Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

APPENDICES

1. Extracts From Godwin, D'urfey and Swift

2. Bibliography

3. Genealogy

4. Coat of Arms

APPENDIX I

Bishop Godwin—Tom d'Urfey—Swift

To give full extracts from all the books copied by or copied from Cyrano de Bergerac would make a volume. In the notes or the introduction attention has already been called to Cyrano's greater or less indebtedness to Lucian, Rabelais, Sorel, Gassendi, Descartes, Rohault and other writers. His borrowing from Bishop Godwin's Man in the Moon is considerable. This pamphlet is included in the Harleian Miscellany (1810) vol. xi. The hero is a Spaniard, Domingo Gonsales, who manufactures a flying machine, drawn by "gansas," or wild geese, in which he is carried to the moon. There is a certain amount of scientific disquisition upon gravity and a rebuke to those who reject the Copernican system of astronomy; which corresponds with Cyrano's talk with the governor of New France. Other points in common may be tabulated:

1. Gonsales does not feel hungry on his voyage "on account of the purity of the air".

2. He sees the earth turning beneath him.

3. Everything in the moon is larger than in the earth and the people are "generally twice as high as ours"; they "live wonderful long", "a thousand years".

4. They fan themselves rapidly through the air; the "attraction" of the moon's earth is much less than ours.

5. A paragraph about sleep seems to have inspired Cyrano with his beds of flowers and tickling attendants.