EUR I COL A ON THE AURORA BOREA LIS. 



363 



ancient or modern writer. But in truth they had been previously so 

 noticed, and in one instance by an author who was a great favourite of 

 Collins himself, if, to adopt his own language — 



. " If not with light regard, 



I read aright that gifted bard, 

 Him whose school above the rest 

 His loveliest elfin queen has blest." 



I allude to Spenser, who, in his " Faerie Queene," thus describes Bri- 

 tomart in a passage so beautiful in itself, and containing so apt and 

 uncommon a comparison, and withal so curious in its application to our 

 subject, that I take leave to insert the whole stanza : — 



" With that her glistening helmet she unlaced, 



Which doft, her golden locks, that were upbound 

 Still in a knot, unto her heels down traced, 

 And like a silken veile in compasse round 

 About her backe and all her bodie wound. 

 Like as the shining skie in summer's night, 



What time the days with scorching heat abound, 

 Is crested all with lines of firie light, 

 That it prodigious seems in common people's sight." 



F. Q. iv. i. 13. 



It must be, I think, sufficiently obvious to every reader of this ex- 

 tract that, as Dr. Jortin remarks upon it, <c Spenser here gives a 

 description of what we call Aurora Borealis." And I think it also 

 sufficiently obvious that the appearance had not escaped pretty general 

 observation in Spenser's time, though <c common people " were puzzled 

 to account for it. Now the fourth book of the " Faerie Queene " was 

 published in or about 1593, and written but a short time before, which 

 is about 122 years previous to "the first year of the first George's 

 reign," the supposed period of " the first appearance of the northern 

 lights." 



But in the recent edition of White's " Natural History of Selborne/' 

 by Captain Thomas Brown, Edinburgh, 1833, occurs the following 

 note by the editor in reference to the Aurora Borealis, which White 

 describes as having "made a particular appearance, Nov. 1, 1787»" 

 The editor says, " At what time this meteor was first observed is not 

 known ; none are recorded in the English annals till the remarkable 

 one which happened on the 30th of January, 1560: another very bril- 

 liant one appeared in 1760." It may be noticed, in passing, that the 



