A Voyage to the Moon

2

Among the "others" who had previously "discovered" the Moon, Ariosto is the most prominent. In his Orlando Furioso, Astolfo goes to the moon, visits the "Valley of Lost Things," finds there many broken resolutions, idlers' days, lovers' tears, and other such matters; and finally recovers Orlando's lost wits, which he brings back to the earth.

The Satire Ménippée (1594) gives, in its Supplément, "News from the Regions of the Moon."

Quevedo, the Spanish satirist and novelist (1580-1645), with whose works Cyrano was acquainted, also gives an account of the moon in his Sixth Vision.

In England, the Rev. John Wilkins (1614-1672), once Principal of Trinity College, Cambridge, and later Bishop of Chester, a brother-in-law of Cromwell, and one of the founders of the Royal Society, published in 1638 the "Discovery of a New World; or, a Discourse to prove it is probable there may be another habitable world in the Moon; with a discourse concerning the possibility of a passage thither"; and later, in 1640, the "Discourse concerning a new Planet; tending to prove it is probable our earth is one of the Planets." These two works are said to have done more than any others to popularize the Copernican system in England. The Discovery of a New World was translated into French by Jean de Montagne, and published at Rouen in 1655 or 1656. See Charles Nodier, Mélanges extraits d'une petite bibliothèque.

Finally, the most important of Cyrano's predecessors in the discovery of the moon was Francis Godwin, M.A., D.D., Bishop of Llandaff and later of Hereford (1562-1633). It was not till 1638, after the worthy Bishop's death, and in the same year that Rev. (later Bishop) John Wilkins' Discovery of a New World was published, that there appeared his "Man in the Moone; or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither, by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger." This was translated into French by Jean Baudoin or Baudouin in 1648, as "L'homme dans la lune … voyage … fait par Dominique Gonzales, aventurier espagnol," and was well known to Cyrano, as we shall see.

In saying that "the sun owes its discovery wholly to our author," the translator appears to be ignorant of a work which Cyrano certainly knew: the Civitas solis of Campanella, published in 1623 as a part of his Realis Philosophiæ Epilogisticæ Partes IV.

3

Cf. the last sentence of the Voyage to the Moon.

4

Monsieur de Cuigy, who is mentioned by Lebret as a friend and admirer of Cyrano, and who was one of the witnesses of his famous battle against the hundred ruffians, possessed an estate at Clamart-sous-Meudon, near Paris. He appears as a character in M. Rostand's play of Cyrano de Bergerac.

5

Jerome Cardan, 1501-1576, natural philosopher, doctor, astrologer, mathematician, and a voluminous author; in short, a sort of Italian Paracelsus, both by his universal learning, and by his intense interest in all domains of possible knowledge, in which he included astrology and necromancy. His most important work is the one referred to here, the De Subtilitate Rerum, 1551.

6

Cf. M. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, act III., scene xi.: "One way was to stand naked in the sunshine, in a harness thickly studded with glass phials, each filled with morning dew. The sun in drawing up the dew, you see, could not have helped drawing me up too!" (Miss Gertrude Hall' s translation.)

7

Generous = noble. Cf. Lord Burleigh, Precepts to his Son: "Let her not be poor, how generous soever; for a man can buy nothing in the market with gentility."

8

Stammering, mumbling; a North of England word.

9

Paul Lacroix, the editor of the French edition of Cyrano's works, not understanding this phrase, has ingeniously invented the interpretation of "quarantine officer" for it. Not only have the words never had this meaning, but they are evidently a proper name. And in fact François de l'Hospital, Maréchal de France, was Governor of Paris in 1649, the year when the Voyage to the Moon was probably written. Cyrano, thinking he has fallen in France, near Paris, and being asked if he carries news of the fleet to the Governor, naturally answers that he knows nothing of ships going to Paris, and that he carries no news to the Maréchal de l'Hospital.

10

In connection with this discussion it is to be remembered that nearly two centuries were required for the Copernican system, promulgated in 1543, in the De orbium coelestium revolutionibus, to become generally popularized; and that in 1633, only sixteen years before the Voyage to the Moon was written, Galileo had been compelled by the Inquisition to deny the motion of the earth.

11

According to the Ptolemaic system, still generally accepted by "modern Philosophers" at the time of Cyrano's writing, the fixed stars, the sun, the moon, and each of the five (then known) planets, revolved about the earth in different orbits, according to various "epicycles" and "excentrics."

12

The motion of the moon, for instance, was explained in the Ptolemaic system as an epicycle carried by an excentric; the centre of the excentric moving about the earth in a direction opposite to that of the epicycle.

13

The French has: "of the two other motions": i. e., the movement of the fixed stars, and that of the planets.

14

Gassendus or Gassendi was Cyrano's own teacher of Philosophy. Of Provençal origin, and at first Professor in the University of Aix, he came to Paris in 1641, and gave both private lessons and public courses as Professor of the Collège Royal. It was in one of his private classes that Cyrano was a fellow-student with Chapelle, Hesnaut, Bernier, and almost certainly Molière; the most important group of young "libertins" (i. e. free-thinkers) of the epoch.

Gassendi was a bitter opponent of the supposedly Aristotelian school-philosophy of the time; and was on the whole the leader of those who in the seventeenth century followed Epicurean methods in thought. He is the author of a life of Epicurus, and an exposition of his philosophy. He was also an opponent of Descartes, being the most important contemporary supporter of empiricism as against the essentially idealistic method of Descartes.

He is important also as a popularizer of the Copernican system, by his Life of Copernicus, and his Institutio Astronomica (1647).

15

A dog trained to turn a spit, by running about in a rotary cage attached to it. The French has simply: "as a dog makes a wheel turn, when he runs about in it."

16

Cyrano had probably learned this from his master Gassendi. Cf. his "Epistola XX. de apparente magnitudine solis," 1641. Modern Gassendis say the sun is 1,300,000 times greater than the earth in volume, 316,000 times in mass.

17

Ingenuously. The two words were interchangeable in the seventeenth century.

18

Iron pyrites.

19

Supports, feeds; cf. Shakspere, Richard III.

"I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
And entertain a score or two of tailors."

20

St. Augustine.

21

The Feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24.

22