James Hogg and British Romanticism

A Kaleidoscopic Art

Meiko O'Halloran

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137559050
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire européenne

This study argues for Hogg's centrality to British Romanticism, resituating his work in relation to many of his more famous Romantic contemporaries. Hogg creates a unique literary style which, the author argues, is best described as 'kaleidoscopic' in view of its similarities with David Brewster's kaleidoscope, invented in 1816.

1

Hogg’s Self-Positioning in The Poetic Mirror and the Literary Marketplace

This chapter provides a foundation for the case studies in my subsequent chapters by elucidating Hogg’s attraction to a kaleidoscopic literary practice through his self-positioning as both a participant in, and a critical viewer of, the literary marketplace; he draws together and critiques some of the competing impulses and rival literary forms circulating in the Romantic period. I begin by situating his kaleidoscopic art at the cultural intersection of Brewster’s scientific invention and some contemporary literary responses to the kaleidoscope – most specifically, the popular perception of the miscellany as its closest literary analogue in the 1810s and 1820s. Part I then pursues Hogg’s conception of a commercially based miscellany, placing his projected ‘Poetical Repository’ and its successor, The Poetic Mirror, in relation to debates about canon-making and commerce, and demonstrating his critical engagement with the prevailing literary conflicts of his day through his use of the two key models of genre-mixing – the miscellany and the anthology. Using the ‘high’ culture of anthologising which would become central to the construction of a canonical British literary history, and ‘low’ literary forms of parody and imitation, Hogg eventually created a mock miscellany which was also a satirical take on the anthology as a mode of shaping a selective narrative. As my analysis of Hogg’s parodies of Wordsworth and Southey will reveal, much of the critical value and insight of The Poetic Mirror turns on Hogg’s use of ‘low’ literary forms to critique and challenge some of his fellow poets’ disdain for the popular. Part II maps out and explores several other facets of Hogg’s self-fashioning which contribute to the development of his kaleidoscopic literary aesthetic. Drawing on Hogg’s other works, I explore some further expressions of his interest in literary diversity through his shifting relationship to bardic communities and his friendship and artistic affinity with Byron – demonstrated through their mutual enjoyment of playful competition, mixed literary styles, and self-reflexivity. This leads onto a discussion of Hogg’s understanding of himself as an instinctive and non-didactic author, attracted to the miscellaneous and motley, and interested in inviting readers to exercise their own critical judgement – aspects of his writing and thinking which collectively inform his extensive literary experimentation.

A cultural intersection: Brewster’s invention and literary kaleidoscopes

It is not surprising that Hogg does not draw direct comparisons between his work and the kaleidoscope, for while his kaleidoscopic literary practice bears a figurative resemblance to Brewster’s invention and shares some affinities with it, it was not a planned response to it. I suggest that, as he participated in a literary culture of miscellaneity and genre-mixing which had much in common with Brewster’s invention, Hogg felt his way instinctively towards an analogy with the kaleidoscope, rather than consciously using literature as a technology or seeking to provide a literary counterpart to Brewster’s scientific endeavour. In a culture which was intensely preoccupied with the act of viewing and reviewing itself, instruments which altered the viewer’s perceptions attracted particular excitement and interest. In 1814, as Hogg began to conceive of his ‘Poetical Repository’, Brewster’s experiments with the polarisation of light by successive reflections between plates of glass led to an accidental discovery: under certain conditions, the viewer could see the multiple reflections of an object clustering mysteriously in a circular arrangement. After further experiments, Brewster invented a new optical instrument which he called ‘the kaleidoscope’, the name deriving from the Greek words, ‘χαλος, beautiful; ειδος, a form; and σχοπεω, to see’.¹ By positioning mirrors at certain angles inside a tube, and placing pieces of coloured glass or other objects in a cell at one end, Brewster made it possible for the viewer who looked through the tube and turned the cell to see an ever-changing series of multiplied reflections, projected with perfect symmetry in a circular pattern. The kaleidoscope thus gave structure, order and harmony to miscellaneous objects, transforming them into beautiful forms, and as the movement of the cell made the objects collide in unpredictable arrangements, viewers could enjoy an endless variety of images. After demonstrating the effects of an early model of the kaleidoscope to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1815, Brewster obtained a patent for his invention in August 1817. By 1818, there was a commercial mania for kaleidoscopes all over Britain.

