A Voyage to the Moon Part 14

We have thus placed before the reader an a.n.a.lysis of this interesting Satirical Romance. The time and s.p.a.ce we have occupied sufficiently indicate the favourable sentiments respecting it with which we have been impressed. Of the execution of the satires, from the several extracts we have given, the reader will himself be enabled to judge.

This is of course unequal, but generally felicitous. In the personal allusions which occur through the work, the author exhibits, as we have before noticed, a freedom from malice and all uncharitableness, and in many of them has attained that happy _desideratum_ which Dryden considered a matter of so much difficulty:--

"How easy is it," he observes, "to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that n.o.ble trade, which yet no master can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the scholar is never the nearer in his practice; neither is it true, that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled, while he is hurt, in this manner, and a fool feels it not: the occasion of an offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted, that, in effect, this way does more mischief--that a man is secretly wounded, and, though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it out for him, yet, there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband."[11]

In conclusion, we must express our regret, that the author should not have added notes to the work--the want of them will be seriously felt by every one; some of the satires, indeed, must escape the reader, unless he pay a degree of attention, which notes would have rendered unnecessary. In his next edition, we trust that this deficiency may be supplied; and we antic.i.p.ate as much instruction and entertainment, from the wide scope which such an undertaking will afford, as we have derived from the perusal of the text. Cheerfully would we extend to him, if required, the leisure claimed by Spenser, after he had composed the first six books of his "_Faerie Queene_," provided he would promise us similar conditions:--

"After so long a race as I have run Through Faery Land, which those six books compile, Give leave to rest me, being half foredonne, And gather to myself new breath awhile;

"Then, as a steed refreshed after toyle, Out of my prison will I break anew, And stoutly will that second work a.s.soyle, With strong endeavour, and attention due."

[APPENDIX FOOTNOTES]

[Footnote 1: Scott's Swift, vol. xi. p. 4]

[Footnote 2: Aristoph. in Pace. 130.]

[Footnote 3: Orlando furioso, Canto x.x.xiv. St. 68 and 69.]

[Footnote 4: Micromegas, Histoire Philosophique, chap. 8.]

[Footnote 5: Fuller, a learned contemporary of the Bishop, has given us an amusing case of litigation, originating from this nourishing character of odours.--

"A poor man, being very hungry, staid so long in a cook's shop, who was dishing up meat, that his stomach was satisfied with only the smell thereof. The choleric cook demanded of him to pay for his breakfast, the poor man denied having had any; and the controversy was referred to the deciding of the next man that should pa.s.s by, who chanced to be the most notorious idiot in the whole city be, on the relation of the matter, determined that the poor man's money should be put betwixt two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man's money, as he was satisfied with the smell of the cook's meat."--_Fuller's Holy State_, lib. iii. c.

12.]

[Footnote 6: Aristophan. in pace. 137.]

[Footnote 7: The idea of the Glonglims is the author's. Ariosto makes the lost intellect, of those who become insane upon the earth, ascend to the moon, where it is kept _bottled_.--

"Era come un liquor suttile e molle, Atto a esalar, se non si tien ben chiuso; E si vedea raccolto in varie ampolle, Qual piu, qual men capace, atte a quell' uso."

_Orlando furioso_, Cant. 34. St. 83.]

[Footnote 8: Our author might also have alluded to the old apology for every thing inane or contemptible--"It is a tale of the man in the moon." When that arch flatterer, John Lylie, published (in 1591) his "_Endymion_, or _the man in the moon_"--a _court comedy_, as it was afterwards called; in other words, intended for the gratification of Queen Elizabeth, and in which her personal charms and attractions are grossly lauded--he pleads guilty to its defect in plot, in the following exquisite apologetic prologue:--

"Most high and happy Princess, we must tell you a tale of the man in the moon; which, if it seem ridiculous for the method, or superfluous for the matter, or for the means incredible, for three faults we can make but one excuse,--it is a tale of the man of the moon."

"It was forbidden in old time to dispute of Chymera, because it was a fiction: we hope in our times none will apply pastimes, because they are fancies: for there liveth none under the sun that knows what to make of the man in the moon. We present neither comedy, nor tragedy, nor story, nor any thing, but that whosoever heareth may say this:-- 'Why, here is a tale of the man in the moon.' Yet this is the man designated by Blount, who re-published his plays in 1632, as the '_only rare poet of that time, the witie, comicall, facetiously-quicke, and unparallel'd John Lylie, Master of Arts!'"]

[Footnote 9: It is to be regretted that the author has not followed the good example set him by Johnson, in his _Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia_, published in the Gentlemen's Magazine for 1738: the denominations of the speakers being formed of the letters of their real names, so that they might be easily deciphered. This neglect has obscured many of the author's most interesting satires.

Who could suppose from the letters alone, that _Wigurd_, _Vindar_, and _Avarabet_, were respectively intended for _G.o.dwin_, _Darwin_, and _Lavater_?]

[Footnote 10: It is a curious circ.u.mstance, that Swift, in his description of the Academy of Lagado, should have so completely antic.i.p.ated the Pestalozzian invention.]

[Footnote 11: Dryden's Essay on Satire]