CIX.] OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER CIX. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRING TON. 
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 knoAvn 
within the memory of man. By my journal 1 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 Avas 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 N"orway. 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 superstitious 
u 
