is mentioned below. Primary materials have been arranged in chronological order, since that order shows at a glance the increasing interest in these themes during the seventeenth and eighteentlTcenturies. I have in­ cluded here all voyages to the moon or planets discussed in the text, together with a number of others which seemed so derivative and uninteresting that I omitted any mention of them; plays, essays, satires and a few poems dealing with the theme, even though they were not true cosmic voyages; all manuscript materials I have discovered on flight, whether or not discussed in the text; a number of scientific works of the period dealing with the question of the inhabitability of the moon or planets or with the problem of human flight. I have omitted, as of little interest to the literary student and the general reader, a large number of scientific and philosophical works that deal with the theme only in passing; a larger group of scientific works I explored for my own background. For example, a complete bibliography would contain a number of scientific works dealing with the nature of the air and the problem of gravity— particularly in the period between Kepler and Newton. When I came to study these works in detail, however, I found that, im­ portant though they are in the history of science, they proved too technical for writers -of cosmic voyages, who (with the exception of Wilkins and a few others) usually took their theories from encyclopedias, with the result that fictional writers were seldom up-to-date on such matters. I have given only a minimum of bibliography on periods before the seventeenth century, limiting myself, with one or two excep­ tions, to works mentioned in my text. 258

BIBLIOGRAPHY

259

PRIMARY MATERIALS THE PREHISTORY OF FLIGHT

Solomon. Kabra Nagast. The Queen of Sheba and her only son, Menylek; being the history of the departure of God & His Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to Ethiopia. . . . A complete translation, with an introduction by Sir E. Wallis Budge. London,

1922. Flight by Birds

See the article by Roger Loomis in Secondary Materials ; the refer­ ences are conveniently collected there. Cicero. The Somnium Scipionis, which survives in fragmentary form in Bk. VI of De Re Publica, was also handed down by Macrobius with his commentary, in which form it was usually known. I have used the trans. C. W. Keyes in the Loeb Classical Library, New York, 1928, Vol. 213. Plutarch. I have used the trans, of De Facie in Orbe Lunare, “Of the Face Appearing within the Orb of the Moon,” in Plutarch’s Essays and Miscellanies, ed. W. W. Goodwin, Boston, 1906, V, 234—292, together with the Latin trans. Kepler made for publication with his Somnium. Aulus Gellius. The story of Archytas and the mechanical pigeon is told in Nodes Atticae, Liber X, caput xii. Lucian. Ed. of Lucian in Greek, Latin, English are listed below under the date 1634, when the first English trans, appeared. Early British Attempts at Flight

King Bladud. Quotations in my text are from: The First Part of the Mirror for Magistrates, 1574, fols. 40-46; Thomas Heywood, Troia Britannica, 1609, Canto 16, verse 6; Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, Bk. II, Canto X, 25-26; Michael Drayton, PolyOlbion, Songs III, VIII; John Taylor, All the Workes of John Taylor the Water Poet, 1630, p. 271; idem, The Number and Names of the Kings of England and Scotland from the begin­ ning of their Government to this Present, London, 10th item.

The literary materials on Bladud may be found, conveniently brought together, in Howard C. Levis, The British King Who Tried to Fly. London, 1919.

260

NQ'iXQ.'E.Z TO THE MOON

Elmer of Malmsbury. Gesta Regum Anglorum, Liber II, caput 225 ; English trans. J. A. Giles, Bohn Library, 1847. Milton’s account in The History of Britain may be found in The Works of John Milton (Columbia ed.), New York, 1932, X, 308. John Damian. The story is told by John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, in his History of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1830, p. 76. Roger Bacon. For various references in Bacon which have been interpreted as anticipating modern aviation, see De Mirabili potestate Artis et Naturae. Paris, 1542, chap. IV ; app. to Opera Inedita, by J. S. Brewer, 1859; The Mirror of Alchimy, 1597 ; The Discovery of the Miracles of Art, Nature, and Magick . . . out of Dr. J. Dee’s own copy, by T. M., 1659. THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT

1493 F. Riederer. Spiegel der Waren Rhetoric. Freiburg, 1493. This volume contains what is said to be the earliest pictorial repre­ sentation of flight in a printed book. The frontis shows the ascent to heaven of Daedalus and Icarus, both wearing feathered wings attached to the arms by thongs. 1566 Eugenio Torralba. The manuscript confession of Torralba (who when he was arrested by the Inquisition in 1528, acknowledged strange voyages with his “familiar,” during one of which he flew to the moon) is in the National Library at Madrid. An extract was published by J. A. Pellicer in his ed. of Don Quixote, 1798, Pt. II, Vol. II, pp. 18-23. The first literary version of the story was that of Luis Zapata in Carlo Famoso, 1566, Canto XXX, verses 23—40. 1591 Lodovico Ariosto. Orlando Furioso in English heroical verse ... by J. Harington. London, 1591. 2nd ed., 1607; 3rd ed., 1634. This was for-many years the trans, most familiar in Eng­ land. The 1st ed. of the original had appeared in 1516, followed by many others during the century. The trans, by John Hoole appeared 1773-1783. 1593-5 Anon. Satyre Ménippée De La Vertu Du Catholicon d’Espagne. . . . Le Supplément du Catholicon, ou nouvelles des Régions de la Lune. Paris, 1593-5. The Catalogue of the British Museum

lists five ed. during the seventeenth century, with others in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “Nouvelles des Régions de

BIBLIOGRAPHY

261

la Lune” seems to have first appeared in an undated ed., between those of 1594 and 1595. Trans, as A pleasant Satyre or Poesie: wherein is discovered the Catholicon of Spayne, and the chiefe leaders of the League [by P. Le Roy and others]. Newly turned

out of French into English. London, 1595. 1598 Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas. Bartas: His Deuine Weekes and Workes Translated. London, 1598. La Sepmaine of Du Bartas had been published in 1578, but the poem gained its great popularity in England after Sylvester’s trans., of which numerous ed. appeared. My text follows the ed. of 1605, p. 221; it may be found in “The Sixth Day of the first Weeke.” 1603 Richard Knolles. The Generali Historie of the Turkes, from the first beginning of that Nation to the rising of the Othoman Familie. London, 1603. Includes (p. 37) the tale of the Turk

in Constantinople who attempted to fly by a kind of parachute. 1605-1615 Miguel de Cervantes. El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, compuesto por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Lisbon, 1605. The second part did not appear until 1615, although a spurious sequel had appeared shortly after the publication of the original. Passages quoted in my text are from The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. Trans, from the Spanish by John Ormsby, with an Introduction by George Edward Wood­ berry. New York, 1926, Pt. II, chap. 41, pp. 236-237.

1606? Hugo Grotius. “Iter Currus Veliferi.” This poem, written shortly after the invention of the “sailing chariot” by Simon Stevinus, was published in Hugonis Grotii Poemata Collecta olim a fratre ejus, Guil. Grotius. London, 1639, pp. 385-396. 1607 Britannicus Mercurius (Joseph Hall). Mundus alter et idem, sive Terra Australis ante hac semper incognita longis itineribus peregrini Academici nuperrime lustrata Auth. Mercurio Britannico (Edited by Gulielmus Knight). Hannoviae, 1607. To the 1643 ed. were added T. Campanellae Civitas Solis, et Nova Atlantis F. Baconis. The Utopia was trans, as The Discovery of a New World or a Description of the South Indies, Hetherto Unknowne. By an English Mercury. Trans, by J. H(Healey),

London, 1620?

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1609 Anon. The Man in the Moone telling Strange Fortunes: or, The English Fortune Teller. London, 1609. Reprinted from a unique copy in the Bodleian Library, ed. J. 0. Halliwell (Percy Society XXIX, 1849). This seems to be the same work as The Man in the Moone, a popular treatise on practical morality, by W. M.

1609. It is an astrological rather than astronomical tale of a man benighted in the forest, and of his experiences with a sooth­ sayer. 1610 Galileo Galilei. Sidereus Nuncius, magna longeque admirabilia . . . spectacula pandens, suspiciendaque proponeus unicuique, praesertim vero philosophis atque astronomis, quae a G. Galileo, etc. Venetiis, 1610. Quotations in my text are from The Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei, and a Part of the Preface to Kepler's Dioptrics, ed. E. S. Carlos. London, 1880.

1611 John Donne. Ignatius his Conclave: or his Inthronisation in a late Election in Hell. 1611. The Conclave Ignatii was entered in the Stationer’s Register on January 24, 1611, the trans, on May 18, 1611. Ben Jonson. Love Freed from Folly and Ignorance. Presented February 3, 1611. In Works of Ben Jonson, ed. W. Gifford, London, 1816, VII, 203-204. 1621 Robert Burton. The Anatomy of Melancholy. What it is, with all the kindes, causes, symptomes, prognostickes, and severall cures of it. . . . By Democritus Junior. Oxford, 1621. The other

five ed. which were revised, expanded and corrected by Burton himself appeared in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651. There are many references to and comments on the “new astronomy,” particularly in the Preface of Democritus Junior and the “Di­ gression of Air.” Most of these appear as early as the 1st ed., for while Burton added details and quoted new authorities, he did not fundamentally change his mind on any of these matters. Ben Jonson. News from the New World Discovered in the Moon. Presented January 6, 1621. In Works, ed. Gifford, VII, 355 ff. 1622-23 Tommaso Campanella. Apologia pro Galileo. Francofurti, 1622. In addition to discussion of Galileo’s discoveries and theories, Campanella, following both classical and modern scientific think­

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ers, asserts his belief in infinite worlds and implies his belief in the inhabitability of the planets. Burton mentions this work, and it was frequently referred to as an authority by John Wilkins and others in the seventeenth century. Campanella’s Civitas Solis (The City of the Sun) appeared in 1623; here too many of the newer astronomical theories, including belief in other in­ habited worlds, are attributed to the Solarians. Campanella’s, however, is not a cosmic voyage, since his traveler finds the City of the Sun on our earth. Charles Sorel. The Comical History of Francion. Wherein the variety of Vices that abuse the Ages are Satyrically lim’d in their Native Colours. Int erne oven with many pleasant Events, and Moral Lessons, as well fitted for the entertainment of the Gravest Head as the Lightest Heart. By Monsieur De Moulines, Sieur De Parc, a Lorain Gentleman. Done into English by a Person of Honour. London, 1655. The 1st ed. appeared at Paris in 1622

or 1623, the 2nd in 1633. According to the trans., the 1st ed. contained only seven books; others came to the bookseller after the author’s death, but there is some doubt about their authen­ ticity, since the book was so popular that others tried to capitalize upon its success. The section referred to in my text is in the eleventh book; another section, suggesting the romantic con­ ception of a moon-world, will be found in the second book. 1627 Francis Bacon. Sylva Sylvarum: or a Naturall Historie. In ten centuries. . . . Published after the Authors death. By William Rawley. New Atlantis. A Worke unfinished. London, 1627.

