The 'Spectre' of Science.

The Study of Optical Phenomena and the Romantic Imagination

Author(s): C. J. Wright
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 43 (1980), pp. 186-200
Published by: The Warburg Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/751195
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 THE 'SPECTRE' OF SCIENCE. THE STUDY OF OPTICAL
PHENOMENA AND THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION

By C. J. Wright

C that
oleridge, considering
she ended by explaining Ann Radcliffe's
the supernatural The Mysteries
occurrences of Udolpho, regretted
which terrified
her readers as either perfectly natural phenomena or deliberately produced
manifestations.'

The interest is completely dissolved when once the adventure is finishe

and the reader, when he is got to the end of the work, looks about in vain
for the spell which had bound him strongly to it. 2
At much the same time an anonymous correspondent complained to
magazine which had revealed the secret behind a contemporary marv
exhibited as 'The Invisible Lady', 'after all, we lose by all these discoverie
when made public much innocent pleasure.'3 Such complaints, howeve
took on a more serious tone when the rational scientific approach turne
from mere entertainments to the world of religion and the arts. Burke,
his discussion of aesthetic theory, had postulated that
there are reasons in nature why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed
should be more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that
causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge
and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little.4
That there is considerable truth in this view would be evident, even had
not been demonstrated in our own century by Otto's classic work on th
expression of the numinous.5 There consequently grew up in the afterma
of the Romantic Movement a reaction against and hostility towards scienc
out of the fear it would destroy that element of magic necessary for religion
and art to enhance the prosaic nature of everyday life.
This fear and hostility was at the end of the eighteenth century still
relatively rare phenomenon. There were as yet not even words to expres
any perceived polarity between the arts and sciences. 'Science' stood for th
totality of knowledge. It had not shrunk to its modern sense of 'Natura
Philosophy'. Likewise 'Art' meant far more than 'The Fine Arts'. The wor
1Bonamy Dobree, 'Introduction', Ann
The other end of this was hidden in the frame
opposite one of the horns into which the voice
Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, I970,
p. xi. Thus, the flame appearing on wasthe projected. The original article appeared
point of a spear is explained by a footnote
in William Nicholson, A Journal of Natural
referring the reader to the Abb6 Berthelon's
Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, N. S., xvi,
works on electricity. Ann Radcliffe,Jan.
The1807, pp. 69-7I. The complaint, in a
Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794, iii, p. I86. letter headed 9 Jan. I807, Bristol, was
2 The Critical Review, xi, Aug. 1794, P. printed
362. in the next issue, Feb. I807, p. I 19.
3 The invisible lady was supposed to exist4 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry
in a hollow copper ball a foot in diameter,
into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful, Dublin 1766, p. 87: part ii, section
with four horns protruding from it, suspended
within an iron framework. When questions iii, 'Obscurity'.
were addressed to the ball a faint answer 5 Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 1928,
could be distinctly heard. The trick was pp. 62-73: chapter ix: 'Means of Expression
worked by having a lady concealed in the of the Numinous'.
next room at the end of a speaking tube.
186

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 187
encompassed all crafts and skills.6 Commentators writing in the wake of the
Romantic Movement have tended to dismiss eighteenth-century culture,
especially its literature, as dry and materialistic, and blamed this on the
Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. This is now recognized as a
travesty of the truth. The progress of science, and in particular Newtonian
physics, fired the imagination of the age.7 Writers took over and used in the
boldest ways imaginable the new vocabulary of science, a fact not easily
perceived today now that their borrowings have become commonplace and
their scientific origin is no longer recognized.8 Artists had long been schooled
in the study of anatomy. Natural and Moral Philosophers such as Erasmus
Darwin and James Beattie easily turned to poetry. Indeed Darwin, the most
practical of men, even used it to proclaim his scientific ideas. Scott, the
greatest of the Romantic novelists, saw his historical fiction, at least as far as
his own country was concerned, as an accurate delineation of a past period.
He was, after all, the product of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment.9
There was only one exception to this picture of harmony. The Romantic
Movement held 'feeling' at a premium, stressing the primacy of experience.
Science itself was not at first seen as a threat to this, but its mathematical
underpinning was. G. H. Lewes, writing of Goethe, reveals the prejudice of
the times. Discussing the Farbenlehre, the German poet's treatise on optics,
he observed 'the native direction of his mind . . . was towards the concrete
phenomenon, not towards abstractions. He desired to explain the phenomena
of colour, and in Mathematics these phenomena disappear; that is to say, the
very thing to be studied is hurried out of sight and masked by abstractions.'10
Thus more people were alienated by the way science accounted for the wonder-
ful, than the fact that it did so. Worse, the general public suspected that for
scientists the means, that is the abstractions, were more important than the ends.
The love of beauty was not, then, inevitably opposed to the advance of
science. Even the younger Mill, who had been brought up in the stern tradi-
tion of Benthamite Utilitarianism to spurn the arts, came to see this, battling
through to a realization that 'the intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud
lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is
vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension.'11
Explanation and analysis need only be destructive of awe where this is based
on trickery, deceit or misunderstanding. For example, Basil Montagu sought
to dispel the fear of ghosts by explaining the physical laws accounting for the
supposed apparitions.1 Where such factors did not operate, however, all
might be well. Many of the early romantics themselves actively engaged in
Natural Philosophy and their outlook was frankly rationalist. The most
6 For the importance of such semantic 9 See Duncan Forbes, 'The Rationalism of
developments, see Raymond Williams, CultureSir Walter Scott', The Cambridge Journal, vii,
and Society r780-1950, 1967, pp. xiii-xx. The
1953-4, pp. 20-35.
word 'scientist' was actually coined by 10 G. H. Lewes, The Life of Goethe, I906, v,
William Whewell. ch. ix, p. 344.
SSee Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Newton "John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 1924,
Demands the Muse: Newton's Opticks and the
p. I129.
eighteenth century poets, Princeton 1946. 12B. Montagu, Lectures delivered at the
8 See Donald Davie, The Language of Science
Mechanics' Institution upon the Connexion between
Knowledge and Happiness, 1832, pp. 6, 7.
and the Language of Literature, 170oo-74o, 1963.

