Abstract
The April 1818 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine opens with a proto-Brechtian sketch entitled ‘Galileo at the Inquisition’, in which Galileo is imagined in dialogue with one of the monks, his gaoler. It is difficult to tell where exactly the sympathy of the author lies throughout the interaction - or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the moral authority appears to shift between the two characters. Galileo is immediately recognizable as the hero of a scientific modernity, resisting the politico-theological constraints of an oppressive ‘universal’ church. Yet the question of whose ‘truth’ proves the more vulnerable remains unclear, as when Galileo yearns heavenward and the Monk recommends he ‘study the scriptures, with care and diligence, and you will have no need for optical contrivances’:
Galileo I think there is no sacrilege in attempting to discover more of the nature of the universe than what is revealed in [the Scriptures]. Monk So you believe yourself capable of succeeding in the attempt? Galileo Perhaps I do. Monk Do not allow yourself to be led away by the idle suggestions of selfconceit. What is there to be seen about you, which should enable you to penetrate farther into the secrets of the universe than me and the rest of mankind?
Geologers all, great, middling, and small,
Whether fiery Plutonian or wet Neptunist,
Most gladly, it seems, seek proofs for their schemes,
In the water, or spirit, of a jug of gin-twist.
(William Maginn)1
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Notes
William Maginn, ‘A Twist-imony, in Favour of Gin-Twist’, BEM, 12 (November 1822), 635–638.
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Christie, W. (2013). Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in the Scientific Culture of Early Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh. In: Morrison, R., Roberts, D.S. (eds) Romanticism and Blackwood’s Magazine. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137303851_10
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