This aerial somersault must take place where the neutral point of attraction lies .sx The Moon is lighted not only by the Sun , but by the reflection of the Sun's light on the Earth , a luminosity which is much brighter than terrestrial moonlight ; indeed , the smallest Lunars cannot stand the light of the Sun alone , and only the largest can bear the light of both Sun and Earth .sx Godwin's views on radiation are only partly sound .sx In mid-space he found it .sx exceeding temperate .sx .. as where neither the Sunne-beames has any subject to reflect upon , neither was yet either the earth or water so neere as to affect the ayre with their naturall quality of coldness .sx Yet we feel that Godwin's half truth is better than .sx that imagination of the Philosophers , attributing heat together with moystnesse unto the ayre , .sx which he had " never esteemed otherwise than a fancy " and which he later qualifies as " vanities , fansies , dreames , " along with the philosophers' region of fire in mid-air .sx Gravitation in the Newtonian sense does not enter into Godwin's rerum natura , but a magnetic force replaces it with not dissimilar effects .sx As the birds fly above Teneriffe , they rest and the lines slacken :sx In the upper air , if he does not encounter a fiery region , he does meet with Devils , whose temptations he overcomes ; they give him food , which on arrival in the Moon he finds changed into foul substances .sx Equally fantastic are his statements that birds migrate from Earth to Moon ( p. 67 ) and that lunar weaklings are exchanged for earth-babies , especially in North America , whose inhabitants .sx resemble the Lunars both in colour and in their tobacco smoking habit ( p. 105) .sx The Lunars possess magic stones of wonderful properties , some of which Gonsales brings to Earth .sx But there are more pleasant things ; interesting reflections on other countries and other customs ; the tobacco of the North American Indian , Spanish wine , the downy beds of Flanders and Antwerp beer ; Godwin knew of the Jesuit missions to China ; and he praises the noble conduct and chivalrous humanity of the English sailors who saved the Spanish mariners from their sinking ships ; and he contrasts the nimbleness of the English vessels with the lumbering bulk of the Spanish ships .sx Nor does he forget to inculcate moral lessons .sx The Lunars , who are of great stature and live to a great age , are models of conduct :sx There are no prisons nor pain of death :sx The temperate life of the Lunars , the pure air and gentle climate make physicians of little use , and the Moonmen die , when their allotted span is finished , like a candle going out .sx The consideration of lunar death gives Godwin the opportunity for some gentle satire .sx on earthly mourning .sx In the Moon , a man about to die calls his friends to a feast :sx Such was the world as Godwin would have it , and if I have quoted at some length , it is that better comparison may be made with the work of Cyrano de Bergerac .sx Godwin is said to have been a zealous reformer ; at any rate , he was a married bishop .sx Yet he wrote things which come strangely from a Protestant pen .sx His strange discoveries would be submitted to the " Sages of our State , " that they might determine whether they contained anything detrimental to the realm and to .sx The most striking feature of Godwin's description of the religion of the Lunars is their respect for the Holy Name .sx On landing in the Moon , and again on arrival at the court of the Prince Pylonas , Domingo pronounces the words " Iesus Maria " and all fall on their knees .sx They bow at the name of Saint Martin , for " Martin " is the lunar term for God .sx On an island named " Insula Martini " rules a Prince Hiruch , five thousand years old , who never leaves the island , and another person , Imozes , rules over things religious .sx In this perhaps veiled reference to the Papacy , there is no hint of satire .sx Truly amazing , especially if the book were written while Godwin was still a student at Oxford , is his knowledge of the Jesuit missions in China ; to these we shall refer again , but in passing we may notice that the Anglican divine must have followed with interest and with some sympathy the work of this most rigidly Roman of Roman Catholic societies .sx This survey of the contents of the Man in the Moone enables us .sx now to consider some problems concerning the authorship , the date of composition and the sources and influence of this lunar Utopia .sx The first edition of the Man in the Moone contains no reference whatever to Francis Godwin .sx The only name is that of Domingo Gonsales , and there are the mysterious initials " E.M. " at the end of the Preface .sx Moreover , the entry in the registers of the Company of Stationers runs as follows :sx Again , no reference to Godwin , but " E.M. " is identified .sx Now Wood says that our book was " published some years after the author's death by E.M. ( of Christ Church ) , " but my efforts to trace him have been of no avail , and Edward Mahon remains almost as mysterious as " E.M. " .sx The doubt that was aroused in the present writer's mind by this strange absence of the name of Francis Godwin was , however , removed by other considerations .sx The Nuncius Inanimatus , concerned with signalling , and anonymous on its first appearance , was ascribed in its second edition ( 1657 , with the Man in the Moone ) to Godwin ; and this evidence , not perhaps in itself conclusive , is supported by an entry in the Calendar of State Papers :sx The good bishop was then interested in signalling and cryptography , as was John Wilkins , Bishop of Chester , and the evidence cited above is further strengthened by the regular attribution of the Nuncius and the Man in the Moone to Godwin , first described as " a late reverend and learned bishop " and later by name , in the .sx Discovery of a New