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188 C. J. WRIGHT

famous horror story of the per

preface to Frankenstein Mary S
which the interest of the story d
mere tale of spectres or enchantm
The conflict between the ratio
history of optics and its impac
of the phenomena involved fell
trooped into the Lyceum to
projection on to gauze and the m
lanterns, together with simple sh
or diminish the size of figures,
similar techniques by charlatan
festations at seances.15 The journ
were eager to print articles and
kinds. Whether it was a solar ha
hour seen between two and thr
and four at Arbroath,'7 a circu
the rose-pink, light green and bl
bia over a period of two months
spectrum,20 the inversion of v
opening sighted in mountains nea
their peaks,22 the public was de
mena could be reproduced by
Wedgwood's notebooks there i
aurora borealis by directing sun
off by spirits of wine.23 The Ann
the haloes round the sun or a c
plate, one side of which has be
that has been allowed to crystal
13 M. Shelley, Frankenstein:
18 Quarterly Journal of Literature, Scienceor,
and The
Prometheus, 1818,thei,Arts,
pp.xi, 1821,vii,
no. xxi, p.viii.
40. Letter of
14 Nicholson, n. Thomas
3 above, Taylor the younger,
N. Greenwich,
S. i, Feb. 1
pp. 147-50. This 28
mayFeb. 1821. be compared wi
'Eidophusikon' of 19Loutherbourg, whic
The Annual Register... for the Year 1832,
so admired by Gainsborough,
I833, p. 445- Reynol
Turner. Walter 20Thornbury,
See James Wood, 'On Halos', Memoirs The L
J. M. W. Turner, of the Literary and I1970,
R.A., Philosophical Society
pp.of 113-
15 See Jacob Manchester, Warrington, 1790,
Burckhardt, Die iii, pp.Zeit
336-43, Cons
tins des Grossen,andBasle,
The Gentleman's I853,Magazine, vol. lxviii,
p. 257, a
David Brewster, Aug.
Letters
1789, pp. 675, 676. on Natural M
1832, 'Letter IV', 21pp.
Henry Home Blackadder, 'On Thus,
56-97. Unusual in
and Queries, 2nd Atmospherical
series, Refraction',
13E.P.J.,
Oct. xiii, no. 186o,
a correspondent 25, April 1825, pp. 66-71.
discussing a supposed
in the Tower of London
22 Ibid., i, no. i, Juneobserves
1819, pp. 202, 203. 'the
23Samuel von Friewald,
of the window recesses, and 'An artificial
the close
Aurora Borealis',the
cloth curtains, forbid from the possibility
Transactions of the
action of a magic [Swedish]
lantern or
Royal Academy phantasmag
of Sciences, 1739--1776.
16 Edinburgh B.L. Add. MS 28309, fol.
Philosophical 41v.
Journal, (here
E.P.J.), viii, no. 16, April
24 The Annual Register . 1823, p. 395
. . for the Year 1823,
11 The Annual 1824, pp. 297*, 298*, reprinted
Register... for the from E.P.J.,
Tear
1807, p. 59.- viii, no. I6, April 1823, p. 394.

