GILBERT WHITE'S GREATNESS 193 



well-informed or otherwise competent judges, citing fresh 

 proofs of White's industry and accuracy. That he was 

 a prince among observers, nearly always observing the 

 right thing in the right way, is a very great merit ; but 

 not a few others have been as industrious and as accurate 

 without attaining the rank assigned to him. Good- 

 natured reviewers are apt to say of almost any new book 

 on observational natural history that the author has 

 studied in White's school, and to prophesy the success of 

 a work which they declare has been written on the model 

 of " Selborne." Such an author has frequently the gift 

 of writing agreeably, and has occasionally been a fair 

 naturalist, though too often there is a tendency to observe 

 the wrong thing or in the wrong way ; but the best of 

 these men does not come near White. He had a genius 

 for observing, and for placing before us in a few words 

 the living being he observed. That, in addition to his 

 excellence in this respect, he was not only all that was 

 meant by the old phrase " a scholar and a gentleman," 

 while that he was a philosopher of no mean depth, is also 

 evident ; but it seems as though the combination of all 

 these qualities would not necessarily give him the un- 

 questioned superiority over all other writers in the same 

 field. The secret of the charm of his writings must be 

 sought elsewhere ; but it has been sought in vain. 

 Some have ascribed it to his way of identifying himself 

 in feeling with the animal kingdom, though to this sym- 

 pathy there were notable exceptions. Some, like Lowell, 

 set down the " natural magic " of WTiite to the fact that, 

 " open the book where you will, it takes you out of 

 doors ; " but the same is to be said of other writers, who 

 yet remain comparatively undistinguished. It may be 

 certainly averred that his style, a certain stiffness 

 characteristic of the period being admitted, is eminently 

 unaffected, even when he is " Didactic," as he more than 

 once apologises for becoming, and the same simplicity is 

 as observable in his letters to members of his family, 

 which could never have been penned with the view of 

 publication, and have never been retouched, as in those 



