Trips to the Moon

Trips to the Moon, by Lucian,
Edited by Henry

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Trips to the Moon, by Lucian, Edited by
Henry Morley, Translated by Thomas Francklin
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Trips to the Moon
Author: Lucian
Release Date: December 10, 2003 [eBook #10430]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIPS TO
THE MOON***
This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.

TRIPS TO THE MOON
by Lucian.

Translated from the Greek by Thomas Francklin, D.D.

CONTENTS.
Introduction by Professor Henry Morley. Instructions for Writing
History. The True History. Preface. Book 1. Book 2.
Icaro-Menippus--A Dialogue.

INTRODUCTION.

Lucian, in Greek Loukianos, was a Syrian, born about the year 120 at
Samosata, where a bend of the Euphrates brings that river nearest to the
borders of Cilicia in Asia Minor. He had in him by nature a quick flow
of wit, with a bent towards Greek literature. It was thought at home that
he showed as a boy the artist nature by his skill in making little waxen
images. An uncle on his mother's side happened to be a sculptor. The
home was poor, Lucian would have his bread to earn, and when he was
fourteen he was apprenticed to his uncle that he might learn to become
a sculptor. Before long, while polishing a marble tablet he pressed on it
too heavily and broke it. His uncle thrashed him. Lucian's spirit
rebelled, and he went home giving the comic reason that his uncle beat
him because jealous of the extraordinary power he showed in his art.
After some debate Lucian abandoned training as a sculptor, studied
literature and rhetoric, and qualified himself for the career of an
advocate and teacher at a time when rhetoric had still a chief place in
the schools. He practised for a short time unsuccessfully at Antioch,
and then travelled for the cultivation of his mind in Greece, Italy, and
Gaul, making his way by use of his wits, as Goldsmith did long
afterwards when he started, at the outset also of his career as a writer,
on a grand tour of the continent with nothing in his pocket. Lucian
earned as he went by public use of his skill as a rhetorician. His travel

was not unlike the modern American lecturing tour, made also for the
money it may bring and for the new experience acquired by it.
Lucian stayed long enough in Athens to acquire a mastery of Attic
Greek, and his public discourses could not have been without full
seasoning of Attic salt. In Italy and Gaul his success brought him
money beyond his present needs, and he went back to Samosata, when
about forty years old, able to choose and follow his own course in life.
He then ceased to be a professional talker, and became a writer, bold
and witty, against everything that seemed to him to want foundation for
the honour that it claimed. He attacked the gods of Greece, and the
whole system of mythology, when, in its second century, the Christian
Church was ready to replace the forms of heathen worship. He laughed
at the philosophers, confounding together in one censure deep
conviction with shallow convention. His vigorous winnowing sent
chaff to the winds, but not without some scattering of wheat. Delight in
the power of satire leads always to some excess in its use. But if the
power be used honestly--and even if it be used recklessly--no truth can
be destroyed. Only the reckless use of it breeds in minds of the feebler
sort mere pleasure in ridicule, that weakens them as helpers in the real
work of the world, and in that way tends to retard the forward
movement. But on the whole, ridicule adds more vigour to the strong
than it takes from the weak, and has its use even when levelled against
what is good and true. In its own way it is a test of truth, and may be
fearlessly applied to it as jewellers use nitric acid to try gold. If it be
uttered for gold and is not gold, let it perish; but if it be true, it will
stand trial.
The best translation of the works of Lucian into English was that by Dr.
Thomas Francklin, sometime Greek Professor in the University of
Cambridge, which was published in two large quarto volumes in the
year 1780, and reprinted in four volumes in 1781. Lucian had been
translated before in successive volumes by Ferrand Spence and others,