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 189

A number of factors increased the interest in optics at thi

paradoxically, was the uncertainty surrounding many of its
laws.25 The nature of rainbows and haloes had still not been f
At the same time, striking advances were being made. W
Wollaston was showing how the differing refractive powers
different temperatures could explain many of the remarkab
which had long puzzled scientists.27 The polarization of l
discovered and the brilliant young David Brewster was making
work in this field.8 It became a fashionable subject for scient
interests lay elsewhere. Faraday, for instance, produced
atmospheric effect he had witnessed from the Isle of Wight.29
Equally important was the rage for picturesque and roman
coupled with the increasingly reliable reports of explorers a
The 'Fata Morgana', the castles of the fairy Morgana seen in
Messina, were a well-known optical illusion.30 'Mirage' wa
language from the experiences of the French revolutionary
Near East.31 The more rugged the country the more likely w
striking optical phenomena.32 Nor did one have to go abroad to d
The Lake District afforded many examples. Surveying the vie
Hill near Penrith, Thomas Gray had noted that
a curious deceptio visus presented itself: all the vales between
appeared lower than its surface, owing to the sky and earth b
25 Robert Mudie, A Popular Guide to the
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, i, I 794-1804, ed.
Observation of Nature, 1832, p. Kathleen
128. 'TheCoburn, 1957, Text and Notes, art.
431. An English
philosophy of light is... a very obscure and commentary was, however,
imperfect philosophy; and there areto not
available the public, Nicholson, n. 3 above,
many parts of knowledge in which i, Aug. 1797, pp. 225-7, Sir Joseph Banks
theories
are more likely to lead us wrong.'having lent his own copy of Minasi to
Nicholson.put
26As late as I81I9 Dr. Watt of Glasgow Interestingly, Nicholson prefaces
forward a new theory of the rainbow.his article
Itwith
did lines by James Thomson, The
not find favour. E.P.J., i, no. I, Castle
June of 18I9,
Indolence, canto i, stanza xxx:
p. 203; Quarterly Journal, vii, I819,As when a shepherd of the Hebrid' Isles
no. xiii,
p. 168. Placed far amid the melancholy main,
27 W. H. Wollaston, 'On double Images (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,
caused by atmospheric Refraction', Philoso- Or that aerial beings sometimes deign
phical Transactions of the Royal Society, I8oo, xc, To stand, embodied, to our senses plain)
part ii, pp. 239-54. Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
28 For his own summary of the science, see The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain,
his Optics, Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, A vast assembly moving to and fro:
1831. Then all at once in air dissolves the
29 M. Faraday, 'On a peculiar Perspective wondrous show.
Appearance of Aerial Light and Shade', These had been used by Mrs. Radcliffe in
Quarterly Journal, xxii, 1827, no. xliii, pp. 81- The Mysteries of Udolpho at the head of Book
83. A concise account of the phenomenon is I, ch. 13 (erroneously numbered ch. 14 in
given by Brewster, Optics, pp. 278, 279. the 1794 edition).
30 In his notebooks Coleridge copied out a 31 W. H. Wollaston, 'Observations on the
German article on them from Johann Quantity of horizontal Refraction', Philoso-
Friedrich Gmelin's Gittingisches Journal der phical Transactions, 1803, xciii, part i, p. I;
Naturwissenschaften, G6ttingen, i, I1798, pp. Sir James Murray, A New English Dictionary,
1908, Oxford, vi, part ii, p. 487.
I 15-17, based on Antonio Minasi, Disserta-
zione prima sopra un fenomeno volgarmente detto 32John Mason Neale, The Unseen World,
1847, pp. 29, 30.
Fata Morgana, Rome 1773, see The Notebooks

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 190 C. J. WRIGHT
tending to a line drawn from the
last appeared to meet.33
Wordsworth recorded several suc
one occasion he saw a magnifice
recognized it as a reflection of L
from view by a bank of mist, he
know the district would have fou
such appearances had given rise t
and gardens. On one occasion he h
a new island in Grasmere.

Marvellous was the illusion! Comparing the new with the old Island,
surface of which is soft, green, and unvaried, I do not scruple to say tha
as an object of sight, it was much the more distinct.
Gradually the vision faded into a dim inversion and finally disappe
revealing to the poet that a sheet of ice on the lake had produced the ill
by reflecting and refracting, 'as persons skilled in optics would no do
easily explain',34 a part of Silver How opposite.
The most common natural optical phenomenon is the rainbow. In
nineteenth century this still had a strong theological significance. As descri
in Genesis ix it was the sign God set in the sky to mark for all future genera
the Covenant he had made with Noah and his descendants. As late as the
185os there were fundamentalists, Coleridge's friend Carlyon among th
who claimed this passage should be taken literally and that the rainbow
unknown before the Flood.35 Significantly, Thomas Chalmers, who bel
God was sparing in His use of miracles such as the Flood, preferrin
ordinary processes of nature where these were equally effective for ac
plishing His purpose, argued that 'the rainbow, as a memorial of the Coven
might not necessarily imply the establishment of any new optical law',3
felt impelled to point out that it did generally indicate the departure of ra
Carlyon and his confreres cannot be dismissed out of hand. For R
'God's Arch', of which the rainbow was one example, was a fundam
element of a specifically Christian architecture.37
It is thus as both a religious and an aesthetic symbol that the rainb
figures in Campbell's poem of that name. He sees it as 'A midway stat
Betwixt the earth and heaven', while sadly reflecting that
When science from Creation's face
Enchantment's veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws.38

3 See the entry in Thomas Gray's Journal Reflections, 1836-x1856, iii, pp. 351-61.
for I769, quoted by Thomas West, A Guide 36 T. Chalmers, Daily Scripture Readings,
to the Lakes in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Edinburgh
and and London 1853, i, pp. I I, 12.
Lancashire, Kendal 1812, p. 264. 3 Peter Conrad, The Victorian Treasure-
34 William Wordsworth, A Description of House,
the I973, p. I59.
38Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, xviii,
Scenery of the Lakes in the North of England, 1822,
pp. 125, I26. no. cii, July 1825, pp. 131, I32, pointed out
35 Clement Carlyon, Early Tears and Late the relationship of Campbell's 'To the

