I Am No Poet But If

The Chemical History of a Candle was a series of six Christmas Lectures Faraday delivered at the Royal Institution, first in 1848 and most famously in 1860–61, when they were transcribed and published in book form edited by William Crookes. Beginning with the simple question of why a candle burns, Faraday led his young audience through combustion, oxidation, and the composition of air, turning chemistry into a kind of narrative. The remark captures his conviction that scientific facts, properly observed and connected, have an inherent beauty — that rigor and poetry are not opposites.