“Experiment solitary touching the flying of unequal bodies in the Air,” Century VIII, No. 791; “Experiment solitary touch­ ing flying in the Air,” Century IX, No. 886 in Sylva Sylvarum. For Bacon’s scientific interpretation of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, see Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, Heath; 1857, II, 596, 634. Friederick Hermann Flayder. De Arte Volandi, cujus ope quivis homo . . . semet ipsum promovere potest. Tubingen ( ?), 1627. At least until the Restoration, this work is more fre­ quently referred to by serious writers in England than any other continental authority. Wilkins frequently quotes Flayder, speak­ ing of him usually as “Frederick Hermann.” 1632 Desmarets de Saint Sorlin. Ariane, ou, se voit les Aventures de

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VOYAGES TO THE MOON

Mélinte, de Palaméde, d’Epicharis, d’Aetelphe, d’Amyntas, d’Ericyne, & de Pisastrate. 1632. Trans, as Ariana. In Two Parts. As It was Translated out of the French, and presented to my Lord Chamberlaine. London, 1636. One of the adventures

was the escape from a tower by Melintus, by means of a “para­ chute” fashioned from a bed sheet; “putting himselfe upon the pinnacles in opposition to the wind, he made it fill up the sheet, and this wind lifting him almost by force, he let himselfe goe, recommending him to the gods, and felt that he descended little by little.” {Ariana, p. 98.) 1633 Thomas Heywood. The Hierarchie of the blessed Angells. London, 1635. The quotation in my text, warning man “against vaine Curiositie” in attempting to fly, will be found pp. 146—7. 1634 Johann Kepler. loh. Keppleri Mathematici olim imperatorii Somnium seu Opus posthumum de astronomía lunari. Francofurti, 1634. Published also in loannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia. Francofurti, 1858-71, Vol. VIII. There is a German trans, by Ludwig Gunther, Keplers Traum von Mond. Leipzig, 1898. Lucian. Certaine Select Dialogues of Lucian, Together with His True Historic. Translated from the Greeke into English. By Mr. Francis Hickes. Whereunto is added the Life of Lucian gathered out of his owne Writings, with briefe Notes and Illus­ trations upon each Dialogue and Booke. By T. H. Mr. of Arts of Christ-Church in Oxford. Oxford, 1634. The British Museum Catalogue lists ed. of Lucian’s Works in Greek in 1496, 1503,

1522, 1526, 1535; in Greek and Latin in 1615, 1619; in Latin in 1543, 1549. An ed. of Icaromenippus alone is listed as of 1520 ( ?) in Greek; of the True History in Latin in 1475, 1493. The ed. above is the 1st English trans. Later trans., which in­ cluded the voyages to the moon, were: Lucian s Works trans­ lated from the Greek, by F. Spence. London, 1684. Works of Lucian, translated from the Greek by several eminent hands. London, 1711. The Works of Lucian, translated by T[homas] Francklin. London, 1781. Marin Mersenne. Questions inouyes, ou Recreation des Sgavans.

Paris, 1634. Contains a good deal of contemporary opinion and theory on flight. 1635 John Bate. The Mysteryes of Nature and Art. In foure severall

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parts. . . . London, 1634. This 1st ed. of 1634 (at least in the

copy in the Huntington Library) does not contain the pictures of the kite referred to in my text ; they appear in the Huntington copy of the 2nd ed., 1635. An even fuller description of con­ temporary fire-works than is given in Bate appeared in the same year, John Babington Gunner, Pyrotechnia, or A Discourse of Artificial! Fire-Works. London, 1635. 1638 The Man in the Moone: or a Discourse of a Voyage thither. By Domingo Gonsales The speedy Messenger. London, 1638. Re­

published “from a photostat of the unique copy of the first edi­ tion in the British Museum,” by Grant McColley in Smith College Studies in Modern Languages XIX (1937). In spite of Mr. McColley’s statement that the British Museum copy is unique (which I too had always believed), I notice in the Catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale the listing of a copy of 1638, of which I have not been able to obtain more information. The 2nd ed. appeared as The Man in the Moone: Or, A Discourse of a Voyage thither, by F. G., B. of H. London, 1657. This also is very rare. Five later ed. were based upon the compressed and mutilated text published in 1686 by Nathaniel Crouch in his View of the English Acquisitions . . . in the East Indies. Until the appear­ ance of Mr. McColley’s reprint of the 1st ed., Godwin students largely depended on the text given in Anglia X (1888), by Erwin Honncher, which was based upon one of the compressed ed. The Man in the Moone was trans, into French as L’Homme dans la Lune, ou le Voyage chimérique fait au monde de la lune nouvellement découvert par D[ominique] Gonsales. Mis en notre langue par J. B. D. (Jean Baudoin). Paris, 1648; another ed.,

1666. This was the trans, used by Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, who were not alone in believing the work French; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was often spoken of, even in England, as a French or Spanish work. Of its popularity Mr. McColley says : “It is a conservative estimate that during the years between 1638 and 1768, the dates of the first and last London editions, there were published in four languages twentyfive editions of The Man in the Moone.” On various problems connected with the book, see articles by McColley and Lawton listed below. John Wilkins. A Discourse Concerning A New World and An­ other Planet: The First Book, The Discovery of a New World;

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or, A Discourse tending to prove, that ’tis probable there may be another habitable World in the Moone. London, 1638. A 2nd

and 3rd ed. appeared within two years; the latter (published at London, 1640) was called A Discourse concerning a New World and another Planet. The work is also included in Wilkins’ Mathe­ matical and Philosophical Works, 1708; another ed., 1802. The quotations in my text are from the 1708 ed., most of them from Bk. I, chap. 14. 1639 Richard Zouch. The Sophister. A Comedy, 1639. There are sug­ gestions here of a cosmic voyage. Zouch’s traveler flew over Hell and—according to his statement—“pac’d the uttermost extreme outside of the Primum Mobile, from whence, many thousand miles below me, I beheld great Jupiter, and all the Minor Gods.” 1647 Johann Hevelius. Selenographia: sive Lunae Descriptio. 1647. Hevelius is recognized as the founder of lunar topography. He inclined to the belief that there was water on the moon and did not deny the possibility of inhabitants, so that he was quoted as an authority by non-scientific writers long after later scientists had corrected his statement. Henry More. Democritus Platonissans: Or An Essay upon the Infinity of Worlds. Cambridge, 1646. The poem was published separately, shortly after More had denied the possibility of an infinity of worlds in his “Psychathanasia,” one of the series of his “Platonic” Philosophical Poems. Here he enthusiastically embraces the doctrine, insisting that it follows by logical neces­ sity from the principles he had earlier laid down and that he was wrong in refusing to accept the conclusion. The poem had a great deal of influence upon young writers of the time. ----- “Insomnium Philosophicum.” Originally published in Philo­ sophical Poems, Cambridge, 1647; reprinted m Complete Poems, ed. Alexander Grosart. Edinburgh, 1878, pp. 178-180. 1648 John Wilkins. Mathematicall Magick, or the Wonders that may be performed by Mechanicall Geometry. London, 1648. Reprinted in Mathematical and Philosophical Works. London, 1802, Vol. II. Cesare Crispolti. Athenaeum Augustum in quo Perusinorum Scripta. Perusina, 1728. The 1st ed. of this work appeared as Perugia Augusta descritta, Perugia, 1648. It includes the story

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of the supposed flight of Giovanni Battista Danti. Since I have not been able to see the 1st ed. I refer to the later in which the tale may be found, pp. 168-9. I have quoted from the trans, given in E. Charles Vivian, History of Aeronautics. New York, 1921, pp. 12-13. Another version of the story appears in Henri Paulrau, Dictionnaire de physique. 1789. 1649 S.S. The Man in the Moon. Discovering a World of Knavery Under the Sunne: Both in the Parliament, the Councel of State, the Army, the City, and the Country, with Intelligence from all Parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Die Lunae, from Nov. 14 to Wednesday Novemb. 21, 1649. Another ed. : The Man in the Moon, discovering a world of knavery under the Sun. Printed in the world in the moon for J. Jones, to delight all the mad merry people under the sun. 1653. Not a voyage. The pam­

phlet suggests the kind of technique used by Defoe in the various pamphlets mentioned below under 1705. 1651 Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Almagestum Novum Astronomiam V eterem Novamque Complectens Observationibus Aliorum, etc.

Bononiae, 1651. The Almagest and Hevelius’ Selenographia were the two standard books on selenography for many years. Unlike Hevelius, Riccioli definitely stated that because of the absence of atmosphere of considerable density or any large bodies of water, the moon must be a desert, unfitted to sustain life of any kind. 1652 Peter Heylyn. Cosmographie in foure Bookes, Contayning the horographie and Historié of the whole World. London, 1652. Bk. IV contains a good deal of discussion of the moon-world. Heylyn feels that his age has proceeded far from the fantasy of Lucian and implies that means of communication with the moon will be discovered. 1653 Dorothy Osborne. Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple, ed. G. C. Moore Smith. 1928. The letter quoted in the text is No. 45, p. 108. 1656 Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien. Histoire comique ou Voyage dans la Lune. The 1st ed. appeared “sans privilège” in 1650. The 1st authorized ed. was Histoire comique des Estais et Em­

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pires de la Lune. Paris, 1656. Other ed. 1659, 1661, 1662, 1663, 1676, 1678, 1681. English trans.: SEAHNAPXIA, Or, the Gov­ ernment of the World in the Moon. A Comical History. Written by that Famous Wit and Cavalier of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac. And Done into English by Tho. St. Serf, Gent. London, 1659. The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and Sun . . . newly Englished by A. Lovell.

London, 1687. A modern ed. of this trans, was published by Curtis Hidden Page. New York, 1919. A Voyage to the Moon. A comical romance. Done from the French of M.C. de B., by Mr. Derrick. 1754. For the most part I have used the 1687 Lovell trans. However, I have not hesitated to substitute phrases or sentences from other trans, when they seemed to me more pungent or closer to the original. Athanasius Kircher. Athanasii Kircheri . . . Itinerarium Exstaticum quo Mundi Opificium, id est, Coelestis expansi. Romae, 1656. According to a statement in the preface to the 2nd ed., Iter Extaticum Coeleste, 1660, the 1st ed. was sold out before publication and many copies were sent abroad. 1657 Pierre Borel. Discours nouveau prouvant la pluralité des mondes, que les astres sont des terres habitées et la terre une estoil . . . et autres choses très-curieuses, par Pierre Borel. Genève, 1657. Trans, as A New Treatise proving a multiplicity of worlds; that the planets are regions inhabited and the earth a star. . . . Translated from the French, by D. Sashott. London, 1658. While

there is nothing here that had not been said before, it is a good résumé of the subject and was well known in England. Borel had earlier written an interesting history of the telescope in De Vcro Telescopii invcntore, cum brevi omnium conspicilorum historia. Haguae Comitum, 1655-56.

1659 Democritus Turned Statesman. London, 1659. In Harleian Mis­ cellany, VI, 193.

1661 Joseph Glanvill. The Vanity of Dogmatizing : or Confidence in Opinions. Manifested in a Discourse of the Shortness and Un­ certainty of our Knowledge and its Causes. London, 1661. Con­

tains other passing discussion of the possibility of flight in addi­ tion to the sentence about buying wings to fly to the moon,

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which will be found on pp. 181-182. “The Ballad of Gresham Colledge,” quoted in my text, is attributed to Glanvill and dated about this time by Dorothy Stimson who published it in Isis, XVIII (1932), 108-117. 1663 Lord Worcester. A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions As at present I can call to mind to have tried. 1663. Reprinted by H. Dircks in Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester. 1865. My quotation is from Invention 77. 1664 G. Havers. A General Collection of Discourses of the Virtuosi of France, rendered into English by G. Havers. 1664. Conference XCIII includes a good résumé of opposed opinion on the possi­ bility of inhabitation of the moon. 1665 Robert Hooke. Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descrip­ tions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, With Observations and Inquiries thereupon. By R. Hooke. London,

1665. This, the first complete book on the microscope, includes also material on telescopic discoveries. Other material on Hooke has been drawn from : The Diary of Robert Hooke (1672-1680), transcribed from the original in the possession of the Corporation of the City of London. Edited by Henry W. Robinson and Walter Adams. London, 1935. The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, containing his Cutlerian Lectures, and other Dis­ courses read at the meetings of the illustrious Royal Society. Published by Richard Waller. London, 1705. The Philosophical Transactions and Collections to the End of the Year 1700; Abridg’d and Dispos’d under General Heads. London, 1716.

1666 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess

of

Newcastle. The Descrip­

tion of a New World, called The Blazing World. Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princesse, The Duchess of Newcastle. London, 1666. (Published with Observa­ tions upon Experimental Philosophy.)