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 191

Campbell was far from being totally opposed to the March of In

was, as well as a poet, one of the chief promoters of a university f
Similarly Keats, the most often cited proponent of the anti-scientific
received a medical training. However, his famous lines
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings39
betoken a more serious disenchantment with the scientific ideal. The su
was one of his favourite sources of metaphor. At the 'immortal dinne
28 December 1817, given by Benjamin Robert Haydon, Keats and L
agreed that Newton 'had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reduc
it to its prismatic colours',40 and the image is also found in a contempo
piece of Keats's theatrical criticism, where he bids Kean 'cheer us a lit
the failure of our days! for romance lives but in books. The goblin is d
from the heath, and the rainbow is robbed of its mystery.'41
In painting the rainbow was a particularly potent image. Hazlitt, arg
the superiority of art to literature, which he saw as the superiority of crea
forms out of names over reducing feelings to words, naturally turned to it
The air-drawn visions that hover on the verge of existence have a bo
presence given them on the canvas: the form of beauty is changed in
substance: the dream and glory of the universe is made palpable to fe
as to sight!-And see! a rainbow starts from the canvas, with all its hu
train of glory, as if it were drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven.42
The metaphor is appropriate not only for its aptness but because a rai
does seem to spring out of almost every other canvas. Constable was fascina
by it and painted it again and again. It appears later in Ford Madox Bro
'Walton-on-the-Naze' and in Millais's 'The Blind Girl', a tasteless work
which one of Constable's double bows is reproduced, while entering int
repertory of many lesser artists. In the 185os the landscape painter Daw
output included 'Rainbow on the Trent', 'Rainbow at Sea' and 'River Sc
with Rainbow'.43 It even made the transition to the colourless world of the
black and white print as in Stanfield's engraving of 'The Hamoaze, Ply-
mouth'.44

Rainbow' to Henry Vaughan's 'The Rain-Keats, edited by H. Buxton Forman, New

bow' in an article entitled 'Plagiarism byYork I939, v, p. 232, reprinted from 'Mr.
Mr. Thomas Campbell'. The attitude of Kean' in The Champion for 21 Dec. 1817.
various Romantic writers to science is dis- 42 William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of
cussed in M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the
Painting', Table-Talk: or, Original Essays,
I821, p. 8.
Lamp, New York 1953, ch. xi, pt. ii, 'Newton's
Rainbow and the Poets', pp. 303-12. 43 Alfred Dawson, The Life ofHenry Dawson,
39 'Lamia', part ii, 11. 229-34. The Poem
I891, pp. 63, 68. See also, for example, the
was written in 1819. American Frederick Church's 'Landscape
40 The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin
with Rainbow' I866, reproduced by William
Robert Haydon, 1926, i, p. 269. Vaughan, Romantic Art, 1978, p. 179.
44 'In the engraving of the Hamoaze
41 The Poetical and Other Writings of John

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192 C. J. WRIGHT

Most of these artists were fre

therefore fitting that one of the
have been penned by Charlotte
Channel crossing.
In my reverie, methought I
dream-land, far away. Sunshin
of gold; tiniest tracery of clu
woods deep massed, of heights
stream, embossed the metal-b
sky, solemn and dark blue, and
tints of enchantment-strode f
arch of hope.45
In view of the grim future that
passage need not be stressed. It
rently supernatural figure in t
disguise adopted by an admirer
was herself to assert that the d
which is one of the themes of
growing maturity. In 1848 she w
I have now outlived youth, and
all its illusions-that the roman
from the truth, and that I see
things are not what they were t
One of the great inspirations t
landscape then in Lord Orford's
'that curious and beautiful Phae
Wash] from the cliffs of Hunstan
very moment of his arrival at Wo
visible from the portico of the
dence'.*48 Turner was obsessed by
end of his life. The photograph
again and again in the late 40s, a
how anxious he was to acquire a
spanning the Niagara Falls, wh
part with.49 Constable, too, ado
attached to the present
engravedwork, the art
rainbow, arc
presented us withand the
the ship sailing
constant recur
scene, always occurs
grand, in Dore's
and always I87
differen
the 'wooden Rime of the
walls of Ancient Mariner'. England'.
old
soldier and the soldier's wife;
45 C. Bronte, Villette, I853, i, p. the
104. sailo
the fishermen; the rainbow-"The
46 Conrad, n. 37 above, p. 2o10. airy
of vapour and the sun/Brought
47 Sydney D. Kitson, The Life of John Sell fo
purple, cradled Cotman,
in 1937,vermilion,/Bapti
p. I166.
molten gold, and 48swathed
Ibid., p. 360. in dun'-a f
zone to enclose such 49 W. Thornbury
a scene (n. 14 above),
ofp. beaut
349-
water and the sky, Interestingly
all there
tendis even a story,
to though
consti
probably apocryphal,
picture full of charms, and that Turner on a
creative
kinds of grateful Scottish
feelings.'tour discussed optics with David Sta
Clarkson
Brewster. Ibid., pp.
Stanfield's Coast Scenery, 138, 139. p. 62. A s
1836,

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 193

version of the explanatory text he wrote for David Lucas's engravin

'Stoke by Nayland, Suffolk' from his Various Subjects of Landscape, char
of English Scenery he enters into a detailed discussion of the laws of opt
rainbows.

