THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19268, 24 March 1928, Page 13

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (SFECULLT WRITTEN 708 THE PRESS.) By A. H. Gbinlixg. CCLXII.—ON THE MOON.

There was an important omission in the list of literary centenaries which I compiled at the boginning of the year. Jules Verue'was born on February Bth, 1828, at Nantes, in France. How well I remember the delight with which, as a boy, I read, one after another, all his books. Sampson Low conferred a tremendous benefit upon the youth of the early seventies, when they issued all Jules Verne's stories in a popular edition at a very low price, and the books had an enormous circulation both in England and in America. Jules "Verne was only twelve years of age when .i 0 wrote his first poem, and pretty poor stuff it was, but it was not as a poet that he was to find fame. It was the amazing adventures of Baron Munchausen which he read as a boy that eventually decided his literary career. He asked himself whether it might not be possible to write something of the sort in a serious strain, so that the;, would bear the impress of truth. As a result "Five Weeks in a Balloon" appeared in 1863, quickly followed by "A Voyage to the Centre of the Earth," "From the Earth to the Moon," "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "Around the World in Eighty Days," "Michael Strogoff," and the rest. Wonderful as those stories seemed sixty or seventy years ago, read to-day they are but a recital of very ordinary feats.

Jtjles Verne was not a scientist, but a novelist pure and simple. He was a close student ( all the popular handbooks published on scientific subjects, and his study was crowded with all manner of scientific instruments, such as a quadrant, an electrical machine, a thermopile, globes of diiferent sizes, as welf as maps, calendars, and charts. He was not a traveller, but he made one balloon ascent, and he made aeronautics his special subject. My favourite wyss "From the Earth to the Moon," a book which -it is interesting to compare with Mr H. G. Wells s "The First Man in the Moon," published some thirty-five years later. Jules Verne was not the first Frenchman to make a romance out of the moon. 'He was anticipated 180 years before by Cyrano de Bergerac with his famous "Voyages to the Moon and the Sun," "The Voyage to the Moon" was supposed to have been written as early as 1648. Mr Eiehard Aldington says:—

Even in Cyrano's time there was nothing original in a fanciful voyage to the moon. Brun quotes" a formidable list of predecessors, most of whom one has never heard of, whose work Cyrano may or may have known. It probably derived directly or indirectly from Lucian of Samosate. It is certain that Cyrano copied Rabelais, that he took whole paragraphs and many ideas from Porel's "ffrancion, and several hints from Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon.

Bishop Godwin, of Llandaft an° Hereford, was born in 1562 and died in J. 63- "The. Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Vpyage thither by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger was published shortly after the author s death by E.M., of Christchuroh. The works show that Godwin had some imagination and was well acquainted with the ■Copernican system. It wis translated into French in 1648. It is generally supposed that from this work, Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, derived several hints for his 'Discovery of a New World in the Moon' and that Cyrano de Bergerac also borrowed from it in the 'Voyage to the Mpon.' Swift is usually credited with having derived from de Bergerac some ideas for 'Gulliver's Travels,''particularly in the voyage to L<aputa; but there is no reason why he should not have taken them directly from Godwin." The title of Dr, Wilkjns's work published in 1638, was "The Discovery of a Wprld in the Moone, or a Discourse tending to provide that 'tis probable the're may be another habitable world in the planet." To the third edition of the book, published in 1640, there was added "A Discourse on the Possibility of a Passage Thither."

Jules Verne's story cjiffers from all tl}e above-mentioned writers in that 't was a novel pure and simple, without any ulterior motive or propagandist design. Of de Bergerac's work Mr Richard Aldington says: "These imaginary voyages are often described t>y French writers as 'Utopias.' They are no more Utopias than 'Pantagruel' and 'Gulliver's Travels.' They lack the political system of the Utopian romance, whose purpose is to recommend speciously some abominable form of tyranny under the pretext of making everybody happy. At different times I have read the 'Republic of Plato,' the 'Utopia' of Sir Thomas More, Canipanella,'s 'Citta del Sole,' William Morris's 'News from Nowhere,' and Hudson's 'A Crystal Age,' and I am bound to say, with all due deference to these great men, that Morris's 'Nowhere sounded least unendurable, while the rest were nightmares, visions of meddlesome cranks. I have a deep reverence for Plato, so far as I am able to comprehend him, but I think I wou d rather die than be enslaved by his ideal state." The same writer continues:

Now. Cyrano de Bergernc had n0 " nt ®"' tion of creating one of these ideall. «n pleasant tyrannies.' His P ur P p ~ e T lar to that of Rabelais and Swift. He wanted to satirise, existing humbugs, and prejudices; he £ ant "' to mock at a literal belief m the OM testa ment; he wanted to hold up to odii.m fundamental villainy of man, and he to convey amusingly a number of quasi scientific and philosophical ideas \vh ch it was highly dangerous then to publish, and still more dangerous to try to popularise. Even then Cyrano did not dare to publish the book in his lifetime; and it was mutilated when it appeared after his death.

When I contemplate the moon, two or three lines of a lyric come to my mind. I read them years ago in one of the early numbers of ''The English Review": The moon on the one hand, the dawn oil the The °moon is my sitter, the - dawn is my The on my left and the dawn on my My brother, good morning; my sister, goad night. I do not remember the author, but the lines associate themselves with Mr Hilaire Belloc's lines headed ''The Early Morning." "A saucy slip of » wench was she. She lav on her back and laughed at me, So early in the morning." To which may be joined Mr John Freeman's lines:—' It was tl)o lovely lifted Slowly her white brow ?mon3 Bronze cloud-waves that ebljed and drifted Faintly, fnintlier afar. Calm she looked, yet pale with wonder. Sweet in unwonted thoughtfulness, Watching the earth that" d.windled under F»int|y| faintlier afar. It was the lovely moon that lovelike Hovered ever the wandering, tired

Earth, hep bosom grey and dovelikc, Hovering beautiful as a dove. . The lovely moon, her soft light falling Lightly on Toof and poplar and pine— Tree to tree whispering and calling, Wonderful in the silvery shine Of the round, lovely, thoughtful moon

11l an esfsay oh "Motoring at Night" the late Dixon Scott says:—"Of motoring after nightfall there are ] anifestly two main kinds. On the one hand there is motoring by moonlight; on the other there is motoring on nights of cloud or undisputed stars. For my own part I much prefer the latter." After dwelling on the deof motoring under the stars, the essayist says:—

ILotoring by mooplight is very differtravel more swiftly—though I doubt whether you travel so far. You never quite reach the border line that divides the familiar from the phantasmal. There is none of those blanched abrupt births. The world is wider—a less partial lamp than yours expounds the pale beauty of the fields pnd spreads a moth* coloured carpet beneath the feet .of the m?ht. And as a result of tjie consequent release, the slackening of the optical tenr 6ion, the other senses, I have noticed acquire a A new freshness snd freedom. One 'grows peculiarly conscious, for example, of all the wayward night odours that slip out into the silver air at the summons of the dew. . . .

The tnoon is like a lantliorn held jliove the face of the sleeper: and by its light you can fpp. far and near, the little hamlets cuddling unconsciously round their brooding spires; and a town or two, may be, anij unsuspected farms in sly recesses, seeming now to show a light and now to hide it: and the soft small thread of brightness, quivering through the stillness which is the midnight mail. There is something strangely moving in the spectacle. It is as though you had caught the country unawares-—and had found it mueh simpler and more innocent than you knew. And it is a real satisfaction reserved for the motorist.