1670 Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz. Ioannis Caramvelis Mathesis Biceps, J/etus et Nova. ... In Omnibus, et Singulis Veterum, & Recentiorum Placita examinantur; interdum corriguntur, semper dilucidantur : & pier ague omnia Mathemata reducuntur specula-

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tivé & practicè ad facillimos & expeditissimos Canones. Campaniae, 1670. In these volumes, among his many discussions of “old” and “new,” Caramuel includes long sections on the theory and practice of flight, of which the most important for my pur­ poses are “Ptetica, Ars Volandi,” I, 740 ff. ; “Nautica Aetherea,” I, 743 ff. The charge against Calvin, to which I have referred, occurs in the “Ptetica,” I, 740. The sections are rich in allusion to all sorts of theories of flight, ancient and modern. Francesco Lana Terzi. Prodromo overo saggio di alcune inventioni nuove premesso all’ Arte Maestra. Brescia, 1670. The sixth chap., describing Lana’s airship, was reprinted in the same year with the title La Nave V olanti. In 1784, after the successful balloon ascensions, the work was reprinted at Milan, Rome, and Messina. A section was trans, into English by Robert Hooke in Philosophical Collections. 1679. No. I. A later English trans, ap­ peared in Five Curious and Interesting Papers. Glasgow, 1807. There is a modern trans, in Aeronautical Classics, No. 4. London, 1910. Hooke’s critique of the flying machine, “T. Lana’s way of making a Flying Chariot,” was published in Philosophical Col­ lections, n.d., No. I, pp. 19 ff. 1676 Gabriel de Foigny. La Terre Australe connue, c’est-à-dire la description de ce pays inconnu jusqu’ ici, de ses moeurs et de ses couttimes par M. Sadeur. A Vannes, 1676. While there is

no extra-terrestrial journey here, the tales were well known to writers of cosmic voyages both in the original and in the English translation, A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Aus­ tralis, or the Southern World, by J. Sadeur. London, 1693. An illustration shows the hero on his journey from the Congo to La Terre Australe, clinging to a great bird. Philip Lohmeier. Exercitatio Physica de Artificio Navigandi per Aerem. Rinteln, 1676. The volume is devoted to discussion of every sort of problem faced in the seventeenth century by en­ thusiasts for the idea of human flight. Thomas Shadwell. The Virtuoso. A Comedy. Acted at the Duke’s Theatre. Written by Thomas Shadwell. London, 1676. Shadwell’s Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, who shares all the scientific fads of his day, has a good deal to say in passing of the world in the moon and of the possibility of flying thither. J. C. Sturm. Collegium Experimentale sive Curiosum. Norimbergae, 1676-85. Sections in I, 56 ff. and in the Appendix con­

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sist of a Latin trans, of Lana’s sec. on the airship in the Prodromo, together with explanation and discussion of the proposal. Francis Willughby. Ornithologiae libri très. 1676. This work, of which an English trans, was published by John Ray in 1678, became the standard work on ornithology for many years. Willughby’s study of the anatomy of birds and the principle of their flight was the basis for many experiments on artificial wings. 1680 J. A. Borell. J oh. Alphonsi Borelli Philosophia De Motu Animalium ex unico principio M echanico-statioco deducta. Rome, 1680-1. An English trans, of the section dealing with human flight has been published in Aeronautical Classics, No. 6. London, 1911. 1685 Samuel Wesley. “Pindarick Poem on Three Skipps of a Louse” in Maggots, or Poems on Several Subjects. London, 1685, pp. 162-4. That the poem was intended as a parody of Godwin and of attempts at flying in general is indicated in Wesley’s note: “You see Reader, other folks have had their Maggots as well as your Humble Servant. Two Bishops have wrote expressly of this new Plantation, and the way to sayl thither. One by making a Globe of Glass, or Brass lighter than the Atmosphere. The other by a way perhaps as practicable as the former, by harnessing a certain number of Fowl, called by the Spaniards Ganza’s on which he makes the Signior Domingo hoisted thither.” 1687 Aphra Behn. The Emperor of the Moon: A Farce As it is Acted by Their Majesties, at the Queens Theatre. Written by Mrs. A. Behn. London, 1687. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle. Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes. Paris, 1686; 2nd ed., 1687; 4th, 1698. English trans. A Plurality of Worlds. Written in French by the Author of the Dialogues of the Dead. Translated by Mr. Glanvill.

1688; other ed., 1695, 1702, 1719. The Theory or System of several new Inhabited Worlds lately discover’d, and pleasantly describ’d. Made English by Mrs. Behn.

London, 1700; another ed., 1718. Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. Translated from the last Paris edition, by W. Gardiner. 1715. The 2nd ed., entitled A Week’s Conversation on the Plurality of Worlds, also in-

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eluded Mr. Secretary Addison's Oration in defense of the new Philosophy, 1728. There were at least five later ed. of the

Gardiner trans. 1690 Gabriel Daniel. Voyage du Monde de Descartes. Paris, 1690. Trans, as A Voyage to the World of Cartesius. Written originally in French and now Translated into English. London, 1692. The Preface is signed “T. Taylor, Mag. Coll. Oxon., May 7, 1692.” 1692 Francis Harding. “In Artem Volandi” in Musarum Anglic anarum Analecta: sive Poemata quaedam melioris notae, seu hactenus inedita, seu sparsum Edita, in unum Volumen conqesta. Oxford,

1692,1, 77-81. William Molyneux. Dioptrica Nova, A Treatise of Dioptrics in Two Parts. By William Molyneux of Dublin. London, 1692. Like all works on the telescope in this period, Molyneux’s book touches on many of the problems of the moon and planets, in­ cluding the possibility of their inhabitation. In one section he writes a sort of cosmic voyage (pp. 279 ff.) though the journey is made only through the telescope. 1693 Richard Bentley. The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism. London, 1693. Reprinted in Works of Richard Bentley, edited by the Reverend Alexander Dyce, Vol. III. The third section, “A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World” contains a sec. on the problem of planetary inhabitation. Bentley concludes : “All bodies were formed for the sake of intelligent minds ; and as the earth was principally designed for the being and service and contemplation of man, why may not all other Planets be created for the like uses ?” 1694 Anon. Arlequiniana, ou Les Bons Mots. Les Histories Plaisantes et Agréables. Recueillies des Conversations d’Arlequin. Paris, 1694. The adventure of the flyer who threatened to bring suit because he fell on the roof of his neighbor’s house is on pp. 82-7. 1697 Elkanah Settle. The World in the Moon, an Opera. 2nd ed. London, 1697. 1698 Christian Huygens. C. Hugenii KO2MO0EOROS, sive de Terris

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coelestibus earumque ornatti conjecturae. 1698; editio altera, 1699. The work was trans, into English as The Celestial Worlds Discover’d: or Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants, and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets. London, 1698. An­ other ed. of the trans, was called Cosmotheoros: or Conjectures concerning the Planetary Worlds.

Late Seventeenth Century (dates unknown) Anon. The Lunarian Or Newes from the World in the Moon to the Lunaticks of this World. Wherein are accurately described their Citties, Towns, Countries, & Provinces, with ye hills, Plains, Promontories, & Forrests, , , with the manner and means of sayling thither through the vast Ocean of the Aire. . . . First discovered by Cornelius van Drebble of Aleman in Holland, but since more perfectly described by ye famous Tudeskin Vertuoso, Lucas Lunanimus of Lunenberge. British Museum Additional Manuscripts 11,812. According to the author this is a manuscript

of 294 pp.; according to the British Museum pagination, of 98 ff. Elsewhere in the manuscript the title is given as Selenographia. In addition to its many other obvious sources, there is some parody of Godwin, particularly in the references to “ye famous Tudeskin Vertuoso.” James Dymocke. A Dictionary of Memorable Things in Nature, Arts, and Sciences. A manuscript volume of 776 pages in the Huntington Library. The author also calls it Rarities of Nature and Art and The Delights of the Mind. It is an encyclopedia of general information, arranged alphabetically with an entry for every day in the year. A section on “fflying,” ff. 147-48, indicates only the general information common in the period. From material in other sections I should date it around the turn of the century. 1700 Ned Ward. A Journey to Hell: or, a Visit Paid to the Devil. A Poem. The Second Edition. London, 1700. There are suggestions here of a cosmic voyage, since in spirit at least the character ranges throughout and beyond the world. Ward suggests also the subterranean journey, though the Hell discovered by his voyager is conventional. 1701 Nehemiah Grew. Cosmología Sacra: Or a Discourse of the Uni­ verse As it is the Creature and Kingdom of God. London, 1701.

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One of the popular physico-theologies of the day, written by the great botanist. Like other works of the kind, it contains sections on the moon and planets, with discussion of the possibility of their inhabitation. 1702 Samuel Colvill. Whiggs Supplication: A Mock Poem in Two Parts. By Samuel Colvill. St. Andrews, 1702. Since the work was published posthumously, the date of composition is earlier. A social satire in which the author discovers in the moon all the laxness and immorality of his own day. 1703 David Russen. Iter Lunare: Or, A Voyage to the Moon. Contain­ ing some Considerations on the Nature of that Planet: The Possi­ bility of getting thither, With other Pleasant Conceits about the Inhabitants, their Manners, and Customs. By David Russen of Hythe. London, 1703; another ed., 1707. Iter Lunare was upon

St. Serf’s trans, of Cyrano de Bergerac. The author’s proposal of a spring to reach the moon occurs in a passage (pp. 32 ff.) in which he is largely paraphrasing Wilkins; I suspect that he picked up the general idea from Wilkins in Mathematicall Magick, though Wilkins certainly never suggested anything so absurd. 1705 Daniel Defoe. The Consolidator: or Memoirs of Sundry Transac­ tions from the World in the Moon. Translated from the Lunar Language. By the Author of the True-born English Man. London,

1705. ------ . A Journey to the World in the Moon. By the Author of the True-born Englishman. Printed at London, and Re-printed at Edinburgh by James Watson in Craig’s Closs. 1705. ------. A Letter from the Man in the Moon, to the Author of the True-born English-Man: Containing variety of Diverting Newes, and Comical Intreagues relating to the present Posture of Affairs in Europe. 1705. (Advertised in the London and Edinburgh ed.

of the tract above.) ------ . A Second and More Strange Voyage to the World in the Moon, containing a Comical Description of that remarkable Country. London, 1705. When I first read these pamphlets in

the Trent Collection in the Boston Public Library, I took for granted that they were written earlier than The Consolidator and that the longer work had grown out of them. I found that

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Wilson and Hazlitt had rejected them as piracies, but that Trent had accepted them. At that time Mr. Henry Hutchins had not published his Defoe bibliography in the CH EL. He courteously replied to my inquiries giving reasons for including them in the Defoe canon and also for dating them after the Consolidator. The Consolidator provoked many replies and discussions in the periodicals. Among the replies was Dr. Joseph Browne, The Moon Calfj Or Accurate Reflections of the Consolidator, Giving an Account of Some Remarkable Transactions in the Lunar World. By the Man in the Moon. 1705. Defoe replied to various attacks in his Review, particularly in two long papers. One of these (Vol. VII, No. 15, April 29, 1710) adds to The Consoli­ dator a story of the misfortunes of a lunar tailor who made a

“representer” or “character-coat.” In the second sketch (Vol. VIII, No. 16, May 2, 1710), Defoe adds some details about the government in the moon. Anon. A New Journey to the World in the Moon, containing: I. A full Description of the Author’s performing his Journey; and his Reasons why former Lunarian Travellers could not find their Way thither; with an exact Account of the different Roads for their fziture Direction. II. The History of the Several Sovereigns, Religion, Politics, Education, etc., of the Lunar World, for above an hundred Years to the Present Time. 2nd ed. London, 1741.