It must be observed that a Rainbow can never appear foreshortened, or

be seen obliquely, as it must be parallel with the plain of the picture,
though a part of it only may be introduced.50
He also pointed out that where there were subsidiary bows, the sequence of
colours in the spectrum would be reversed in every other one. This phenome-
non, which had been described by Newton, was observed by Cotman in the
Hunstanton parhelion. The danger inherent in Constable's approach was
that lesser artists might substitute scientific precision for freshness of observa-
tion. A modern critic has scathingly observed that later painters reproached
Rubens for his inaccurate portrayal of the spectrum, while praising mediocre
contemporaries for passing the scientific test he failed.51
The rainbow was not, however, the only atmospheric image borrowed by
the arts. There was also the glory. This conceit, which came so easily to the
Romantics, of a body or shadow surrounded by a halo was a standard part
of the metaphorical vocabulary. In The Eve of St Agnes Keats writes of Made-
line in the moonlight, 'And on her hair a glory, like a saint.'52 Later, George
Eliot allows herself to speak of 'the bright low-slanting rays of the early sun,
which made a glory about her [Dinah Morris's] pale face and pale auburn
hair,'53 while Hardy describes the abiding image of Elfride Swancourt
imprinted on her lover Stephen Smith's mind as formed when she was
singing at the piano and
the furthermost candle on the piano comes immediately in a line with her
head, and half invisible itself, forms the accidentally frizzled hair into a
nebulous haze of light, surrounding her crown like an aureola.54
One of its finest appearances is in T. L. Beddoes's unfinished verse drama
The Second Brother, where a female attendant confesses to her mistress that she
cannot sleep because she is in love.
Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another's thought,
As in a glory. I was dark before,
As Venus' chapel in the black of night:
But there was something holy in the darkness.55

So completely has this passed out of fashion, it is doubtful today whether th

average reader even comprehends the technical meaning of the term.
The most spectacular glory was that which surrounded the Spectre of t
o50 Op. cit., 1830/1833, unpaginated. i, p. 39.
51 Geoffrey Grigson, The Harp of Aeolus, 55 Poems by the late Thomas Lovell Beddoes,
I947, p. 89. with a memoir, 1851, i, p. 30. Such imagery
52 Canto xxv. only survives, if at all, amongst self-con-
53 G. Eliot, Adam Bede, William Blackwood, sciously literate authors. See, for example,
Edinburgh and London, n. d., p. 5oo. Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the
54 Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes, 1873, Bellona Club, 1975, p. 137.

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 194 C. J. WRIGHT
Brocken in the Harz Mountains. B
ponder her childhood love for Art
ere yet Mr. F. appeared a misty
like the well-known spectre of som
this image too was probably on the
power at its height, all the greate
tionally associated with witchcraf
became a fashionable pursuit. Co
two attempts to view the phenom
Whit Sunday, 12 May, and again a
were conditions propitious.59 O
traveller Mrs. Trollope ascended
meeting the sun, and his attendan
In the 182os her son Thomas Adolp
down from St. Catherine's Hill in
mist. In fact he had to wait until
the Rigi in Switzerland.61 The eff
C. T. R. Wilson in attempting to r
of the coronas and glories'62 he had
the observatory on Ben Nevis in 189
and devote a lifetime to work on
content with a variation of the sp
ranean on board the 'Speedwell' o
of the ship and saw, racing across
projected by the sun and surrounde
56 Charles Dickens, Little
1804, art. 43o. Dorrit, 1867,
Bk 2, ch. xxiii, p. 274. 60 Frances Trollope, Belgium and Western
57 It appears fleetingly Germany in 1833, Paris 1834,
inii, Isak
p. 242. Dinesen
Seven Gothic Tales, 61 T. A. Trollope,p.
1934, 'The Spectre
456. of the
'Under
handling of his thoughts, Brocken', Notes and Queries,things 7th series, vi,
becam
gigantic, like those 29 Dec.huge1888, pp. shadows
509, 510. of the
selves upon the mist, 62 Charles which
Thomson Rees Wilson, traveller
mountains meet and 'Reminiscences
are terrified of my Early Years', Notes gigan
of, and
and somehow grotesque, Records of the Royal like
Society objects
of London, xiv, no.play
2,
about, a little outside Nov. 1959,of human reason.'
p. I66.
coincidence, on the preceding page an 63 Alethea Hayter, A Voyage in Vain, 1973,
evening landscape after a storm with a double pp. 128-32. The nature of this phenomenon
rainbow is described. had been raised in Nicholson, n. 3 above, i,
58 See, inter alia, the description of the Sept. 1797, p. 284. 'There is an optical
Brocken in George Meredith, The Egoist, appearance so frequent, that it is rather
1879, iii, p. 330. surprising that writers on science have never
59 Carlyon, n. 35 above, i, pp. 32-51, mentioned it. Whenever the sun shines upon
170-72. Carlyon quotes, pp. 47-50, the agitated water not absolutely loaded with
account given by Brewster, Letters on Natural opake matter, and the spectator is so placed
Magic, pp. I29, I30, as well as the source that the shadow of his head may be projected
article, J. L. Jordan, 'Beobachtung des upon the surface of the fluid, he will see an
Brokengespenstes', J. F. Gmelin, Gittingischesinnumerable quantity of divergent rays
Journal, i, pp. I 10o-14. Coleridge copied this within the water, of which that shadow is the
out in German in his notebooks immediately centre. They are incessantly shifting their
before the article from the same magazine onplace laterally; and if more persons than one
the 'Fata Morgana', The Notebooks, i, 1794-are present, each sees a system of radiations or

