Xll. INTRODUCTION 



ment of research in natural history, in which Gilbert White's 

 career again contrasts with that of his friend, who applied 

 himself, not unsuccessfully, to the research of endowment. And 

 so the epithets, " rich," " sinecure," and " pluralist," as applied 

 to the man of whom Mulso remarks (letter 205), " of you [it 

 may be said] here is ye Man who refused Livings, and served 

 Curacies," may be relegated to the category of terminological 

 inexactitudes, even " from a College point of view," as they 

 certainly will be from that of common sense. 



It is pleasant to learn that, as time went on, the breach in 

 the friendship between Musgrave and White was healed, and 

 that their feelings for one another became as they had been 

 "before competitions divided" them. Yet from the fact of 

 Gilbert White's writing to his brother at Blackburn in 1773, 

 some years after the death of Musgrave, of " probable disputes 

 at College," it would appear that the Oriel Common-room did not 

 always contain a happy family. 



Perhaps the most striking point in the letters is the extra- 

 ordinarily correct estimate their author formed of his friend's 

 powers as a descriptive naturalist, and the wonderfully accurate 

 prophecies he indulged in of the future success of the book which 

 was being written by a then wholly obscure country clergyman, 

 many years before that book was published, or even completed. 

 There are many such anticipations of White's and of Selborne's 

 future renown. To mention one of them : so far back as 1779, 

 ten years before the " Selborne " was given to the world, Mulso 

 actually remarks that his correspondent may perhaps be pardoned 

 for describing the antiquities of Selborne, as well as its natural 

 history, because " it may save some future Biographers trouble, 

 " who may think it necessary to celebrate the Place where such 

 "a Genius was born " I — a place which he had three years pre- 

 viously prophesied that White would " immortalise." 



And possibly the correspondence may appeal to the general 

 reader. It has been said that every man's life is a fairy story 

 written by God's fingers; though perhaps the fairies had not 

 very much to do with John Mulso's fortunes, unless his uncle 

 the Bishop be regarded as a fairy Godfather. Yet the ingenuous 

 expression of his early hopes and fears, his enjoyment of pros- 

 perity when it came, and the close of his days, saddened as it 

 was by ill-health, and the illness and death of his amiable wife, 

 in short, the candid history of an actual life, are not without 

 a real interest ; and the whole story has a value so far as it 

 illustrates a certain phase of social life during the latter half 

 of the picturesque easygoing eighteenth century. 



Gilbert White, as I have said, lived for nearly two years after 

 the death of his friend in September 1791 ; but not many of his 



