X. INTRODUCTION 



were two men, whose friendship lasted without the smallest 

 apparent cloud for fifty years, of more totally opposite habits 

 and character. Both, it is true, were men of good birth and 

 education, and fond of books and reading ; but, while Gilbert 

 White grew up in a home situate in the depths of the country, 

 literally " five miles from anywhere," and amid circumstances 

 which must have been such as to cultivate hardihood and self- 

 reliance, Mulso was a typical townsman, who loved the corner 

 seat of a carriage much better than the back of a horse, an 

 animal which he seems to have regarded in the light of a rather 

 disagreeable, though sometimes necessary, means of exercise. 

 And the two friends certainly took very different views of life 

 and its duties. They both, no doubt, in adopting the profession 

 of a clergyman, were to some extent influenced by the expecta- 

 tion of enjoying a reasonable competence ; but, while one of 

 them, as time went on became almost absolutely idle, the other, 

 whose circumstances would, as a bachelor, have equally admitted 

 of laziness, spent his whole life, after taking holy orders, in the 

 active performance of clerical duty, from his " sentiment," as his 

 friend records, *' that a clerg}'man should not be idle and 

 unemployed." Nor was this duty of a merely perfunctory 

 character, since I have been frequently assured by old people 

 in Selborne that their parents distinctly recollected and dwelt 

 upon the very assiduous manner in which Gilbert White visited 

 his parishioners, by whom he was ever held in the greatest 

 respect and regard. 



Mulso's letters certainly evince a full recognition of this 

 difference of character. Early in the correspondence, he writes : 

 " I envy you your bold Flights, your Eagle Eanges; ... I am 

 a poor sculking Quail, whose very Love-song is plaintive." And 

 in many other passages he does full justice to White's greater 

 energy and firmness of disposition. In wit and vivacity no 

 doubt Mulso was the superior, though a dry vein of humour 

 often pervades the naturalist's letters. His sister, Mrs. Chapone, 

 fully recognised these qualities, writing to a friend in 1775 that 

 her brother was "a diverting animal," and terming him "that 

 comical creature " on another occasion ; while his children in 

 their account of their aunt mention their father's " genius," 

 and his " captivating manners." He certainly was a man of 

 great amiability of character, and proved himself a very staunch 

 and constant friend. 



The letters now published, it should be pointed out, afford 

 the only existing evidence of an interesting event in Gilbert 

 White's life, his unsuccessful candidature for the Provostship of 

 Oriel in 1757, with its attendant circumstances. It is clear, 

 from what Mulso says, that, at least as far back as 1754, there 

 were two contending parties among the Fellows, headed by White 