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 195

The spectre makes its first significant appearance in Englis

Scott's The Antiquary, published in 1816, in the odd digressi
have been dictated by the charlatan Dousterswivel to Miss W
magic happenings on the Brocken, 'The Fortunes of Mar
Significantly Scott begins the chapter with a reference to Goeth
but, in building up an atmosphere of mystery, he concentrates o
of the spectre, known in the surrounding districts as the Wild M
of huge stature, his head wreathed with oak leaves, an
cinctured with the same, bearing in his hand a pine torn up
It is certain that many persons profess to have seen such a for
with huge strides, in a line parallel to their own course
ridge of a mountain.64
All they were seeing, of course, was the projection of their
The spectre was consequently an ideal image for the role of a
such it was used by De Quincey in Suspira de Profundis. Pro
sensational appearance in this role is in James Hogg's rem
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Set in e
century Scotland, the place of the Brocken is here taken by A
Edinburgh. Hogg attempts to suggest the right atmospheric cond
appearance of the spectre, the rays of the rising sun falling on a
Nevertheless, the phenomenon is not realistically described. Th
he describes as a 'bright halo in the cloud of haze, that rose in a
his head like a pale rainbow'65 seems separate from the sp
necessary for Hogg's purpose to employ poetic licence. His sp
face of George Colwan's infamous half-brother, being a monst
mirror image of him, lurking behind him, preparing to sprin
Colwan over the edge of the precipice into the void.
By the time Hogg wrote there was a large body of scientifi
the Brocken Spectre. Similar phenomena had been reporte
scientific expedition to Peru.66 In the early 175os Dr. Ebene
described a sighting in the hills north of Glasgow.
There was a double range of colours, like those of the rain
round the shadow. The colours of the outermost range we
very distinct, and about two feet distant from the shadow
then there was a darkish interval, and after that another narr
colours, closely surrounding the shadow, which was very much
In a paper read on 13 March 1789 before the Manchester
Philosophical Society, John Haygarth described the phenome
glory round his own head, but no of
State such
Discoveries relating to Vision, Light,
appearance round the shadows ofColours,
the otherI772, ii, p. 599.
67 E. McFait,
persons, though these also are very visible to 'Some Phaenomena obser-
him.' An explanation is offered in thein
vable next
foggy Weather', Essays and Observ
issue, Dec. 1797, P- 430. tions, Physical and Literary [read before
64W. Scott, The Antiquary, Edinburgh
Medical, afterwards Philosophical, Societ
1816, ii, p. 59.- Edinburgh], Edinburgh 1754, i, pp. 197
65j. Hogg, op. cit., 1947, p. 38. quoted by Priestley, ii, n. 66 above, p. 6oo.
66 Joseph Priestley, The History and Present

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 196 C. J. WRIGHT
seen it on the borders of the Vale o
Only three years before A Justifie
Edinburgh scientific periodical an
by a Glasgow surgeon and his frie
from the summit of Ben Lomond.

Mr. Macgregor's attention was attracted by a cloud in the east, partly of

a dark red colour, apparently at the distance of two miles and a half, in
which he distinctly observed two gigantic figures, standing as it were, on
a majestic pedestal. He immediately pointed out the phenomenon to
Mr. Menzies, and they distinctly perceived one of the gigantic figures, in
imitation, strike the other on the shoulder, and point towards us [sic].
They then made their obeisance to the airy phantoms, which was instantly
returned: they waved their hats and umbrellas: the shadowy figures did
the same.69

Nor was it so fanciful for Hogg to suggest the high ground about Edinburgh
as a likely place for a sighting. In February 1837 two gentlemen standing on
Calton Hill actually did see their own gigantic shadows projected on a murky
cloud overhanging the capital.70
Hogg himself claimed to have seen the spectre while a nineteen-year-old
shepherd and later wrote a paper on the subject, 'Nature's Magic Lantern'.71
This might be accepted without reserve were it not for Hogg's notorious
unreliability. While it is true of other writers' accounts that the nature of the
appearance under discussion is far from clear,72 Hogg gives, as has been seen,
no evidence of realizing the technical meaning of 'glory'. In both narratives
he uses it to describe not the rings of light surrounding a shadow in the mist,
but a rainbow. Furthermore 'Nature's Magic Lantern' refers extensively to
the classic description of the spectre in the Romantic Period, a paper by
J. L. Jordan, published just before the turn of the century in a German
scientific periodical.73 Jordan relates not only his own experiences and
impressions but also those of a 'M. Haue'. Of this second account Hogg
68John Haygarth, 'Description of a Glory', the waterfall is called the 'Rinkenfoss'. 'At
Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society this moment the sun burst from behind a
of Manchester, iii, pp. 463-7. An extract cloud, and, shining upon the falling water
appears in Geoffrey Grigson, The Romantics, and the playful spray, cast obliquely on the
1942, PP. 79, 8o; see also Hayter, n. 63 above, dark background a perfect double rainbow
p. 129. approaching nearly to a circle. The effect
was exceedingly striking. Placed in the only
69E.P.J., v, no. 9, April I821, p. 2 I8.
70Walter Cooper Dendy, The Philosophy ofpoint where the circumference was incom-
Mystery, 1841, p. 136. plete, we saw ourselves clothed with the
7' This was first published after Hogg'srainbow. Unprepared as we were for so
death in vol. iv of his Tales and Sketches,
extraordinary a position, it was too sublime;
Glasgow, Edinburgh and London I837.
and we almost shuddered at the glory of the
Edith C. Batho, The Ettrick Shepherd, Cam- vesture with which we were surrounded:
bridge 1927, p. 219. while in the beauty and grandeur of this
72 Compare the description of the Riuken-masterpiece of his hand, we recognized the
power of Him who "weigheth the mountains
foss in Charles Boileau Elliott, Letters from the
North of Europe, I832, pp. II I, 112. Part of in scales", and "covereth himself with light
the account is reprinted in The Saturdayas with a garment."'
Magazine, no. 107, I Mar. 1834, p. 88, where73 See n. 59.