No record remains of the 1st ed. of this anonymous work which I have placed here for the sake of convenience. It is a direct imitation and often a plagiarism from The Consolidator. The work appeared in 1741 in the ed. noted above, and has also been preserved in The Diverting Jumble: or They Shall be Saved. Being a Collection of Pamphlets on various Subjects. London, 1747. Mr. Hutchins believes that the 1st ed. probably appeared not long before the 2nd. 1706 Wonders in the Sun: or, The Kingdom of the Birds; A Comick Opera, Written by Mr. D’Urfey. London, 1706.

1707 Pier Jacopo Martello. Gli Occhi di Gesu. Versi . . . Vestendo I’abito Carmelitano in Parma la Contessa Costanza de Grassi.

Bologna, 1707. Martello also discusses Lana’s airship and other machines and matters pertaining to flight in “Dal Volo,” Versi e Prose di Pierjacopo Martello. Rome, 1710, pp. 137-158.

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1708 Anon. Furetiriana, ou Les Bon Mots et Les Remarques ¿’Histoire, de Morale, de Critique, de Plaisanterie, & d’Erudition de M. Furetière. Paris, 1708. Following Cyrano, M. Furetière makes

an ascent by means of fire-works. A descent is made by means of a parachute. 1709 Bartholomeu Lourenço de Gusmâo. Reproduction fac-similé d’un dessin à la plume, de sa description et de la pétition addressé au roi Jean V (de Portugal) en langue latine et en écriture con­ temporaine (1709) retrouvés récemment dans les Archives du Vatican du célèbre aéronef de Bartholomeu Lourenço de Gusmâo “l’homme volant” portugais, né au Brésil (1685—1784), précur­ seur des navigateurs aériens et premier inventeur des aérostats.

Lausanne, 1917. 1711 Laurent Bordelon. Gomgam, ou l’Homme Prodigieux, trans­ porté dans l’air, sur la terre, et sous les eaux. Livre véritablement nouveau. Paris, 1711; 2nd, 1713. An adaptation of the classical

tale of Abaris and the Arrow of Gold. Largely a fantasy, the story only occasionally shows interest in contemporary science. There is a brief extra-terrestrial voyage when Gomgam visits the rainbow ; here too he shows scientific curiosity about theories of the rainbow expressed by Descartes and Newton. 1713 Joseph Addison. The Guardian, July 20, 1713. My quotations are from The Works of Addison, ed. G. W. Greene, New York, 1854, IV, 376 ff. 1714 William Derham. Astro-Theology: or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens.

London, 1715. Another of the physico-theological encyclopedias, and one of the most popular and influential. Frequently reprinted during the eighteenth century it was a favorite source for poets and popular writers who dealt with scientific themes. There is discussion of current theories for and against human flight, of the possible inhabitation of the planets, and a critique of Huygens’ Cosmotheoros, in addition to information about the astronomical discoveries and theories of the day. Emanuel Swedenborg. Suggestions for a Flying Machine by Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the Original Swedish

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by Hugo Lj. Odhner and Carl Th. Odhner. Swedish Scientific Association, Philadelphia, 1910. Swedenborg’s letters of 1714—5, addressed to his brother-in-law, Eric Benzelius, in which he dis­ cusses the possibility of a flying-machine, may be found, in both Sw’edish and Latin, in Emanuel Swedenborg Opera Quaedam aut Inédita ant Obsoleta De Rebus Naturalibus nunc edita sub auspiciis Regiae Academiae Scientiarum Suecicae. 1907-11, I.

224—229. My quotations are from the English trans, mentioned above and from “A project for a machine with wings and sails by which one may attempt to fly in the air,” originally published in Daedalus Hyperboreus (1717), No. 4. 1725 David Gregory. The Elements of Astronomy, Physical and Geo­ metrical. London, 1725. A section of this scientific work by the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford (II. 810 ff.) affords one of the many interesting examples of the extent to which the conventions of the cosmic voyage were adapted to scientific writ­ ing. Gregory takes his readers on a short journey to the planets, and in passing mentions various earlier writers I have discussed. 1726 William Arntzen. Dissertatio Astronomico-Physica. De Luna Habitabile quam Favente Numine Praesidio viri Celeberrimi Jacobi Ode, A.L.M. et Philos. Doct. Ejusdemque Facultatis in Academie Trajectina Professoris Ordinarii Publico Examine Exponit. Auctor Gulielmus Arntzenius. Trajectie ad Rhenum . . . Academiae. 1728. A doctoral dissertation containing a care­

ful survey of opinions expressed, in ancient and modern times, on the possibility of lunar inhabitation. While the author reaches a negative conclusion, he gives the evidence on both sides. Jonathan Swift. Travels into Several Remote Nations Of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships. London, 1726.

1727 Samuel Brunt (pseudonym). A Voyage to Cacklogallinia: With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of that Country. By Captain Samuel Brunt. London, 1727. Repub­

lished, with an introduction by Marjorie Nicolson, for the Fac­ simile Text Society by the Columbia University Press, New York, 1940. A German trans, appeared at Leipzig in 1735; other ed. 1736, 1751, 1770; another German trans., Berlin, 1799; Russian trans., 1788.

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Faustina Bordoni. The Devil to Pay at St. James’s; Or, A full and true Account of a most horrible and bloody Battle between Madam Faustina and Madam Cazzoni. (By Faustina Bordono,

afterwards Hasse). London, 1727. 1728 Murtagh McDermot (pseudonym). A Trip to the Moon. By Mr. Murtagh McDermot. Containing some Observations and Reflections, made by him during his stay in that Planet, upon the Manners of the Inhabitants. Printed in Dublin: And Re­ printed at London, 1728.

1737 Thomas Gray. “Luna Habitabilis.” First published in Musae Etoniensis, 1737; also in The Works of Thomas Gray. London, 1825, I. 196 ff. 1741 Ludwig Holberg. Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum Novam Telluris Theoriam Ac Historiam Qïiintae Monarchiae Adhuc Nobis Incognitae. Hafniae & Lipsiae, 1741. In the year of its first appear­

ance, the work was published also in Danish, German, French and Dutch. The standard Holberg bibliography lists 59 ed. in 11 languages. In the eighteenth century there were 34 trans., includ­ ing Swedish, Russian and Hungarian versions. My quotations are from the first English trans., A Journey to the World UnderGround. By Nicholaus Klimius. Translated from the Original.

London, 1742. According to the Danish scholar, Julius Paludan, in the same year as Holberg’s voyage appeared the first Swedish moon­ voyage by Johan Krook, which shows the influence of Godwin, Cyrano, Swift, Brunt, with reminiscences of Fontenelle, Huygens, Kircher, and others. 1742 Jean Jacques Rousseau. Le Noztveau Dédale: ouvrage inédit de J. J. Rousseau, et copié sur son Manuscrit original daté de l’année 1742. A Paris-, Chez Mme. Masson. The only American

copy of this very rare work is in the Library of Congress; one is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was published in part by Pierre-Paul Plan in the Mercure de France (1910), Vol. 87, pp. 577-597. M. Plan does not doubt the authenticity of the work, and mentions parallels with others of Rousseau’s works. He proposes the date of 1752 because of a passage on the sub­ ject in one of Grimm’s letters of that year.

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1744 Eberhard Christian Kindermann. Die Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach der obern Weit, Weiche jüngsthin fünff Personen angestellet. 1744. An illustration shows the Lana air­

ship with six globes, suggesting that the author based his flying­ machine not upon Lana himself but upon Lohmeier’s proposal for two additional globes. James Ralph. The Astrologer. London, 1744. Through two char­ acters, “Stargaze” and “Siftem,” the author satirizes astronomical fads of the time. “The Telescope of the Magi, for instance, car­ ries the visual Ray, point blank, many millions of Miles beyond the Solar System; separates ev’ry individual Spark in the Galaxy . . . makes the Geography of Mercury as distinct as any one Tract in our Terra Incognita; and distinguishes the Man in the Moon, as plain as the Saracen’s Head in Friday-Street.” 1746 P. Giambattista Roberti. La Moda, poemetto fatto nell’ occasion? delle lietissime nozze di sue eccellenze il n.h. Gio. Antonia Ruzini e la nobil donna Arpalice Manini. Venice, 1746. The poem has.

a section based on Martello’s treatment of the Lana airship. 1750 (?) Anon. La Relation du Monde de Mercure. In Voyages Imaginaires, ed. Garnier, Vol. 16. 1751 Richard Owen Cambridge. Scribleriad. London, 1751. H. C. Levis, An Aerial Race between a Briton and a German, Chis­ wick Press, 1918, has reprinted the stanzas on the aerial battle, together with passages describing a submarine, a method of purifying the air in such a vessel, and Grecian fire. Ralph Morris. A Narrative of the Life and astonishing Adven­ tures of John Daniel, A Smith at Royston in Hertfordshire. For a Course of seventy Years. Containing ... A Description of a most surprising Engine, invented by his Son Jacob, on which he flew to the Moon, with some Account of its Inhabitants. . . . Taken from his own Mouth. By Mr. Ralph Morris. London,

1751; other ed., 1770, 1801. The sections on the flying-machine were republished by “Charles Clark (an Amateur) at his Private Press” as Flying And No Failure! Or Aerial Transit Accom­ plished More Than A Century Ago. . . . Totham, 1848. There is a modern ed. of the original work in the Library of Impostors, ed. N. M. Penzer, Vol. I. London, 1926.

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Robert Paltock. The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins. A Cornish Man. London, 1751. For the complete long title, see above p. 137-8. Philip Gove in The Imaginary Voyage lists 37 English, Irish and American ed., as well as trans, into French and German. For an excellent résumé of critical opinion about the work (from which I have borrowed in my text), see Gove, pp. 325-327. 1752 François Marie Arouet de Voltaire. Le Micromégas De M. De Voltaire. London, 1752. I have used the French text, Micro­ mégas, ou Voyage d’un habitant de l’étoile Sirius, in Voyages Imaginaires, ed. Garnier, Vol. 23, and the English trans, in The Works of Voltaire . . . with notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized, 1901, Vol. III.

1753 Baroni delli Marchesi Cavalcabo. L’impotenza del Demonio di trans p or tare a talento per I’aria da un luogo, all’ altro: i corpi umani, dove ancha si démontra l'impossibilità di volare con artificio umano. Rovereto, 1753. A reply to Lana, in which the

author asserts that not even demons can aid man to fly, and that no artificial means will ever be found either of increasing man’s native power or decreasing his specific gravity, two insuperable obstacles to human flight. 1755 Anon. A Voyage to the World in the Centre of the Earth. Giving an Account of the Manners, Customs, Laws, Government and Religion of the Inhabitants. Their Persons and Habits described. With several other Particulars. In zvhicli is introduced, the History of an Inhabitant of the Air. Written by Himself. With some Account of the Planetary Worlds. London, 1755. An obvious

imitation of Holberg, with reminiscences also of Godwin, Cyrano and Peter Wilkins. Joseph Galien. Mémoire Touchant La Nature Et La Formation De La Grêle Et Des Autres Météores Qui Y Ont Rapport, Avec une conférence ultérieure, de la possibilité de naviger dans l’Air à la hautetir de la région de la Grêle. Avignon, 1755. So far as I

can learn, only one copy of this work is extant. A description of that copy will be found in Maggs’ Catalogue, No. 619 (1936), p. 18. A 2nd ed., to which reference is usually made, appeared as L’Art de naviger dans l’Air. Amusement Physique et Géo­ métrique par le R. P. Jos. Galien. Avignon, 1757.

