208 Slimmer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



a country gentleman of some property, married, and 

 had several sons by Miss Holt of Streatham. He 

 could afford to give his sons a good education, for 

 he sent Gilbert to a tutor at Basingstoke who was 

 himself a scholar, and who knew how to bring up 

 his sons as scholars. Both these boys were younger 

 than Gilbert ; the elder one, Joseph Warton, matri- 

 culated in the same year with him at Oriel, and 

 became afterwards Head Master of Winchester ; 

 while the younger, Thomas, the friend of Johnson, 

 was afterwards Fellow of Trinity and Professor of 

 Poetry. Of these schooldays we know only one 

 incident, told us by White himself in his letters on 

 the antiquities of Selborne. "When a schoolboy, 

 more than fifty years ago, he (the author) was an 

 eyewitness, perhaps a party concerned, in the under- 

 mining of that fine old ruin at the north end of 

 Basingstoke town, well known by the name of Holy 

 Ghost Chapel." Any one who will read the rest 

 of the passage will see that even in his old age 

 White could dwell with some complacency on this 

 exploit. With a quiet humour only possible in an 

 age that knew no " Society for the Preservation of 

 Ancient Buildings," he quotes Dryden : 



" It look'd so like a sin, it pleased the more." 



But the history of White's early years is lost 

 almost as completely as the memory of his features, 



