LETTER CXCIV 299 



to be made a Priest on that Day at Farnham. But This, as 

 You please : for I cannot trust to it, tho' I shd be glad of it. 



We are pretty well here, tho' I did not venture to ye Visita- 

 tion & of Course did not see the Chancellor, in his own Hair. 

 What do You think of me in my own grey Locks ? a Sort of 

 a Pochett Nestor! — A pretty piece of Coquettry, to ask an old 

 Fellow wth attendrissement — " Cui canam religas Comam? — 

 Simplex &c." — well ! — it's a comical World that we live in ! 



Having, I hope, acquitted Myself of the Charge of being an 

 ungratefull Beast to You, I repeat my wish to see You, & shall 

 be glad that your Appearance Today should make this Letter 

 vain. 



My Sister does not go 'till Saturday. 



With affte Comps. to All under your Eoof & in ye Neighbourhood, 

 I am ever. Dear Gil, Afftely Your's, 



J. Mulso. 



Letter 194. 

 Beverend Mr White, Meonstoke. 



Selborne near Alton, Hants. Saturday Sepr 29, 81. 



Dear Gil : + at Alton. 



I thank you, in his Name & my own, for your late Civilities 

 to my Son, of which he is very full ; I think he has even brought 

 home with him the Tone of your Voices, your Phrases, & your 

 Stories. He is likewise sensible of ye Charms of Miss White, 

 & the Obligingness of your Neighbours. In short, he has made 

 a happy Importation of Funds of Conversation for Us upon that 

 best of Subjects, a Knot of Friends. He deliver'd your Piece by 

 Mr Grimm (the Temple),* which I approve of very much ; tho' 

 I still think that Mr Grimm has a heavy Hand at a distant View ; 

 nor can I forgive him, but as a Christian, for giving so little an 

 Idea of the high Point of your Hermitage:! In the Place he is 

 just, but gives no Eepraesentation of the Position wth Eegard 



* Plate VIII., opp. p. 342 in the "Selborne." 



+ The Hermitage which Grimm drew is clearly shown in his large view 

 of Selborne (the frontispiece to Gilbert White's book), situate a little to the 

 west of the zigzag path up the Hanger. It is the " — straw-clad cell, 

 Emerging gently from the leafy dell," of the " Invitation to Selborne " ; to 

 which lines the author appended the note, "a grotesque building, contrived 

 by a young gentleman [Harry White] who used to appear in the character of 

 an Hermit." It was built in 1758, a few years later than the " — pensile 

 nest-like bower" of the same poem, which is explained as " a kind of Arbour 

 on the side of a hill" ; to this Mulso alludes in Letter 21 as "the Nidus 

 Acherontiae ; by which Name I think you have christened your Arbour on 

 ye Hill." In 1776 a second Hermitage, described by Gilbert White as 

 " A new Hermitage, a plain cot," was built halfway up the Hanger, exactly 

 opposite to his house. This also is portrayed in Grimm's view of Selborne. 