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1757 Miles Wilson. The History of Israel Jobson, the Wandering Jew. Giving a Description of his Pedigree, Travels in this lower World, and his Assumption thro’ the Starry Regions, conducted by a Guardian Angel, exhibiting in a curious Manner the Shapes, Lives, and Customs of the Inhabitants of the Moon and Planets; touching upon the great and memorable Comet in 1758, and interwoven all along with the Solution of the Phaenomena of the true Solar System, and Principles of Natural Philosophy, concording with the latest Discoveries of the most able Astrono­ mers. Translated from the Original Chinese by M. W. London,

1757. Wilson, curate of the Yorkshire village of Halton Gill from 1737 to 1777, was probably the author of an earlier pam­ phlet, The Man in the Moon, of which no copy is known. A resume appears in H. Speight, The Craven and North-West Yorkshire Highlands, London, 1892, pp. 396-397. The History of Israel Jobson has been discussed in detail in the article (listed below) by George K. Anderson, to whom I am much indebted. 1758 Emanuel Swedenborg. The Earths in our Solar System, which are called Planets, and the Earths in the Starry Heavens. By Emanuel Swedenborg. Originally published in Latin at London.

1758. Many others of the Swedenborgian religious works also show the powerful effect of his distinguished career in science upon the religious teacher. I have referred to this one particu­ larly because it is such a characteristic series of cosmic voyages. 1759 Samuel Johnson. The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale in Two Vol­ umes. London, 1759. The 1st ed. of Rasselas, from which I have quoted. For other material on Johnson’s interest in flight see Hodgson below. 1764 Francis Gentleman. A Trip to the Moon. Containing an Account of the Island of Noibla, Its Inhabitants, Religious and Political Customs, etc. By Sir Humphry Lunatic, Bart. York, 1764. A

dull and undistinguished parody of the cosmic voyage, inspired, according to the author, by his reading of Cyrano. In slumber or trance he is conveyed to the moon “seated in a kind of Triumphal Car.” His guide’s explanation of his assumption will suggest the tone of the tale: “The imperceptible Method of thy Conveyance I cannot explain to thy Comprehension; let it

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suffice to say that some Rays of Attraction, sent down from the Mount of Observation, a Spot which from Earth appears to be the Nose of the Man in the Moon, drew thee from the Place where thou lay’st asleep.” 1765 Marie-Anne de Roumier. Voyages de Milord Céton Dans Les Sept Pianettes, ou Le Nouveau Mentor, in Voyages Imaginaires, ed. Garnier, Vol. XVII. 1766 (?) Filippo Morghen. Raccolta delle cose più notabili, vedute dal Cavalière Wild Scull, e dal Sigr. de la Hire nel lor famoso viaggio dalla Terra alia Luna che sono spiegate nella storia di detto viaggio descritta dall’ istesso Wild Scull nell’ ordine seguente, e disegnate dal detto Sigr. de la Hire. Esposte in nove rami incisi appresso Filippo Morghen Fiorentino. . . . Dedicata A.S.E. ie Signor Guglielmo Amilton, Inviato di S.M.B. alia Corte di Napoli. On problems of dating the various issues, see McColley

below. 1768 Bernard Zamagna. Navis Aeria et Elegiarum Monobiblos. Rome, 1768. Republished in Latin with an English trans, by Mary B. McElwain, Smith College Classical Studies, No. 12. Northamp­ ton, 1939. 1775 Louis Guillaume La Folie. Le Philosophe Sans Prétention, ou L’Homme Rare. Ouvrage Physique, Chymique, Politique et Moral, Dédié aux Savons. Par M.D.L.F. Paris, 1775. For

further information—other than that given in my text—on the first “electrical” flying-machine, see Nicolson and Mohler below. 1776 Thomas Cogan. John Buncle, Junior, Gentleman. London, 1776; another ed., 1778. 1778 Hildebrand Bowman (pseudonym). The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman, Esquire, Into Carnovirria, Taupiniera, Olfactaria, and Auditante, in New-Zealand; in the Island of Bonhommica, and in the powerful Kingdom of Luxo-Volupto, on the Great South­ ern Continent. Written by Himself. . . . London, 1778.

1781 Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne. La Découverte australe Par un Homme-volant, ou Le Dédale français; Nouvelle très-

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283

philosophique: Suivie de la Lettre d'un Singe, etc. Leipzig and Paris, 1781. The work was trans, into German in 1784 as Der fiiegende Mensch, and into Italian in 1818 as Awenture E Viaggi Di Un Uomo Volante.

1782 Anon. “De Inventione Nova Areostatis, Facta anno Domini 1782. Poema.” A manuscript Latin poem of 126 lines in the Library of Congress. It includes a brief account of men of the past who had attempted to scale the heavens, celebrates the discovery of the “true way,” by the aid of globes, describes the fear of country­ men when they first saw the globes and believed that the moon was falling. The next section relates the consternation among the gods when men seemed to have found a new way to storm the citadels of heaven. The gods divide into camps, some protesting the presumption of man who again has aspired too high, others, like Athena and Apollo, praising the children of the gods for their brilliant invention. Mars particularly exults in the new machine since wars, once limited to earth, will now be carried on in the air and the heavens will rain blood. While the poem is dated 1782, I suspect that it was revised after the balloon ascensions of 1783. 1783 Henry Fielding. “A Journey from this World to the Next. By Henry Fielding, Esq.” in The Novelist’s Magasine, London, 1783, Vol. XII. William Thomson. The Man in the Moon: or Travels into the lunar regions, by the Man of the People. London, 1783. 1783-4 The Balloons of de Rozier, Charles, the Montgolfiers, Lunardi, etc. Helene Jacobius in Luftschiff und Pegasus, Halle, 1909, has collected a number of the poems and some of the prose inspired by various ascensions in 1783-4. The literature is so extensive that I mention only a few examples of longer works. Anon. Le Char Volant, ou Voyage dans la Lune. London and Paris, 1783. Anon. Modern Atlantis, or the Devil in an Air-Balloon. 1784. Jean Louis Carra. Essai sur la nautique aérienne. Paris, 1784. Vincenzo Lunardi. An Account of the First Aerial Voyage in England. London, 1784. ----- Pilon. Aerostation, or The Templar’s Stratagem. 1784. ----- Piroux. L’Art De Voyager Dans L’Air Et De S’Y Diriger.

284

‘VOYAGES TO THE MOON

Mémoire qui va remporter le prix proposé par l’Accadémie de Lyon. Lorraine, 1784. I may conclude with an anonymous “poem,” The Ballooniad, in two cantos, presumably published at London, 1785. Of the 1st

ed., no copy is known ; the 2nd ed. is very rare ; there is a copy, London, 1785, in the Harvard Library. The poem celebrates attempted flights from Birmingham by a barber named Harper. The first attempt was unsuccessful : as the “poet” says of a later unsuccessful trial : “Alas ! how soon thy tow’ring hopes were quash’d And thy grand bubble ’gainst vile chimnies bash’d.” On this attempt Harper escaped through a window of the house on which his balloon fell (as in the earlier adventure of Arlequin, I have mentioned), leaving in the car a small boy who was whisked off alone. Harper’s second attempt was successful ; he rose to 4,300 feet and floated for 70 miles, amazed to find himself in clear air and sunshine though he had left Birmingham in fog and rain. As fantastic as the flights of earlier voyagers, the adventure led the author of the Ballooniad to utter a fitting epitaph for all these early aviators and inventors who in satire and fantasy attempted to discover the wings of the dove : “When thy great hands the menial bason bore What first induc’d the love of chemic lore ? Did soapy bubbles Air Balloons supply And teach thy soaring mind to mount the sky ?”

SECONDARY MATERIALS

I have listed here only : A. Books and articles referred to, quoted from or paraphrased in the text ; B. A short list of books, articles, pamphlets on the history of flight, which I have selected from many read merely because these contain material (in text or illustration) of interest to the student of literature. While some of them remain standard in the history of aviation, others have been superseded, but are still valuable in the history of the subject. A. George K. Anderson. “The History of Israel Jobson.” Philo­ logical Quarterly XXV (1946), 303-320.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

285

Geoffroy Atkinson. The Extraordinary Voyage in French Liter­ ature before 1700. New York, 1920. ------ . The Extraordinary Voyage in French Literature from 1700 to 1720. Paris, 1922. ------. Les Relations de Voyages du XVIIe Siècle et I’Evolution des idées. Paris, n.d. Hadley Cantril. The Invasion from Mars. Princeton, 1940. (This

contains the script of the Orson Welles broadcast.) Arundell Esdaile. A List of English Tales and Prose Romances Printed before 1740. London, 1912. Louis Faure-Favier. “Le Romantisme Littéraire né de la Con­ quête de l’Air.” Mercure de France 192 (1926). The quotation in the text is from pp. 352—353. Camille Flammarion. Les Mondes Imaginaires et les Mondes réels: voyage pittoresque dans le ciel et revue critique des théories humaines, scientifiques, et romanesques, anciennes et modernes sur les habitants des astres. 17th ed., 1880. ------ . La Pluralité des Mondes Habités; étude, où l’on expose les conditions d’habitabilité des terres célestes . . . 24th ed., 1876. Charles G. T. Garnier, ed. Voyages Imaginaires, Songes, Visions, et romans cabalistiques. Amsterdam and Paris, 1787—89. Philip Babcock Gove. The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction. A History of Its Criticism and a Guide for Its Study, with an Annotated Check List of 215 Imaginary Voyages from 1700 to 1800. New York, 1941. Ivor B. Hart. The Mechanical Investigations of Leonardo da Vinci. Chicago, 1925.

J. E. Hodgson. Doctor Johnson on Ballooning and Flight. London, 1925. The paper first appeared in the London Mercury X (1924), 63 ff. Erwin Honncher. Fahrten nach Mond und Sonne. Studien insbesondere sur franzosischen Litteraturegeschichte des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Opeln und Leipzig, 1887. Frédéric Lachèvre. Les successeurs de Cyrano de Bergerac.

Paris, 1922. Harold W. Lawton. “Notes sur Jean Baudoin et sur ses traduc­ tions de l’anglais.” Revue de Littérature Comparée VI (1926), 673-681. ----- . “Bishop Godwin’s Man in the Moone.” Review of English Studies VII (1931), 23-55. Roger Loomis. “Alexander the Great’s Celestial Journey.” The

286

VOYAGES TO THE MOON

Burlington Magazine XXXII (1918), 136 ff. The account of

Alexander’s flight quoted in my text is from a trans, of the Historia de Proeliis of the Archpresbyter Leo, as given by Pro­ fessor Loomis. John Livingston Lowes. The Road to Xanadu. Boston and New York, 1927. Grant McColley. “The Seventeenth-Century Doctrine of a Plurality of Worlds.” Annals of Science I (1936), 385^130. ----- . “The Date of Godwin’s Domingo Gonsales.” Modern Phi­ lology XXXV (1937), 47-60. ----- . “Godwin’s Man in the Moone.” The Library (Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, N.S. XVII, 1937), 472-475. ----- . “The Pseudonyms of Francis Godwin.” Philological Quar­ terly XVI (1937), 78-80. ----- . “The Three Editions of Filippo Morghen’s Raccolta.” Art Bulletin XIX (1937), 112-118. Régis Messac. “Voyages modernes au centre de la terre.” Revue de littérature comparée IX (1929), 74—104. Jacob Minor. “Die Luftfahrten in der deutschen Literatur.” Zeit­ schrift für Buchfreunde, N.F. I (1909), 64—73. Marjorie Nicolson. A World in the Moon. Smith College Studies in Modern Languages XVII (1936). ------ . The Microscope and English Imagination. Ibid. XVI ( 1935). ------ . Newton Demands the Muse. Princeton, 1946. ----- . “The Telescope and Imagination.” Modern Philology XXXII (1935), 233-260. ■----- . “The ‘New Astronomy’ and English Literary Imagination.” Studies in Philology XXXII (1935), 428-462. ----- . “Milton and the Telescope.” E.L.H. II (1935), 1-32. ----- . “Cosmic Voyages.” E.L.H. VII (1940), 83-107. ----- . “Kepler, the Somnium, and John Donne.” Journal of the History of Ideas I (1940), 259-280. ----- . Introduction to Navis Aeria of B. Zamagna, trans, by Mary B. McElwain. Smith 'College Classical Studies, No. 12 (1939). ----- and Nora Mohler. “The Scientific Background of Swift’s Voyage to Laputa.” Annals of Science II (1937), 299-334. ----- and Nora Mohler. “Swift’s ‘Flying Island’ in the Voyage to Laputa.” Annals of Science II (1937), 405-430. ----- and Nora Mohler. “The First ‘Electrical’ Flying Machine.” Smith College Studies in Honor of William Allan Neilson. North­ ampton, 1940, pp. 143 ff.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

