CIX.] 



OF SELBORNE 



289 



LETTER CIX. 

 TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



THE summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and a portentous 

 one, and full of horrible phenomena ; for, besides the alarming 

 meteors and tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and 

 distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar 

 haze, or smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this 

 island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits 

 was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known 

 within the memory of man. By my journal I find that I had 

 noticed this strange occurrence from June 23 to July 20 

 inclusive, during which period the wind varied to every quarter 

 without making any alteration in the air. The sun, at noon, 

 looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured, 

 ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms ; but was 

 particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All 

 the time the heat was so intense, that butchers' meat could 

 hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed ; and the flies 

 swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered 

 the horses half frantic, and riding irksome. The country 

 people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red 

 louring aspect of the sun ; and indeed there was reason for the 

 most enlightened person to be apprehensive ; for, all the while 

 Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily, were torn and convulsed 

 with earthquakes ; and about that juncture a volcano sprung out 

 of the sea on the coast of Norway. On this occasion Milton's 

 noble simile of the sun, in his first book of " Paradise Lost," fre- 

 quently occurred to my mind ; and it is indeed particularly 

 applicable, because, towards the end, it alludes to a superstition 

 VOL. i. p P 



