A Voyage to Cacklogallinia

Voyage to Cacklogallinia, A

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Title: A Voyage to Cacklogallinia With a Description of the Religion,
Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country
Author: Captain Samuel Brunt

Release Date: July 4, 2005 [eBook #16202]
Language: English
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A VOYAGE TO CACKLOGALLINIA
With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of
that Country
by
CAPTAIN SAMUEL BRUNT
Reproduced from the Original Edition, 1727, with an Introduction by
MARJORIE NICOLSON
Published for THE FACSIMILE TEXT SOCIETY By Columbia
University Press New York: MCMXL

INTRODUCTION
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia appeared in London, in 1727, from the pen
of a pseudonymous "Captain Samuel Brunt." Posterity has continued to
preserve the anonymity of the author, perhaps more jealously than he
would have wished. Whatever his real parentage, he must for the
present be referred only to the literary family of which his progenitor
"Captain Lemuel Gulliver" is the most distinguished member. Like so
many other works of that period, A Voyage to Cacklogallinia has
sometimes been attributed to Swift; its similarities to the fourth book of
_Gulliver's Travels_ are unmistakable. Again, the work has sometimes
been attributed to Defoe. There is, however, no good reason to believe
that either Defoe or Swift was concerned in its authorship, except in so
far as both gave impetus to lesser writers in this form of composition.
Fortunately the authorship of the work is of little importance. It lives,
not because of anything remarkable in the style or anything original in
its author's point of view, but because of its satiric reflection of the
background of its age. It is republished both because of its historical
value and because of its peculiarly contemporary appeal today. Its
satire needs no learned paraphernalia of footnotes; it can be readily
understood and appreciated by readers in an age dominated on the one
hand by economics and on the other, by science. Its satire-- not too
subtle--is as pertinent in our own period as it was two hundred years
ago. Its irony is concerned with stock exchanges and feverish
speculation. It is a tale of incredible inflation and abrupt and

devastating depression. Its "voyage to the moon" has not lost its appeal
to men and women who can still remember a period when human
flights seemed incredible and who have lived to see "flying chariots"
spanning oceans and continents and ascending into the stratosphere.
The first and most obvious interest of the tale is in its reflection of
economic conditions in the early eighteenth century. The period
following the Revolution of 1688 saw tremendous changes in attitudes
toward credit and speculation. A new and powerful economic
instrument was put into the hands of men who had not yet discovered
its dangers. With the natural confusion which ensued between "credit"
and "wealth," with a new emphasis upon the possible values inherent in
"expectations of wealth" rather than immediate control over money, an
unheard-of speculative emphasis appeared in business. The rapid
increase in new trades and new industrial systems afforded possibilities
of immediate rise to affluence. The outside public engaged in
speculation to a degree not before known. Exaggerated gains, violent
fluctuations in prices, meteoric rises and collapses--these gave rein to a
gambling spirit perennial in man. The word "Projects" enters into
literature as a recurrent motif, strangely familiar to our present
generation, which needs only to turn Defoe's Essay on Projects into
contemporary language to see the similarities between the year 1697
and the year 1939. That essay is filled with talk of "new Inventions,
Engines, and I know not what, which have rais'd the Fancies of
Credulous People to such height, that merely on the shadow of
Expectation, they have form'd Companies, chose Committees,
appointed Officers, Shares, and Books, rais'd great Stocks, and cri'd