287

Coleman O. Parsons. “Lunar Craters in Science and Fiction.” Notes and Queries CLXIV (1933), 346—348. Alexander de Seversky. “139,000 Miles an Hour.” This Week (New York Herald Tribune), June 23, 1946. B. Anon. “History of Aeronautics: Tradition and literary accounts.” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, No. 40 (January, 1936). Americo Bertuccioli. A vol d’avion: pages de littérature française de l’aviation. 1926. Guiseppe Boffito. Il volo in Italia. Firenze, 1921. ------ . Biblioteca aeronautica italiana. Firenze, 1929. D. Bourgeois. Recherches sur l’art de voler, depuis la plus haute antiquité jusqu’à ce jour. 1784. (One of the earliest attempts at history of aviation.) Noel Diesch. “The Navigation of Space in Early Speculation and in Modern Research.” Popular Astronomy XXXVIII (1930), 73-88. R. Esnault-Pelterie. L’Exploration par fusées de la très-haute atmosphère et la possibilité des voyages interplanétaires. Paris, 1928. Louis Figuier. Les grandes inventions modernes. Paris, 1883. Harry Harper. The Evolution of the Flying Machine. London, 1930. J. E. Hodgson. The History of Aeronautics in Great Britain from the Earliest Times to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century.

London, 1924. (This is unquestionably the most comprehensive, the most valuable, and the most interesting treatment of the subject in English.) Berthold Läufer. “The Prehistory of Aviation.” Field Museum of Natural History Publications, XVIII, No. I. Chicago, 1928. (An admirable supplement to Hodgson, as rich in the earliest periods as Hodgson’s from the Renaissance on.) Willy Ley. Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Strato­ sphere. New York, 1944. Maggs’ Catalogues Nos. 387 and 619, “The History of Flight.” F. Alexander Magoun and Eric Hodgins. A History of Aircraft. New York, 1931. Francis T. Miller. The World in the Air: the Story of Flying in Pichtres. New York and London, 1930.

288 . VOYAGES TO THE MOON J. Pearson and Company. (Catalogue) Aeronáutica or the History of Aviation and Aerostation. Told in Contemporary Autograph Letters, Books, Broadsides, Drawings, Engravings, Manuscripts, Newspapers, Paintings, Posters, Press Notices, etc. Dating from the year 1557 to 1800. Alexander Boris Scherschevsky. Die Rakete fiir fahrt und plug. Berlin, 1929. Galileo Venturini. Da Icaro a Montgolfier (2 vols.), 1928. E. Charles Vivian. A History of Aeronautics. New York, 1921.

INDEX (The main entry for each Voyage appears under the name of the author. Names of the chief characters in various voyages are listed in their al­ phabetical order, and referred to the author.) Abaris, flight on Golden Arrow, 10, 276 Account of the First Aerial Voyage in England, 283 Addison, Joseph, 129, 131, 184, 272; satire on artificial wings, 124—126, 276 Aerostation, or The Templar’s Stra­ tagem, 283 Age of Reason, 254 Air, nature of : Kepler, 45 ; Fonte­ nelle, 59 ; Godwin, 77 ; Wilkins, 95, 97; Brunt, 99, 103, 104, 105; Cyrano, 166 ; Poe, 240 Akenside, Mark, 206, 209 Albertus Magnus, 97 Alexander, legend of, 67, 68, 213, 286 Alice in Wonderland. See voyages, subterranean Almagestum, 267 Anaxagoras, 17, 27 Anderson, George, 281, 284 anesthetic, use of, in cosmic voyages, 19, 45, 77, 186 Angelico, Fra, 111 Annus Mirabilis, 32 Arabian Nights, 136, 137 Archimedes, 169, 170, 173 Archytas, mechanical pigeon of, 10, 151-152, 169, 170, 259 Ariana, 263 Ariosto, Ludovico, 20-21, 123, 260 Aristotle, 23, 163 Arlequiniana, 130-131, 272 A.rntzen, William, 277 Astrologer, 279 Astro-Theology, 276 Atkinson, Geoffroy, 7, 285 Attic Nights, 10, 259

Bacon, Francis, 33, 114, 156, 164, 168, 237, 263; on human flight, 70, 113 Bacon, Rogef, 13, 14, 117, 260 Bacqueville, Marquis de, 133 “Ballad of Gresham Colledge,” 26, 269 balloon, 157, 169, 175-176, 200, 211, 237, 270, 283 Ballooniad, 284 Barrie, James, 212 Bate, John, 153, 156, 264—265 Baudoin, Jean, 265 “Bedford.” See Wells, First Men in the Moon Behn, Aphra, 121, 163, 242, 271; Emperor of the Moon, 89-93 Bellerophon, 67 Bentley, Richard, 272 Besnier, Sieur, flight by artificial wings, 118-120 birds, study of, in connection with hu­ man flight, 14, 109-110, 115, 117, 259, 270, 271; possibility of flight by means of, 67 ff. See also voy­ ages, moon Bladud, King, legendary flight by wings, 10-11, 14, 33, 111, 119, 120, 131, 259 Blanchard, Jean Pierre, 200, 237 Bordelon, Laurent, 276 Bordoni, Faustina, 131-132, 277-278 Borel, Pierre, 268 Borell, J. A., 271 Borelli, Giovanni, 170 Bowman, Hildebrand, 143-145, 282. See also wings Boyle, Robert, 96, 169, 170, 175, 195, 199 Brahe, Tycho, 23, 28, 42, 43, 44, 51

289

290

INDEX

British King Who Tried to Fly, 259 Browne, Joseph, 275 Browne, Sir Thomas, 40, 96, 97, 151, 214 Bruno, Giordano, 8, 27-28 Brunt, Samuel (pseud.), 98-108, 142, 163, 229, 240, 277, 278; Voyage to Cacklogallinia: authorship, 98-99; satire on South Sea Bubble, 99104; scientific elements, 104-105; ascent to moon, 106; moon-world, 106-107. See also voyages, moon “Buck Rogers,” 9, 251, 257 Burnet, Thomas, 226 burning-glass, principle of, applied to flight, 165-166 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 9 Burton, Robert, 19-20, 25, 27, 33, 66, 96, 262; on the “flying Turk,” 109, 112, 114, 263; cosmic voyage, 225 Butler, Samuel, 155, 156; on moon­ spots, 25; world in moon, 26; lunar colonization, 31-32; Kepler, 4748; kite, 153-154

Calvin, supposed opposition to hu­ man flight, 35 ff., 270 Cambridge, Richard Owen, 119-120, 279 Campanella, Tommaso, 27, 71, 150, 164, 261, 262-263 Cantril, Hadley, 285 Caramuel, Juan, 35 ff., 269 Cardan, Jerome, 69, 95 Carlo Famoso, 18, 21, 260 Carroll, Lewis, reminiscences of moon-voyage in Sylvie and Bruno, 230-231. Alice in Wonderland: subterranean voyage, 232-233; dis­ covery of a new world, 233-234; relativity, 234-235. See also voy­ ages, subterranean Cassini, Giovanni Domenico, 193 Cavendish, Henry, 175, 176 Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, 122, 220-224, 269 Cavendish, William, Duke of New­ castle, 220, 233, 234 “Cavor.” See Wells, First Men in the Moon Cazzoni, Madam, 131, 278

Celestial Worlds Discover’d, 273 Cervantes, Miguel de, 18-19, 21, 261 Char Volant, 283 Charles, J. A. C., 200 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 68-69 Cicero, 16-17, 21, 24, 259 City of the Sun, 71, 150, 164, 261, 262-263 Clayton, John, 175 Cogan, Thomas, 129-130, 282 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 6, 137, 222, 226 colonization, lunar. See moon “Columbiad.” See Verne Colvill, Samuel, 274 Comical History of Francion, 158— 159, 178 Congreve, William, 86 Consolidator. See Defoe Copernicus, 50, 51, 60, 78 Cosmographie, 267 Cosmologia Sacra, 273 Cosmotheoros, 60-62, 273 Cowley, Abraham, 203 Crispolti, Cesare, 266-267 Cromwell, Oliver, 30 Croome, Dr., 117 Cudworth, Ralph, 205 Cusa, Nicolaus of, 27 Cyrano de Bergerac, 5, 9, 19, 21, 54, 56, 85, 88, 130, 158, 190, 201, 211, 230, 233, 234, 239, 240, 243, 244, 248, 267-268, 274, 278, 280, 281, 285 ; Voyages to Sun and Moon, 159- 168; flight by vials of dew, 160- 161, by moon-rocket, 161-162; world in the moon, 163-164; lunar inventions, 164 ; flying machine, 165-166; satire on magnetism, 171— 172 Daedalus, legend of, 10, 33, 34, 111, 150, 175, 260, 263 “Daemon ex Levania,” 45 ; “Daemon of Socrates,” 88 ; daemons of moon, 17, 45, of air, 90. See also demons Damian, John, attempted flight of, 12-13, 14, 115, 119, 260 Daniel, Gabriel, 202-203, 272, 279 Daniel, Jacob and John, 176-177, 179, 279

INDEX

Dante, 18, 68 Danti, Giovanni Baptista, reputed flight of, 13, 110-111, 267 De Arte Volandi, 263 De Facie in Orbe Lunare, 16-17, 21, 24, 243, 259 “De Inventione Nova Aerostasis,” 283 Defoe, Daniel, 19, 85, 99, 100, 163, 229, 267, 274; use of moon-world for economic satire, 183 ff. ; “Con­ solidator” flying machine, 183, 184— 187 ; moon-world, 187. See also voyages ; flying machines Democritus, 27, 97 Democritus Platonissans, 266 Democritus Turned Statesman, 121, 268 demons and human flight, 280 Derham, William, 276 Descartes, René, 110, 163, 202, 203, 276 Devil to Pay at St. James', 131, 277278 Dickens, Charles, 137 Dictionary of Memorable Things in Nature and Art, 273 “Diego.” See Godwin, Man in the Moone Diodorus of Sicily, 10 Dioptrica Nova, 272 dipping-needle, Gilbert’s, 192-193 Discovery of a New World. See Wil­ kins Diverting Jumble, 188, 275 “Dr. Doolittle,” 251 “Domingo Gonsales.” See Godwin, Man in the Moone Don Quixote. See Cervantes Donne, John, xi, 262, 286 ; use of cosmic voyage, 49 ff. ; relation of Ignatius to Kepler’s Somnium, 4952 Drake, Sir Francis, 221 Drayton, Michael, 10, 22, 259 dream used in cosmic voyages, 42, 196, 201, 281 ; Somnium, 41 ff., 47 ; Alice in Wonderland, 231 ff. Dryden, John, 32-33 Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste, 109, 151-152, 261

291

Du Bois, William Pêne, 251 Dunbar, William, 13 “Duracotus.” See Kepler, Somnium D’Urfey, Thomas, 163, 178, 247, 275; Wonders in the Sun, 87-88 Dymocke, James, 273 “Eagle,” of John Daniel, 176-177, 179; of Regiomontanus, 151-152 Earths in Our Solar System, 63-66, 281 ecstasy, use of, in cosmic voyages, 51, 58, 65, 196, 201 ff„ 281 Edman, Irwin, 235 “electrical” flying machine, 195-199. See also voyages ; flying machines Elijah, 20, 40, 150, 177, 178, 180, 182, 282 Elmer of Malmesbury, attempted flight of, 12, 13, 14, 111, 114, 115, 259-260 Emperor of the Moon. See Beim Essais sur la nautique aérienne, 283 Euclid, 169, 170, 173

