From a copy of 'The Worlds of Space: A Series of Popular Articles on Astronomical Subjects', dated 1894:



"1. Are the planets habitable?

"I do not ask, Are the planets inhabited? That is a question to which an answer will probably never be vouchsafed to man. Even in the case of our nearest celestial neighbour, the Moon, the highest power of our largest telescopes would fail to reveal the existence of any living creatures on its surface. Animals the size of elephants, or even as large as the gigantic saurians of geological times, would be quite invisible in the giant telescope of the Lick Observatory. Large cities, or buildings of great extent - if they existed - might possibly be discerned, and thus afford evidence of the existence of intelligent beings. But this only on the Moon. All the planets are much too distant to enable us to see anything but marking on their discs, these markings being only dimly visible on most of them..."

Discovered in - get this - Baggins' second-hand bookshop yesterday. I didn't buy it, because it cost £25, but you'll be delighted to know that the entire book is available through archive.org. (The author's answer to the question of whether the planets are habitable, incidentally, appears to be a hard no.)

-- and I've just found that he engages in a glorious display of snark, at the beginning of chapter 3:

"The question is often asked, Are the stars inhabited? To this we can confidently answer, No. The stars themselves are certainly not habitable by any forms of life with which we are familiar."

hS