Hogg was neither a theoretical nor a methodical writer, but his experiments with narrative structure and perspective, and characters who transform continuously, led him to feel his way imaginatively towards the creation of kaleidoscopic literary techniques at the same time that Brewster was working on his invention. It is unclear how and when they met, but their mutual friends and acquaintances included Scott, who was known to Brewster from his boyhood in Jedburgh (Brewster was ten years’ Scott’s junior and 11 years younger than Hogg), and General Alexander Dirom, whose children Brewster tutored at their home at Mount Annan in Dumfriesshire in 1804–7.² If their paths did not cross at the homes of Scott or Dirom in the Borders, they may have met in Edinburgh in the early 1810s. Brewster became the editor of the Edinburgh Magazine, a periodical devoted to science and literature, from 1801, and took up residence in the city a year or so after Hogg moved there in 1810. By the 1820s, Hogg was in the habit of calling at Brewster’s home in the Borders, Allerly, just outside Melrose, when he went to sell his sheep at Melrose fair. Brewster fondly recalled Hogg’s visits and his own visit to Mount Benger (Hogg’s home between 1821 and 1830) when he contributed to the construction of a memorial monument of Hogg at St Mary’s Lake in 1860.³ In Tales of the Wars of Montrose (1835), Hogg mentions that Lady Brewster (his friend’s wife) told him the events which form his story, ‘Julia M,Kenzie’.⁴ His conversations with Brewster himself may have been influential on Hogg’s thinking too. It is possible that Hogg had heard about the kaleidoscope that Brewster demonstrated to the Royal Society the year before he composed The Poetic Mirror. But if not, he could hardly have missed hearing about Brewster’s popular new invention in the public press (and especially Blackwood’s) soon afterwards, when the kaleidoscope was manufactured, marketed and pirated across Britain and Europe in 1817–18. Whether or not Hogg recognised the parallels between their scientific and literary interests, his experimental parodies and imitations of 1816 led him to compose a kaleidoscopic collection of poetry which offered readers a range of views which was comparable to Brewster’s optical invention.

Brewster’s kaleidoscope was far more intricate and complex than the cheap toy we know today. Its most distinctive feature and the most significant for its analogy with Hogg’s work was the wide array of choices it gave viewers – not only in selecting the objects they wanted to view, but also in deciding how to view them. The instrument could be assembled in a variety of ways – from its ‘simple’ form to the telescopic, polyangular, annular, parallel, polycentral, microscopic and stereoscopic kaleidoscopes. Purchasers could then choose from a large array of circular object boxes or ‘cells’ what items they wanted to affix to the end of the instrument; these might include beads, glass, coloured fluids, spun thread and painted images. They were also encouraged to experiment with viewing objects outside the instrument by applying the kaleidoscope in its telescopic or microscopic modes, for example. The visual effects produced through their choices could be indeterminate, mysterious, perhaps even disturbing; if the objects in the cell were loose, the number of possible images was infinite, making each viewing quite different – one could neither predict nor recreate any single view. Hogg’s writing similarly exploits accident and design and opens up widely differing readings; his generic juxtapositions and changing narrative patterns prompt unpredictable responses, as they shift from page to page, opening up a plethora of interpretative possibilities – sometimes sinister and sometimes light-hearted. Just as Brewster’s kaleidoscope could be used to view objects in myriad ways, generating an infinite number of images, so Hogg’s kaleidoscopic literature involves readers through a process of endless transformation and interpretative choice.

Brewster’s kaleidoscope captured the public imagination and inspired such excitement that it was almost immediately pirated across Europe. Writing to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (no relation to James) from Naples on 21 December 1818, Percy Shelley complained of a mania of ‘Kalleidoscopism’ in Livorno, caused by a glut of imitative copies of the instrument after he forwarded Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s description of a kaleidoscope to the ‘young English mechanist’ Henry Reveley.⁵ Reveley’s mother, Maria Gisborne, had already expressed her enthusiasm for the ‘delightful science’ of ‘Kaleidoscopism’ to Mary Shelley.⁶ Brewster himself regarded his invention more seriously as a utilitarian tool of reform with which he hoped to renovate the arts on an ambitious industrial scale.⁷ This was in keeping with his efforts throughout his career to expand public knowledge through popular scientific treatises and articles – as Jonathan Crary puts it, ‘his implied program, the democratization and mass dissemination of techniques of illusion’.⁸ He was one of the leading scientific writers for Blackwood’s from the very beginning and became the author of numerous optical studies.⁹ As Brewster explains in A Treatise on the Kaleidoscope (1819), a key stage in its creation was his recognition that ‘it would prove of the highest service in all the ornamental arts, and would, at the same time, become a popular instrument for the purposes of rational amusement’.¹⁰ Others eagerly shared his recognition of the kaleidoscope’s potential for providing new patterns for ‘carpet and lace manufacturers, calico printers, architects, paper strainers, ornamental painters, jewellers, carvers and gilders, workers in stained glass &c.’.¹¹ A public appetite for the creative capacities of the kaleidoscope, whether for industry or leisure, was part of the zeitgeist.