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 197

remarks in passing, 'really it is so like mine, that one would almost be

to think the one was copied from the other.'74
The reader is given to understand that Hogg, who was born in 17
across a translation ofJordan's paper twenty-one years after his own s
giving a date around 18io. No definitive search for this source is un
here, though it is worth remarking the close relationship of 'Natur
Lantern' with Sir David Brewster's much later Letters on Natur
published in 1832. Hogg's account of the aerial phenomena of So
almost certainly derives from this or from a common source.75 His qu
from Jordan on the Brocken Spectre, however, are fuller than those g
Brewster. He also adopts the curious form 'Hawe' for the name of t
scientist instead of the 'Haue' followed by most commentators. In f
scholar in question is probably the distinguished French mineralo
Just Haijy, commonly known as the Abbe Hauiy. This is confir
Montagu, although he, or more likely his printer unused to the um
him the Abbe Haiiy.76 More important is a mistake which crept i
literature through a mistranslation of Jordan's article. Haiiy, hav
the spectre, called the local innkeeper to confirm his observat
maintained our position.., and before long the two figures were th
A third man joined us. Movements we made they imitated.'77 Unfo
the translator transformed his third man into a third figure,
significantly the sense of the passage. Instead of three men see
spectres, two see three. Hogg's narrative cannot, therefore, be drawn f
account of Haiiy's observations in the Encyclopaedia Londoniensis78
omits the relevant sentence altogether. It could, on the other hand, be
from the Encyclopaedia Perthensis in which the error does occur.79 To
Hogg, possibly alerted by Brewster's italicizing the dubious passage
its implications as it stood. Two shadows, possibly even four,
scientifically explained. Three could not. Having no reason to s
corrupt text, he dismissed Haijy's supposed account out of hand. 'I
out of Nature: and I am obliged to doubt either Mr. Hawe's wor
accuracy of his optics.'80

Basil
4 The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd, Lee', which Hogg included in his
I865,
i, p. 459. Winter Evening Tales, I820, but he is not
1 These relate to the 'appearance' of altogether correct in claiming the author
horses and troops on the fell in 1743 and 1744. offers no natural explanation for it. While
Brewster published, Natural Magic, pp. 131-3, Hogg writes of the ghostly soldiers of Lewis,
an account of these taken from James Clark, a notoriously superstitious island, 'if it was
A Survey of the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmore- any optical illusion, let those account for it
land, and Lancashire, 2nd. edn., I789, pp. 55, who can', he later observes 'I make no
56. Clark mentions the occurrence of I743 pretensions to account for this extraordinary
parenthetically in his description of that ofphenomenon, but the singular circumstance
1744. Hogg and Brewster both simplify the of its being visible only from one point, and
narrative by describing the events in chrono- no other, makes it look like something that
logical order. Hogg erroneously calls one ofmight be accounted for.' Ibid., i, pp. 65, 68.
the principals in these episodes 'David' rather 76 Montagu, n. I2 above, p. 6.
than Daniel Stricket. Louis Simpson, James " Jordan, n. 59 above, p. I114.
Hogg, Edinburgh and London, I962, p. I59, 78 i8io, iii, p. 422.
notes that a comparable phenomenon is used 7 Perth, i8I6, xxi, p. 264.
in the expanded version of 'The Adventures of 80 Works, i, p. 460.

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 198 C. J. WRIGHT
The impulse to ascribe the exper
of scientists may have been strong
be taken for granted. In one of h
John Wilson put into Hogg's mou

the refraction and reflection of

understood the sceence o' optics
then wi' sic a shudder o' instanta
glower upon the rainbow, the A
ken causes-Poets effecks.81

Yet this is a demonstrable misrepresentation of Hogg's position. He was

fascinated by science and about the time Wilson wrote became closely
acquainted with Brewster, whose pen portrait he later contributed to one of
the periodicals.82
Most literary men, then, made no attempt to disguise the fact that a
phenomenon like the Brocken Spectre was explicable in natural terms, nor
sought to delude the public by deliberate mystification. Carlyon reports an
interesting debate in the Coleridge circle on stories that the spectre occasion-
ally appeared between the spectator and the sun, 'which from being wholly
inexplicable, was proportionately wonderful', recording that this terminated,
'as might be expected',83 in the dismissal of the idea because of its very
physical impossibility. Indeed, the first reaction of the rational mind had
been to dismiss the phenomenon altogether as an old wives' tale, and Scott
observed 'modern scepticism has only found refuge by ascribing it to optical
deception.'84 In later editions of The Antiquary he added a note to explain
the nature of the occurrence. The explanation of the marvel was thought to
be so widely known that Basil Montagu, that odd utilitarian romantic,85 in a
further exposition of his crude Baconianism on the connexion between
knowledge and happiness, delivered to a far from cultivated audience, arguing
that knowledge dispelled vain fear, took the Brocken Spectre as a self-evident
example of this.86 In this case, therefore, the sublime was not terrible.
Haygarth had sagely remarked the glory 'might excite terror, or delight, in
the beholder, according to the disposition of mind with which it is viewed.'87
Hogg goes out of his way to argue that if the phenomenon excited terror, it
could not be sublime:

[this halo of glory] was a scene that would have entranced the man of
science with delight, but which the uninitiated and sordid man would
have regarded less than the mole rearing up his hill in silence and
darkness.88

