212 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE 1739 



hole I remember to have seen daws flying out from that 

 horrible and tremendous chasm. These birds, thought I, are 

 wise in their generation : for here they breed uninterrupted 

 from age to age, since the most roguish boys dare not 

 interrupt their ancient inaccessible kingdom. 



Are you a Whiteist, or a Badcockist ? * for I hear every 

 man in Oxford must be one or the other. I can tell you how 

 you may do Edmund White a good office. When he and his 

 wife were in Oxford, last summer, they quartered at the 

 Bear-inn, where they left behind them the first volume of 

 Dilly's prose Elegant Extracts. It is a very oddshaped 

 volume in quarto, somewhat like a music book. If you 

 could recover this book, it would be received with thanks. 



Mrs. J. White and I join in respects to you and James 



Etty; and in best wishes to Mr. Ventris, who, we hope, 



is recovering his health and strength very fast. When does 



Bishop W. Smith, your founder, appear ? We long to see 



you a biographer and to read the result of your painful and 



curious enquiries. 



y obliged and humble servant, 



Gil. White. 



When you write, present my respects to D^ Loveday and 

 D'^ Townson. How I wish that we had such a man as either 

 of them living at Selborne ! 



From the Rev. B. Churton. 



Brasen Nose, Dec. 13, 1789. 



Dear Sir, — Your excellent letter deserves a much better 

 answer than I have time or ability to honour it with. But 



* The Rev. Joseph White, Regius Professor of Hebrew and Laudian 

 Professor of Arabic, was appointed Bampton Lecturer in 1784, whereupon he 

 preached, before the University of Oxford, a set of sermons, comparing 

 Christianity with Mahomedanism, which were printed in 1784, and soon 

 reached a second edition. Upon the death, in 1788, of Mr. Badcock, a 

 learned dissenting minister, it was discovered that a considerable share 

 of the sermons was of his writing. 