Surprisingly, however, few people anticipated the possible influence of the kaleidoscope on literature – another form of art which lent itself to multi-layering. Helen Groth documents two poetic responses as part of the contemporary reception of Brewster’s kaleidoscope – Lord Byron’s use of the ‘celestial kaleidoscope’ in Don Juan (which I discuss in relation to Hogg’s Confessions in Chapter 4) and Anna Jane Vardill’s ‘On a Lady’s Kaleidoscope’ – which Groth relates to modern theoretical engagements with the concept of the kaleidoscope.¹² Other literary responses to Brewster’s invention ranged from the fleeting topical depiction of a child’s impulsive purchase of a kaleidoscope from a travelling pedlar in Jefferys Taylor’s children’s story, Harry’s Holiday; or, The Doings of One who had Nothing to Do (1818), to initiatives such as The Kaleidoscope; or, Literary and Scientific Mirror (1818–31), a long-standing cheap weekly miscellany, edited by the Liverpool publisher Egerton Smith, and printed by subscription. Taking its name from Brewster’s invention, Smith’s Kaleidoscope comprised items of poetry and prose on a host of interdisciplinary subjects, culled whole or in the form of extracts from magazines. Its cheap price and relatively long run indicate its success in attracting a popular audience. Hogg was very likely aware of The Kaleidoscope since he is mentioned regularly in its issues, one of which included a reprinting of his poem ‘Hymn to the Evening Star’ on 21 December 1819. And Smith was not the only editor who recognised the miscellany as a literary analogue for the kaleidoscope.

When the radical London publisher William Hone reached for a metaphor to convey the intended popular appeal of one of his miscellanies, The Table Book (1827), he turned to none other than the kaleidoscope which Brewster had offered to the public as ‘a general philosophical instrument of universal application’ as well as ‘a popular instrument for the purposes of rational amusement’ a decade earlier.¹³ Hone presents his miscellany as a ‘literary kaleidoscope’:

MY TABLE BOOK, therefore, is a series of continually shifting scenes – a kind of literary kaleidoscope, combining popular forms with singular appearances – by which youth and age of all ranks may be amused; and to which, I respectfully trust, many will gladly add something, to improve its views.¹⁴

As a commercially popular object of amusement which appealed to consumers of all classes and ages, Brewster’s kaleidoscope provided an apt analogy for Hone’s project in bringing together different kinds of literary texts and juxtaposing ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures to appeal to a mixed body of readers. Like Hogg, Hone challenged the boundaries between the polite and the popular, using the miscellany as an instrument for creating a more inclusive and demotic view of the literary canon in the 1820s. As Mina Gorji observes, in Hone’s The Every-Day Book (1825–26), ‘milkmaids’ and Mayers’ songs shared space with Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Byron’, inviting comparison and contrast and unsettling ideas of poetry as a genteel art.¹⁵ In The Table Book, Hone invites his audience’s participation ‘to improve its views’ and includes a number of responses from readers in the form of letters.

Given his own long-standing interest in optical scientific developments, Hogg would certainly have been aware of the kaleidoscope. His interest in optical effects emerges frequently in his writing – not least a key episode in The Three Perils of Man when the Friar (Roger Bacon) deploys optical illusions to compete with the dark magic of the wizard, Michael Scott. After first producing and multiplying shadowy phantoms using a magic lantern, the Friar uses a distorting glass to make it appear as if the Mountain of Cope-law has been divided into three. Michael Scott retaliates by producing physical doubles of three of the characters and getting his elfin minions to twist the hill of Eildon into three identical hills. Thus, instruments of optical science and illusion are pitted against the supernatural power to duplicate or divide objects or individuals.¹⁶ In his later autobiographical essay, ‘Nature’s Magic Lantern’ (1833), Hogg presents a series of anecdotes of the mysterious optical effects produced by natural phenomena, some of which he observed first-hand in his youth as a shepherd, and others which are preserved in the popular living memory of Scottish rural communities and newspaper accounts. His mention of Brewster appears in connection with an occasion on which Hogg saw a double shadow of himself:

I never forgot the circumstance; and after I became an old man, I visited the very spot, as nearly as I could remember, again and again, thinking that the reflection of the sun from some pool or lake which I had not perceived, might have caused it; but there was no such thing. I never mentioned the circumstance to any living being before, save to Sir D. Brewster, who, of all men I ever met with, is the fondest of investigating everything relating t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Reclaiming Hogg’s Place in British Romanticism
• 1. Hogg’s Self-Positioning in The Poetic Mirror and the Literary Marketplace
• 2. Hogg’s Eighteenth-Century Inheritance: The Queen’s Wake, National Epic and Imagined Ancestries
• 3. By Accident and Design: Burns, Shakespeare and Hogg’s Kaleidoscopic Techniques, from the Theatre and The Poetic Mirror to Queen Hynde
• 4. Exploding Authority and Inheritance: Reading the Confessions of a Justified Sinner as a Kaleidoscopic Novel
• 5. Imploding the Nation: Aesthetic Conflict in Tales of the Wars of Montrose
• Conclusion: Expanding the Range of Romanticism
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index