World in the Moon and the Mercury of John Wilkins .sx More bold than Godwin , Wilkins did not fear to append his initials to the preface of his Mercury , though his name did not appear in full on the title-pages of his works until after his death .sx We may well understand that bishops had some diffidence in signing works on subjects as far removed from faith and morals as signalling , flying , writing and deciphering codes , or discovering in the Moon new worlds which might make them suspect of heresy .sx In spite of the absence of Godwin's name from both book and Stationers' Register , we may yet be tolerably certain that he was indeed the author of the Man in the Moone .sx Hallam's placid statement that internal proofs show the Man in the Moone to have been written between 1599 and 1603 appears at first sight to be sound .sx The terminus a quo is provided by the dates given by Gonsales ; he started his voyage to the Moon in 1599 and returned to China in 1601 .sx Why , then , does not Hallam take 1601 as his earliest date ?sx Clearly these dates are mere fiction and Godwin could post- or pre-date them as he cared .sx More serious is the naval battle off Teneriffe dated August 1599 ; but I can find no trace of this battle , though it is possible that some such skirmish took place .sx On such evidence , one should set back the terminus a quo to the date of the battle of the Isle of Pines , which Godwin mentions :sx The battle of the Isla de Pinos , near Cuba , was fought early in 1596 , and the Spaniards did , in fact , suffer a reverse .sx The terminus ad quem is the date of Elizabeth's death .sx Pylonas , a lunar prince , sent by Gonsales a most flattering message to the Queen of England , " the most glorious of all women living .sx " This reference to Elizabeth as living might surely be explained as fitting .sx the date of Domingo's stay in the Moon , for a close examination of other evidence upsets the terminus a quo to such an extent that even the terminus ad quem would seem to be affected .sx Godwin makes Gonsales land in China ; the Spaniard is then sent to Pekin , where among some Jesuit fathers he meets Father Pantoja .sx This good missionary really lived at Pekin .sx Born in 1571 at Valdemos , he entered the noviciate in 1589 , embarked for the Japanese missions in 1596 , but was turned aside at Macao to accompany Fr .sx Ricci to Pekin , where they founded a mission ( 1601) .sx Fr .sx Ricci died in 1610 , but Pantoja remained at Pekin , where persecution broke out .sx After much suffering , he was banished from that city and died at Macao in January 1618 .sx He was the author of some devotional books in Chinese , but his written work of greatest importance to us is a letter which he despatched on March 9 , 1602 , to Fr .sx Luys de Guzman , Provincial in the Province of Toledo .sx It is a report on the expedition and missions of the year .sx This epistle was first published in 1604 in a Spanish edition , and it did not appear in English until 1625 in the third part of Purchas His Pilgrimes .sx It was always possible for Godwin to have heard of Fr .sx Pantoja in other ways , by way of printed books or from the narratives of travellers whom Godwin may have met , but the arrival of Pantoja at Pekin ( 1601 ) must be the very earliest date for the composition of the Man in the Moone .sx Unless , then , we accept the hypothesis that Godwin had direct information on the Jesuits in China , we must conclude that 1604 is the terminus a quo rather than 1601 .sx I am tempted to go still further and to suggest that 1625 , the date of the appearance of Purchas His Pilgrimes , is still more likely ; the terminus ad quem is thus shifted in the first instance to 1633 , the date of the bishop's death , but on closer examination to 1629 , when the Nuncius Inanimatus was .sx published , for that work would appear to be the discourse on cryptography and signalling promised in the Man in the Moone .sx If such is the case , our estimate of the work is profoundly changed ; instead of the essay of an ingenious student , the Man in the Moone becomes the semi-serious pastime of a learned prelate .sx The inclusion of Elizabeth as alive may have been something more than a literary device to maintain the consistency of dates .sx She had given Godwin the see of Llandaff ; James I had given him Hereford .sx It is unlikely , on the contrary , that a man holding the views with which Godwin is usually credited would find much favour in the eyes of Charles I , or that that unhappy monarch would appear in any favourable light to the Bishop of Hereford .sx It is therefore within the bounds of possibility that the laudatory allusion to Elizabeth conceals some little sting , a hidden contrast of the reigning king with the great queen .sx In the passage dealing with Fr .sx Pantoja , it is odd that Ricci , the head of the mission , is not mentioned ; perhaps he was already dead .sx The year 1610 saw the end of Li-Ma-Teu , as he was known in Pekin , and we may surmise that the Man in the Moone is thus later than that date .sx If Wood's testimony that the book was written while Godwin was still at Oxford should seem too weighty to admit my hypothesis that the date of composition lay between 1625 and 1629 , I see no other way of explaining Pantoja than the facile and unsatisfactory device of regarding that part of the work which refers to the Jesuits in China as a later addition to the work ; in the text I see no signs of such interpolation .sx An examination of the sources which Godwin might have used in the composition of the Man in the Moone gives but little help in determining whether the work is that of a callow student or that of an ecclesiastical dignitary in retirement from the cares of his diocese .sx Godwin mentions only three authors by name :sx Gulielmus Neubrigensis , de rebus Anglicis ; Inigo Mondejar , Nueva Granata , and Joseph Desia de Carana , Mexico .sx