194 GILBERT WHITE AND OTHERS 



which he addressed to his stately correspondents, 

 Pennant and Barrington, for use in their works. Then, 

 too, there is the complete absence of self -importance 

 or self-consciousness. The observation or the remark 

 stands on its own merits, and gains nothing because he 

 happens to be the maker of it, except it be in the tinge of 

 humour that often delicately pervades it. The beauties 

 of the work, apart from the way in which they directly 

 appeal to naturalists, as they did to Darwin, grow upon 

 the reader who is not a naturalist, as Lowell testifies, and 

 the more they are studied the more they seem to defeat 

 analysis. 



Mr. Holt- White's help in the article for the " Dic- 

 tionary of National Biography ' was amply repaid by 

 Newton, when the former was writing his ' Life and 

 Letters of Gilbert White." As recorded in the Preface, 

 ' To Professor Newton, my obligations are many and 

 great. In addition to much valuable advice, he has been 

 good enough to send me the natural history notes which 

 appear with his initials." After a visit which Mr. Holt- 

 White paid to him at Magdalene at that time, he wrote :- 



Needless to say that your visit gave me much 

 pleasure, and I hope that it may not be your last. I 

 look on the entertainment of you as a duty to G.W., 

 from whom I have derived more advantage than from 

 any other naturalist, and it would take a long while to 

 pay off that debt. 



He took exception to the description in the Preface 

 of White as " remaining single " : 



I think ' a bachelor " or " unmarried ' would be 

 better than " single," which seems to imply singularity, 

 and I being in that condition demur to such an impli- 

 cation ! Some people seem to forget that we are all 

 born ' single," barring, as the Irish would say, twins 

 of both sexes so that it is the natural unsophisticated 