Faure-Favier, Louise, 111, 285 Fielding, Henry, 132-133, 283 Firdausi, 67 fireworks, 155, 156-157, 265, 276 First Men in the Moon. See Wells “Flash Gordon,” 9, 263 Flayder, F. H., 263 flight, human, 264, 270, 271, 275, 276, 280; legendary accounts, 10; early attempts, 10-13 ; Sieur Besnier, 118-120; pessimism in regard to, 3, 6, 33 ff., 133, 170 ff. ; theological arguments against, 35 ff. ; optimism in regard to, 37 ff., 94, 133, 134 ff. Principles suggested: birds, 67 ff.; artificial wings, 10 ff., 67 ff. ; fly­ ing machines, 150 ff. ; vacuum, 165, 169; burning-glass, 165-166; mag­ netism, 179, 192; electricity, 195— 199 flying animals, 73-74, 182-183, 200, 240 flying dragon, 157-158 “Flying Island.” See Swift flying machines (see also voyages— moon, planetary), 9, 22, 62, 63, 113,

292

INDEX

flying machines (Conf.) : 116, 142-143, 150, 277, 281, 283. Early suggestions: Solomon, 10; Elijah, 20, 40, 150, 178, 180, 182, 282; Ariosto, 20; Archytas and Regiomontanus, 151-152, 169; kite, 153-154; fireworks, 156; flying dragon, 156. Serious and imagina­ tive proposals: space ships, 3, 32, 252; Cyrano’s “rocket” and flying machine, 161 ff.; Lana’s airship, 168 ff.; Daniel’s “Eagle,” 176-177; Russen’s “moon-spring,” 178, 181 n.; Gusmäo’s “Passarola,” 181— 182; Defoe’s “Consolidator,” 184ff.; “Collective Machine,” 188; Galien’s “Noah’s Ark,” 189; Swift’s “Flying Island,” 189 ff.; La Follie’s “electrical” flying ma­ chine, 195 ff.; balloons, 237 and passim; Poe’s balloon, 239-240; Verne’s “Columbiad,” 245; H. G. Wells’, 248; C. S. Lewis’, 252 flying prostitutes, 143 ff. flying saucers, 257 “flying Turk,” 112, 114, 261 Foigny, Gabriel de, 270 Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism, 272 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bouvier de, 20, 26, 85, 93, 122-123, 216, 271, 278; Conversations upon a Plural­ ity of Worlds, 58-60 Furetiriana, 161 n., 276

Galien, Joseph, 189 Galileo, 22 ff., 50, 51, 52 n„ 92, 109, 154, 203, 262, 280 “gansas.” See Godwin, Man in the Mo one Ganymede, 67, 70 Gardiner, W., 271 Garnier, C. G. T., 285 Gascoigne, Mr., 117 Gassendi, Pierre, 159, 163 “gawry.” See Paltock, Wilkins Gellius, Aulus, 10, 259 Gentleman, Francis, 281 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 10 Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufftschiff, 172, 279

Gilbert, William, 179, 180, 192, 195 Glanvill, John, 271 Glanvill, Joseph, 40, 123, 124, 268269 Gli Occhi di Gesu, 182-183 “glums.” See Paltock, Wilkins Godwin, Francis, 21, 54, 65, 104, 106, 119, 122, 142, 178, 194, 200, 201, 229, 239, 244, 248, 271, 278, 280, 285. Man in the Moone: 71-85; date, 71; gansas, 72 ff.; first flight, 74; journey to moon, 80; world in the moon, 80 ff.; return to earth, 84-85. Anticipations of Gulliver’s Travels, 81, 84; influence and adap­ tations, 87 ff., 229, 239, 244, 247248 Golden Arrow, 10, 276 Gomgam, ou I’Homme Prodigieux, 276 Gosse, Edmund, 137 Gove, Philip, 258, 280, 285 gravity, ideas of, in cosmic voyages: Kepler, 45; Godwin, 77, 80; Wil­ kins, 95-96; Brunt, 99, 105-106; Cyrano, 160, 169; Defoe, 186-187; Holberg, 227-228; Verne, 246; Wells, 248 Gray, Thomas, 127-129, 278 “green children,” 83, 89 Gregory, David, 277 Grew, Nehemiah, 273 Grotius, Hugo, 151, 261 gryphons, 67-68 Guidotti, Paola, 111 Gulliver’s Travels. See Swift; voy­ ages ; flying machines Gunner, John Babington, 265 gunpowder, use of, in cosmic voy­ ages, 161, 240, 245 Gusmao, Bartholomeu Louren^o de, 181-182, 190, 276

Hall, Joseph, 222, 261 Halley, Edmond, 205 “Hans Pfaal.” See Poe Harding, Francis, 126-127, 272 Harrington, J., 20, 260 Hart, Ivor B„ 285 Havers, G., 269 Hermannus, Fredericus, 113

INDEX

Herschel, Sir John, 241 Herschel, Sir William, 241 Hevelius, Johann, 266, 267 Heylyn, Peter, 267 Heywood, Thomas, 33-34, 259, 264 Hicks, Francis, 21 Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 264 Histoire comique des Estats et Em­ pires de la Lune. See Cyrano de Bergerac History of Israel Jobson, 281 Hodgson, J. E„ 175-176, 285, 287 Holberg, Ludwig, 231, 233, 246, 248, 278, 280. Journey to the World Under-Ground, 226-230; descent to a new world, 227-228; discovery of planet Nazar, 228; customs, 229; journey by use of birds, 229 Homer, 225 Hooke, Robert, 116, 120, 216, 221, 269, 270; on artificial wings, 116 ff.; on Lana’s airship, 170, 175 Hoole, John, 20, 260 Hughes, John, 204 Hunt, Leigh, 137 Hutchins, Henry, 275 Huygens, Christian, 85, 216, 231, 273, 276, 278; Cosmotheoros, 60-62 hydrogen, 176 “Icaromenippus.” See Lucian Icarus. See Daedalus “In Artem Volandi,” 126-127, 272 “Invasion from Mars,” x, 1-2, 6, 241, 247, 285 Island of Dr. Moreau, 247 “Israel Jobson, the Wandering Jew,” 177-178, 281, 284. See also voyages, cosmic Iter Lunare, 178, 180 n., 274 Jacobius, Helene, 283 Johnson, Samuel, 133-134, 281, 285 Johnson, Samuel, of Cheshire, 202 Jonson, Ben, 28-29, 40, 96, 262 Journal des Sgavans, 118 “Journey from this World to the Next,” 283 Journey to Hell, 273

293

Journey to the World in the Moon, 274 Journey to the World Under-Ground. See Holberg Jupiter, 64, 217 Kabra Nagast, 259 Kai Koos, 67 Kepler, Johan, xi, 17, 21, 23, 27-28, 30, 37, 62, 66, 77, 80, 81, 87, 92, 94, 95, 163, 168, 186, 201, 222, 234, 246, 248-249, 258, 259, 262, 264, 286. Somnium: composition, 41 ; autobiographical elements in “Duracotus,” 43 ff. ; lunar world, 4647 ; life in moon, 46-47. Influence : Butler, 47-48 ; More, 48-49 ; Donne, 49-52 ; Milton, 52-54 ; Wells, 248-250 Kindermann, Eberhard Christian, 172, 279 Kircher, Athanasius, 57, 157, 215, 225-226, 246, 248-249, 268, 278 kite-voyage. See Lunarian kites, place in history of aviation, 152-153, 265 Knolles, Richard, 112, 261 Koch, Howard, x Krook, Johan, 278

La Décoïiverte australe par un Homme-volant. See Restif de la Bretonne La Follie, Louis Guillaume de, “electrical” flying machine, 196 ff., 282 La Hire, Laurent de, 211 La Hire, Philippe de, 211, 212, 214 Lamb, Charles, 137, 220 Lana, Francesco, 39, 182, 190, 199, 270, 275, 279, 280; airship, 168ff.; scientific reputation, 170; anticipa­ tion of danger of aviation, 171172 ; literary influence, 172 ff., 182 L’Art de Naviger dans I’Air, 280 L’Art de Voyager dans I’Air, 283 Laufer, Berthold, 287 Lawton, Harold, 285 Le Philosophe sans Prétention. See La Follie Leibniz, Gottfried, 168, 170

294

INDEX

Lesley, John, 13, 260 “Letter from the Man in the Moon,” 274 “Levania.” See Kepler, Somnium Lewis, C. S., ix, 251-256 LTmpotenza del Demonio, 280 Lindbergh, Charles, 173 Locke, Richard Adams, “MoonHoax,” 241 ff, 246 Lohmeier, Philip, 170, 270 Loomis, Roger, 68, 259, 285 Lowes, John Livingston, 6, 26, 222, 286 Lucian, 5, 8, 9, 15-17, 21, 24, 50, 51, 62, 90, 93, 104, 109, 136, 139, 163, 221, 223, 225, 236, 237, 259, 264, 267. Cosmic voyage in True His­ tory, 14; artificial wings, 14-15 Lucretius, 175 “Luna Habitabilis.” See Gray Lunardi, Vincenzo, 200, 237, 283 Lunarian, or Nerves from the World in the Moon (anon. MS.), 154— 156, 238, 273 Lyly, John, 22

McColley, Grant, xii, 265, 282, 286 McDermot, Murtagh, 161 n., 240, 278 McElwain, Mary B., 282, 286 Machiavelli, 50 McKillop, Alan, 189 Mackintosh, Thomas, 70 Macrobius, 27 Maestlin, Michael, 43 magnetism, ideas of, in cosmic voy­ ages, 179, 181-182, 192 Magus, Simon, 33 Man in the Moon (by S.S.), 267 Man in the Moon (W. Thomson), 56-57, 283 Man in the Moone (anon.), 262 Man in the Moone. See Godwin Manners, Councellor, 85 Marco Polo, 65, 69 Mars, 6, 8, 58, 64, 172, 251, 252, 257. See also “Invasion from Mars” Martello, Pier Jacopo, 182-183, 275 “Martinus Scriblerus," 215 n. Mendoza, Francesco de, 169 “Menippus.” See Lucian

Mercury, 6, 58, 64, 132, 196 ff. Mersenne, Marin, 264 Meston, William, 86 Micrographia, 269 Micromégas. See Voltaire Milky Way, 23, 215 Milton, John, 156, 167, 206, 209, 213, 227, 260; quoted, 6, 22, 23, 107, 168; possible relation to Kepler, 53-54; cosmic voyage in Paradise Lost, 54-56 Mirror for Magistrates, 11, 259 Modern Atlantis, 283 Mohler, Nora, xi, 192, 199, 282, 286 Molyneux, William, 272 Montgolfier, Frères, 157, 172, 175, 200, 211, 237 moon, 266, 267, 269, 272, 274 ; radar communication with, 2-3 ; possi­ bility of travel" to, 3 ; pretelescopic ideas of, 22-23; Galileo’s observa­ tions on, 24-25 ; inhabitability of, 8, 14, 20, 26-32, 46-47, 49, 59-60, 128, passim. World in the moon, 14, 20, 26-32, 46, 49, 51, 59, 89, 160 ; Kepler, 45—47 ; Fontenelle, 59-60; Godwin, 79-83 ; D’Urfey, 87-88 ; Aphra Behn, 91 ; Cyrano, 163-165; “Israel Jobson,” 178— 179; Martello, 182; Defoe, 187; Brunt, 106-107; Swift, 190-191; “Raccolta,” 212-214; Lewis Car­ roll, 230-231 ; “Moon-Hoax,” 241242; Verne, 246; Wells, 248-250. See also voyages, moon Moon Calf, 275 “Moon-Hoax,” 241-242 “moon spring,” 178, 181 n., 274 More, Henry, 40, 48-49, 266 More, Thomas, 71 Morghen, Filippo, 211-213, 282 Morley, Edith, 137 Morris, Ralph, 279 Mundus Alter et Idem, 222, 261 Mysteryes of Art and Nature, 264 Navis Aeria. See Zamagna New Journey to the World in the Moon, 187-189, 275 News from the New World, 28-29

