Herschel Seeing Is an Art That Must Be Learnt

Contributor: Elsa Cazeneuve

Location: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Clarification:This certificate is a hand-coloured illustration of Herschel's M Forty-Feet Reflecting Telescope, engraved by J. Pass for the 1819 edition of the Encyclopedia Londinensis (or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature), and featured in the chapter related to "Eyes". At the time, Herschel's Xl-Anxiety Telescope was the largest in the world and price over 4000 pounds, paid for past Male monarch George III. Its construction began in 1786, and was completed in 1789; the telescope was erected at Herschel'south home, near Slough. It presently became a touristic allure and a scientific curiosity: people would travel all the way from Paris to admire this new wonder and some even likened it to the Colossus of Rhodes. Afterward on, the telescope was marked on the 1830 Ordinance Survey map of the surface area. Unfortunately, Herschel's last telescope would have years to demonstrate its worth, as it had to rotate very slowly to show various aspects of the heavens. William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who worked together, found that the telescope was hard to ready and maintain and William's son eventually had it dismantled in 1840. Interestingly enough, the dates of the construction and demise of the 40-footer cannot simply recall those of the Romantic era: Herschel's grand telescope came to serve as a symbol of the unbounded Romantic imagination.

Nevertheless, Herschel's telescope as well remains a staple of scientific progress: it was adopted as the official seal of the Majestic Astronomical Society, and testifies to the ambitions of Herschel to plunge always deeper into the sky and empathize the language of the heavens. Indeed, Herschel made more than 400 telescopes during his life, and his fame and skill enabled him to institute a successful concern. He worked on new designs to overcome the limitations of the technology of the menstruum, and was the first astronomer to itemize more than 2400 nebulae, which in the 20th century would come up to be recognized every bit galaxies beyond our own. Herschel was perhaps all-time known for his discovery of a new planet, Uranus, first observed on the 13th of March 1781. His accidental discovery of infrared light from the sun – which would lead to our understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum – was also to go a landmark of optics science, which in plough came to influence Romantic poets such equally William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

"Seeing is in some respects an art, which must be learnt", writes Herschel to William Watson on the 7th of January 1782. Watson, secretary to the Regal Society of London, starting time met Herschel in 1781 and was very much impressed by his self-taught cognition of astronomy and his paw-fabricated telescopes. He therefore introduced the astronomer to the Royal Society of London. At the historic period of 43, William Herschel met George III at Windsor and became the King'due south Personal Astronomer. Between 1782 and 1802, Herschel had over a hundred papers published by the Royal Society (focusing on the volcanos on the surface of the moon, the problem of double stars, the nebulae…). Many of these papers came to exist studied past William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who both good astronomy as part of their daily activities in Nether Stowey. This collaborative star-gazing inspired some of their most famous poems: the narrator of Wordsworth's verse form "The Thorn" carries his telescope up the mount; the crowd gathers around "A Telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky" in "Star-Gazers"; Coleridge's Mariner uses his spy-drinking glass to observe the moon and the stars high to a higher place the ocean. Both poets were also influenced by Erasmus Darwin's poem The Botanic Garden (1791), the offset canto of which celebrates the discovery of Uranus.

So, late descried by Herschel's piercing sight,
Hang the bright squadrons of the twinkling night
[…]
Flowers of the heaven ! Ye to age must yield,
Frail as your silver sisters of the field ! (ll.371-381)

Amongst the sources of inspiration of "The Thorn" was also a huge double-page analogy of Herschel's forty-feet telescope, together with a lengthy description of its magnifying capacity. The narrator of the poem, an apprentice astronomer climbing up a mount, mirrors Wordsworth and Coleridge's activities, as evidenced in the sixteenth stanza:

For i twenty-four hours with my telescope,
To view the sea wide and vivid,
When to this land commencement I came,
Ere I had heard of Martha's proper name,
I climbed the mountain's peak:
A storm came on, and I could run across
No object college than my articulatio genus. (ll.170-176)

Ironically enough, the telescope becomes a metaphor for the narrator's figurative incomprehension, equally he overlooks the suffering of the young adult female next to him. Considering he is obsessed with his need to scrutinize the heavens, the narrator seems to discover life and his surroundings only distantly. In that respect, the telescope stands as a metapoetic device: it is turned back upon the cocky, and invites us to look inward every bit much as upwards. The magnifying power of the telescope, which converts distant lights into planets and stars, is associated with that of imagination every bit defined by Wordsworth, in his Note to "The Thorn": "imagination, by which word I mean the faculty which produces impressive furnishings out of simple elements".

Besides, Samuel Taylor Coleridge used the telescope equally a metaphor for a renewed understanding of human faculties. In his Lectures, Coleridge conceived of an illustration in which Faith came to be associated with a telescope, allowing us to further the powers of Reason: "Now what the telescope is to the heart, (…) faith, that is the energies of our moral feelings, are to the reason. Reason is the center, and faith (all the moral anticipation) the telescope" (1). "By the eye of Reason through the telescope of Faith, i.e. Revelation, nosotros may see what without this telescope we could never take known to exist" (2) .

For Coleridge, the telescope symbolizes an enhanced visual perception, which will allow mankind to run across through the illusionary fragmentation of the world. This "armed vision" epitomizes a new way of seeing, one that sets the poet complimentary from "the despotism of the eye" (3) , enabling him to look both up and inward. The very word "telescope", which comes from the Greek tele skopos (pregnant 'far-seeing') encapsulates in its etymology the prospects of a device related to teleos, meaning "end, goal". Herschel's telescope therefore paved the way for a Romantic redefinition of sight, which strove to achieve both inner depths and new heights.

Creator: J. Pass

Date: 1819

Media rights: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Object type: hand-coloured analogy

Format: sheet 293 x 222 mm

Language: English

References

1. S.T. Coleridge, Lecture 9, 22 February 1819, LHP, I, p. 377.
2. T. Coleridge, 'Aphorism XXII', Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion B, in AR , p. 341.
3. S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Affiliate VI.

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Source: https://www.euromanticism.org/herschels-grand-forty-feet-telescope/