MEMOIR. 



THERE are few, perhaps, who have so extensively and 

 so pleasantly occupied the mind of contemporaries and 

 of posterity, and yet have left such scanty materials for 

 a biography of corresponding interest, as the estimable 

 and accomplished author of the ' Natural History and 

 Antiquities of Selborne.' 



Born in a remote and, at that time, unknown village, 

 to which his fascinating pen has since given fame, edu- 

 cated to a profession the tendency of which is to en- 

 courage rather than to repress that love of retirement 

 from the busy world which was his choice, alike from 

 natural inclination and from the contingent circum- 

 stances of his life, modest in his self- estimation, tem- 

 perate and unambitious in his wishes, and withal en- 

 dowed with a classical and cultivated taste and a love 

 of nature as pure as it was intense possessed, too, of a 

 competency sufficient for all the needful comforts of an 

 elegant retirement, it is scarcely matter of surprise that 

 Gilbert White should, on the termination of his career 

 at the University, have sought at once the retreat with 

 which his earliest recollections were associated, and 

 where he might in quiet indulge those pursuits the cul- 

 tivation of which could involve none of the changes and 

 adventures to which biography ordinarily owes its interest 

 and its charm. 



That he was born in an obscure spot in Hampshire, 

 that he received and profited by the customary educa- 

 tion of a gentleman and clergyman, that he passed the 



