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