xxvi Introduction 



was just seven years old ; he left one son, John, " Barrister-at- 

 law" who was the father of the more famous Gilbert White of 

 these charming letters. 



Gilbert the younger was born at Selborne vicarage on July 18, 

 1720. He died in 1793, so that his seventy-three years fairly 

 covered the greater part of the eighteenth century and of the 

 reigns of the three Georges. Selborne is even now a remote 

 country village, far from the railway ; it was then yet more 

 inaccessible and sequestered than at present. It lay midway 

 between two great coach roads, the Portsmouth and the Win- 

 chester ; and it was approached only by those deep, steep, and 

 water-worn lanes of which White speaks so feelingly, but to 

 render which passable his grandfather the vicar had left a 

 considerable sum of money. Roughly speaking, indeed, Gilbert 

 White spent most of his life at Selborne; and it is partly that 

 long ancestral connection with a single spot which imparts so much 

 value to his continued series of local observations. But he did 

 not lack polite learning, nor intercourse with the best of his kind 

 elsewhere. He went to school at Basingstoke, with Thomas 

 Warton, a well-known clergyman, famous as the father of two 

 more distinguished sons, Joseph, Master of Winchester College, 

 and Thomas, Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Thence the lad 

 proceeded in due course to the University, where he matriculated 

 at Oriel in \ 739, being then nineteen. Four years later, in 1 743, 

 he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in March 1744, he 

 was elected to a Fellowship. He seems to have resided for at 

 least three years afterwards at the University. His first curacy 

 was at Sivarraton, near Old Alresford. In 1752, however, he 

 was Junior Proctor at Oxford, and there are indications that 

 the Swarraton curacy was little more than a title. Not very 

 long afterwards he retired to Selborne, ivhere he was finally 

 settled in 1755, though he did not inherit the family property till 

 his uncle's death in 1763. He could never thencefomvard be 

 induced permanently to quit this his chosen place of residence. 



