A Voyage to Cacklogallinia | Page 3

help of fowls." Ten years
earlier there appeared in England during the same year two works
which were to have great influence in popularizing the theme of light:
Wilkins's Discovery of a World in the Moone,[7] a serious
semiscientific work on the nature of the moon and the possibility of
man's flying thither, and a prose romance by Francis Godwin, _The
Man in the Moone: or, A Discourse of a Voyage thither by D.
Gonsales._[8] These two works were largely responsible for the
emergence of the old theme of flight to the moon in imaginative

literature; the English translation of Lucian at almost the same time
perhaps aided in advancing the popularity of the idea.
The similarities between Brunt's romance and Godwin's tale a century
earlier are too striking to be fortuitous, and, indeed, there is no question
that Brunt used Godwin as one of his chief sources. An earlier
Robinson Crusoe, an idyllic _Gulliver's Travels_, Godwin's The Man in
the Moone helped to establish in English literature the vogue of the
traveler's tale to strange countries. Domingo, like Captain Samuel
Brunt, draws from the "exotic" tradition. Both travelers find themselves
in strange lands; both experience many other adventures before they
make their way to the moon, drawn by birds.
But the century which elapsed between Godwin's fanciful tale and
Brunt's fantastic romance felt the impact of the new science. No matter
how clearly both tales draw from old traditions of legend and literature,
no matter how many elements of fantasy remain, there is a profound
and fundamental difference between them. Godwin's hero made his
way to the moon by mere chance; it happened that he harnessed himself
to his gansas during their period of hibernation. Too late, he discovered
that gansas hibernate in the moon! The earlier voyage took only
"Eleven or Twelve daies"--and that by gansa power! The earlier author
did not suggest that his hero encountered any particular difficulties of
respiration, nor did he pause to consider in detail the problem of the
nature of the intervening air through which his hero passed.
But a hundred years of science had intervened between Godwin's tale
and that of Captain Samuel Brunt. The later voyage to the moon is no
less fantastic in its outlines than is the earlier, yet it shows clearly the
impact of science upon popular imagination. The imagination of man
had expanded with the expanding universe. Brunt takes care to indicate
the vast distance between the earth and the moon by subtle
mathematical suggestion. Although both travelers flew "with incredible
swiftness," the eighteenth-century flyers found that it was "about a
Month before we came into the Attraction of the Moon." Brunt's
account of the preparation for the ascent into the orb of the moon is
almost as careful as a modern account of an ascent into the stratosphere.

His bird flyers lay their plans deliberately and upon the basis of the
most recent scientific discoveries. There is nothing fortuitous about
their final ascent. Brunt was clearly aware of the work of many
scientists, notably Boyle, upon the nature and rarefaction of the air. His
flyers proceed by slow stages, accustoming themselves gradually to the
rarefied air, assisting their respiration by the use of wet sponges. They
learn by experience the answer to the problems with which Godwin's
mind had played but which many later scientific writers had considered
more definitely: what is the nature of gravity; how far beyond the
confines of the earth does it extend; what would happen to man could
he "pass the Atmosphere"? The generation to which Captain Samuel
Brunt belonged might still delight in the fantastic; but like our own
generation, it insisted that fantasy must rest upon that which is at least
scientifically possible, if not probable.
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia is republished today because of its appeal
to many readers. It offers something to the student of economic history;
something to the student of early science. It is one of several
little-known "voyages to the moon," of which the most famous are
those of Cyrano de Bergerac, a form of reading in which our ancestors
delighted and which deserve to be collected. But apart from having a
not-inconsiderable historical interest, it remains the kind of tale which
may be read at any time because it appeals to the fundamental love of
adventure in human beings. Its author was undoubtedly only one of
many men who, under the influence of Godwin, Swift, and others,
could weave a tale in an accepted pattern. Yet there are elements which
make it unique; and it deserves at least this opportunity of rising
phoenix-like from the ashes of the past and being treasured by
posterity.
MARJORIE NICOLSON Smith College Northampton, Mass. Nov. 3,
1939

[1: The best treatment of the South Sea Bubble for