INDEX

Newton, Isaac, 7, 95, 99, 193, 205, 258, 276 “Nils Klim.” See Holberg, Journey to the World Under-Ground “Noah’s Ark,” 189 Nouveau Dédale, 134—136, 278 novae, discovery of, 23 Oldenburg, Henry, 216 Orlando Furioso. See Ariosto Orpheus, 27 Osborne, Dorothy, 122, 149, 267 Out of the Silent Planet. See Lewis Paine, Tom, 254 Paltock, Robert, 225, 233, 242, 248, 280. Romance of Peter Wilkins: sources, 136-138 ; subterranean voyage, 138-140; flying woman, 140-142; flying machine, 142-143 Paludan, Julius, 278 parachute, 10, 13-14, 111-112, 119, 264, 276 Pascal, Blaise, 209, 214 “Passarola,” 181-182, 190 Pepys, Samuel, 116, 175, 220, 221 Perelandra. See Lewis Peter Pan, 212 Peter Wilkins. See Paltock Philo Judaeus, 96 Philosophical Society of Oxford, 30, 93, 113 “Pindarick Poem on Three Skipps of a Louse,” 271 Pitt, Christopher, 205 Plan, Pierre-Paul, 278 planets, 24, 27, 57, 60, 61, 91. See also voyages, planetary; Jupiter; Mars; Mercury; Saturn; Sun; Venus Plato, 16, 21 plurality of worlds, interest in, 8, 60, 256, 271, and passim (under “cosmic voyages”) Plutarch, 16-17, 21, 24, 243, 259 Poe, Edgar Allan, ix, 237, 243, 244, 246, 265. Adventures of Hans Pfaal, 238-241 ; relation to Godwin and Cyrano, 239 Pope, Alexander, 119, 120, 209, 215 n. Prince of Abissinia, 281

295

“Privolvans.” See Kepler, Somnium Purchas his Pilgrimage, 221 Pyrotechnica, 265 Pythagoras, 27

Rabelais, 18-19, 21, 163 Raccolta. See Morghen ; voyages, moon Ralph, James, 279 Rasselas, 133 ff., 281 Regiomontanus, 151-152, 169, 170 Relation du Monde de Mercure, 58, 279 relativity, cosmic, 187, 193-194, 209210, 218-219, 234-235, 245-246, 252-253 Restif de la Bretonne, Nicolas Edmé, La Découverte australe, 145-149, 233, 282 Riccioli, Giovanni Battista, 267 Riederer, F., 260 Roberti, P. Giambattista, 279 Robinson Crusoe, 71, 99, 136, 137, 139 rocket, moon, 3, 4, 19, 32, 38, 156, 161-162 Rohault, Jacques, 159, 163 Roumier, Marie-Anne de, 57-58, 282 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Le Nouveau Dédale, 134-136, 145, 278 Royal Society, 30, 93, 113, 116, 117, 132, 179, 192, 196, 221 Russen, David, of Hythe, 178, 180 n., 274

“sailing chariot” of Simon Stevinus, 150, 261 St. Serf, Thomas, 268, 274 Saint Sorlin, Desmarets de, 263 Saturn, 60, 62, 64, 153-154, 216, 257 Satyre Menippée, 20, 106, 260 Schott, Gaspar, 169 Scott, Sir Walter, 137 Scribleriad, 119-120, 279 Scriblerus Club, 215 n. Second and More Strange Voyage to the World in the Moon, 274 “Selenites.” See Wells, First Men in the Moon Selenographia (anon, kite-voyage),

296

INDEX

154-156, 238-239, 273. See also Lunarian Selenographia (J. Hevelius), 266 Settle, Elkanah, 88-89, 242, 272 Seversky, Alexander de, 3, 5, 33, 287 Shadwell, Thomas, 124, 270 Shanama, 67 Sheba, Queen of, 10 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 137 Shun, Emperor, 10, 111 Sirius, 214 ff. Solomon, 10, 259 Somnium. See Kepler Somnium Scipionis, 16-17, 21, 24, 259 Sorel, Charles, 158-159, 178, 263 South Sea Bubble, satire on, 99 ff. Southey, Robert, 137 space ship, 3, 32, 252 Spenser, Edmund, 11, 259 Spinoza, 168 Staple of News, 28 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 66 Stevinus, Simon, 150, 261 Stimson, Dorothy, 269 Sturm, J. C., 170, 270 “Subvolvans.” See Kepler, Somnium Sun, voyages to, 56, 58, 87 ff., 129, 167-168 “Superman,” 9, 251 supernatural, use of, in cosmic voy­ ages. See voyages, moon Swedenborg, Emanuel, 167, 211, 243, 276, 281; religious adaptation of cosmic voyage, 63-66 Swift, Jonathan, xi, 25, 71, 81, 84, 85, 99, 100, 123, 136, 137, 138, 209, 214, 219, 220, 230, 234, 277, 286. “Flying Island” in Voyage to Laputa: combination of moon­ voyage and flying machine, 190 ff.; principle of flight, 191-193; use of magnetism, 192-193; adaptation of Gilbert’s dipping-needle and terrella, 192-193 ; symbolism, 194 Swinburne, Algernon, 171 Sylva Sylvarum, 263 Sylvester, Joshua, 151, 261 Sylvie and Bruno, 230-231

Tales of Space and Time, 247 “Tarzan,” 9

Taylor, John, 11, 259 telescope, 23-25, 28-29, 45, 51, 110, 153, 154, 184, 187, 206, 207 Temple, Sir William, 122, 123, 284 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 247 terrella, 193-194 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 137 Thomson, William, 56-57, 283 Time Machine, 247 Torralba, 18-19, 45, 186, 260 Traherne, Thomas, 210 Travels of Hildebrand Bozvman, 143— 145, 282 Trent, W. P., 187, 274, 275 Trip to the Moon (Gentleman), 281 Trip to the Moon (McDermot), 278 True History. See Lucian Twenty-one Balloons, 251 vacuum, principle of, applied to flight, 165-166, 169-170 Vanity of Dogmatising, 123, 268 Venus, 4, 6, 58, 64, 129, 251, 252 Veranzius, Faustus, 112 Verne, Jules, ix, 5, 9, 21, 161 n., 237, 265. From the Earth to the Moon: sources, 243-244 ; American con­ quest of moon, 244—245 ; ascent of “Columbiad,” 245 ; relativity, 245246; moon-world, 246 Vinci, Leonardo da, 13-14, 285 ; on birds and artificial wings, 110-111 ; on parachute, 111-112 Virgil, 173, 225 Virtuoso, 270 Vivian, E. Charles, 267 Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de, 220, 227, 231, 234, 280; Micromé­ gas, 57, 214-219, 280 von Guericke, Otto, 169, 170, 195, 199 Voyage to Cacklogallinia. See Brunt Voyage to Laputa. See J. Swift Voyage to the World of Cartesius. See Daniel, Gabriel Voyage to the World in the Centre of the Earth (anon.), 280 voyages, cosmic : “Imaginary” and “extraordinary,” 7, 18, 219 ; “cos­ mic” defined, 7-8, 219-220. Sources : classical, 13-17 ; mediae­ val, 18; Renaissance, 18-21. Con­ ventions established, 15-21, 77, 95,

INDEX

163. Effect of science on : 14, 21-22, 41, 47, 56, 62-63, 66, 195, 241-242, 245, 247. Effect of technology on: 235-236, 237, 239-240, 242, 243, 250, 251, 256. Variations on: 210 ff. Modem critique of: 255 ff. voyages, moon: A. By supernatural means: Kep­ ler, 41^47; Milton, 54—56; More, 48—49; Thomson, 56 ; Kircher, 57; Swedenborg, 57 ff.; Cyrano, 164 ff. Decline of type under impact of science, 56, 62, 63, 66 B. By means of birds: Oriental origins, 67 ; Alexander romance, 67-68, 142, 212; Dante, 68; Chaucer, 68-69; Wilkins, 6970; Godwin, 71-85; Brunt, 98108; Holberg, 229 C. By “flying chariots” : Lunarian kite-voyage, 154—156; Cyrano, 161 ff.; Lana, 168 ff, 172 ff, 182-183; Defoe, 184-187; Swift, 189-195; La Follie, 195 ff.; Poe, 238-241; Verne, 243-247; Wells, 248-250 See also moon; flying machines voyages, planetary: Lucian, 16; Donne, 50-52; Milton, 54—56; Kircher, 57; de Roumier, 57-58; Swedenborg, 64-66; D’Urfey, 8788; Cyrano, 164-165; “Israel Jobson,” 178-179; La Follie, 198 ff.; Johnson of Cheshire, 202; Daniel, 202-203; Voltaire, 214-219; Mar­ garet of Newcastle, 223-224; C. S. Lewis, 251-254 voyages, subterranean: sources, 225226; Peter Wilkins, 138-139, 225, 232; Holberg, 226-230; Lewis Car­ roll, 230-236; Wells, 248-250 Voyages du Milord Ceton, 57—58, 282

Walpole, Robert, 247 “Wandering Jew.” See “Israel Jobson” War of the Worlds, 247 Ward, Ned, 273 Watson, Dr. Fletcher, 4 Watt, James, 213 Welles, Orson, x, 5

297

Wells, H. G, ix, 4, 5, 9, 47, 179, 237. First Men in the Moon: sources, 247 ff.; influence of Kepler on, 248-250; lunar vegetation, 258259; subterranean world, 248-250; Selenites, 250 Wesley, Samuel, 86, 271 Whiggs Supplication, 86, 271 Wilkins, John, viii, 85, 90, 102, 118, 132, 133, 136, 142, 157, 168, 171, 175, 185, 194, 201, 220, 258, 263, 265-266, 274. Mathematical! Ma­ gick, 98. Discovery of a New World, 40, 93-98, 220. On coloniza­ tion of moon, 29-30; on flight of birds, 69-70; on artificial wings, 113-116; on gravity, 95-96; on diet and sleep, 96-97; on flying chariots, 150 ff. Relation to Godwin, 94-95; establishes conventions of cosmic voyage, 95; in Raccolta, 212-214 Willughby, Francis, 117, 271 Wilson, Miles, 177-179, 281, 284 wings, possibility of flight by, 9, 22, 111, 195. Early suggestions: Bladud, 10-12; Elmer of Malmes­ bury, 12; Damian, 12-13; Lucian, 15, 109; Leonardo da Vinci, 14; “Turk in Busbequius,” 109, 112, 114; Danti, 110-111. Wilkins’ theo­ ries of, 113 ff.; Hooke’s, 116-117; Wren’s, 117. Literary treatments of, 121 ff.; Addison, 124-126; Harding, 126-127; Gray, 127-128; Fielding, 132-133; Samuel John­ son, 133-134; Rousseau, 134-135. Romances based on: Peter Wilkins, 136-143; Hildebrand Bow­ man, 143 ff.; Restif de la Bretonne, 145-149. See also flight Wonders in the Sun, 87-88, 275 Worcester, Marquis of, 118, 269 Wotton, Sir Henry, 24 Wren, Sir Christopher, 117 Xenophanes, 27 Young, Edward, 207-210

Zamagna, Bernard, 173-175, 282 Zend Avesta, 67 Zoroaster, 67 Zouch, Richard, 266