The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and 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 23rd to July 20th 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 sprang 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," frequently occurred to my mind; and it is indeed
particularly applicable because, towards the end, it alludes to a
superstitious kind of dread, with which the minds of men are always
impressed by such strange and unusual phenomena.
"--As when the _sun_, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal, _misty_ air,
_Shorn_ of his _beams_; or from behind the moon,
In _dim_ eclipse, _disastrous twilight sheds_
On half the nations, and with _fear_ of _change_
_Perplexes_ monarchs--."