81 No. XXXV, Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga- today chiefly remembered because his edition
zine, xxiii, no. cxxxiv, Jan. 1828, p. 112. of Bacon's works was the subject of Mac-
82 'Sir David Brewster', Fraser's Magazine,aulay's famous essay on Bacon in the July
vi, no. xxxiv, Nov. I832, p. 416. 1837 Edinburgh Review.
83 Carlyon, n. 35 above, i, p. 47. 88 Montagu, n. I2 above, pp. 6, 7.
84 The Antiquary, ii, p. 6o. 87 Haygarth, n. 68 above, p. 465.
85 See M. C. C. Crum, The Life of Basil 88 A Justified Sinner, p. 38.
Montagu, Oxford B. Litt. Thesis, 1954. He is

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 OPTICAL PHENOMENA AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION 199
As for the generality of natural philosophers, most saw no contradict
between their discipline and art. Brewster pointed out the aesthetic beaut
his optical experiments as well as their practical importance, regretting t
popular lecturers in experimental philosophy did not make more use of t
dazzling effects that could be achieved.89 His invention, the kaleidoscope,
a phenomenally successful toy. Three were sent out to Napoleon in exile
St. Helena,90 while somewhat to his client's exasperation a kaleidoscope
one of the few things that Byron's lawyer thought to take out to him
Venice.91 Brewster himself thought the device might be of assistance t
designers of textiles, tiles and various ornaments. The only form of beau
to which it was not amenable, he admitted, was the picturesque, and opt
contrivances were not lacking here either. On his tour of the Lakes Gray
carried with him a Claude Lorraine glass, a plano-convex mirror about fo
inches in diameter on a black foil bound up like a pocket book, as a convenien
substitute for a camera obscura.9 A far more sophisticated device was t
Camera Lucida, developed by William Hyde Wollaston to produce an ima
which an unskilled draftsman could then trace on paper.93 Though no o
realized it at the time, this was the first step on the road to photography.
Addressing himself to the central issue, Sir Humphry Davy felt able
compare the natural philosopher's state of mind with that of the artist.
The contemplation of the laws of the universe is connected with an imme
diate tranquil exaltation of mind, and pure mental enjoyment. T
perception of truth is almost as simple a feeling as the perception
beauty.., the love of nature is the same passion, as the love of the mag
ficent, the sublime and the beautiful.94
The scientific explanation of wonderful phenomena need not rob them
their ability to inspire awe. George Eliot unintentionally demonstrates
in her pejorative description of Adam Bede:
he had that mental combination which is at once humble in the region
mystery, and keen in the region of knowledge: it was the depth of
reverence quite as much as his hard commonsense, which gave him h
disinclination to doctrinal religion.95
In seeking to explain Bede's credulity, she only succeeds in demonstrati
that knowledge and religious feeling are not mutually exclusive.
However, the divide which had opened in the early nineteenth centu
between the sciences and the arts was inexorably widening. The ear
Romantics, as has been shown, were to a large extent conditioned b
eighteenth-century rationalism. Even the revival of neo-Platonic idealism
reaction to this was not of itself anti-scientific. Coleridge was not o
interested in the Natural Sciences but, in such works as his Treatise on Metho
89 E.P.J., i, no. ii, Oct. 1819, p. 289. described as a 'celestial kaleidoscope'.
90 In I818; see B. L. Add. MS 51828,92 West, n. 33 above, pp. 12, 200.
fol. i6v. 93 Brewster, Optics, n. 28 above, pp. 333,
91 Doris Langley Moore, Lord Byron, Accounts 334.
Rendered, I974, p. 225. It was at this time 94 'Parallels between Art and Science',
Byron was writing the second canto of 'Don The Director, xix, 30 May 1807, pp. 196, 197.
Juan' in stanza xciii of which a rainbow is 95 Adam Bede, n. 53 above, p. 47.

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 200 C. J. WRIGHT

dealt at considerable length wi

Baconian induction in Platonic
and their followers were much
movements towards realism in
the road to 'Art for Art's sake'.
to lead to some degree of alien
Babbage that a classical scholar
society in which arts men and sc
to one another.96 Sadly, the ex
were losing interest in such a d
the organic sciences is revealin
poetical mind . . . Mathematic
furnish the materials for a keen
the general value of this hypothes
natural history and its attendan
strongest hold on the Victorian
Art established themselves as dist
natural historians are informed i
a passionate, lyrical, quasi-relig
painting the prose of a Darwin
rainbow:

The successive mountain ranges [of southern Chile] appeared like dim
shadows, and the setting sun cast on the woodland a yellow gleam, mu
like that produced by the flame of spirits of wine. The water was wh
with the flying spray [of the Beagle], and the wind lulled and roared
again through the rigging: it was an ominous, sublime scene. During
few minutes there was a bright rainbow, and it was curious to obser
the effects of the spray, which, being carried along the surface of t
water, changed the ordinary semi-circle into a circle-a band of prisma
colours being continued from both feet of the common arch across
bay, close to the vessel's side: thus forming a distorted, but very near
entire ring.98

Department of Manuscripts, British Library

98 From Kensington, 22 May c. 1840. pelago. Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches

B.L. Add. MS 37191, fol. 385. S. . during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1890,
97 Lewes, n. Io above, p. 345. p. 269.
98 1o Dec. 1834, off the Chonos Archi-

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