SELBORNE. 



his residence in his native village, where he spent the greater part 

 of his life in literary occupations, and especially in the study of 

 nature. This he followed with patient assiduity, and a mind ever 

 open to the lessons of piety and benevolence, which such a study 

 is so well calculated to afford. Though several occasions offered 

 of settling upon a college living, he could never persuade himself 

 to quit the beloved spot, which was indeed a peculiarly happy 

 situation for an observer. Thus his days passed tranquil and 

 serene, with scarcely any other vicissitudes than those of the sea- 

 sons, till they closed at a mature age, on June 26, 1793." 



In addition to this, though there are still living in Selborne 

 some old men who remember Mr. White, and who speak of his 

 memory in terms of the highest respect, as an excellent and 

 amiable man, they do not appear to be very strongly impressed 

 with any overshadowing greatness of character which he exhibited 

 when he sojourned among them. They do speak, however, of his 

 kindness and familiarity with his fellow villagers, in his intercourse 

 with whom he appears to have observed the doctrine of reciprocity 

 with great strictness, and to have been, if possible, more warmly 

 attached to the human inhabitants of the village than to its 

 scenery, its antiquities, its plants, and its animals. White had 

 numerous correspondents, and he paid many visits ; but Selborne 

 appears always to have been the home of his affections, from which 

 no enticement of science, and no blandishment of more fashion- 

 able life, could wean him for any length of time. Yet, with all 

 this fondness for the simplicity of his native village, White was an 

 elegant scholar as well as an excellent man ; and some of his little 

 poems, the themes of which are all rural, though they have no 

 loftiness, and breathe not a whisper of the turbulent passions, are 

 as soft and bland as the notes of the turtle. 



But, as White was both in the village and of the village, he was 

 familiar with his fellow- villagers ; and, though there was the same 

 mildness and moderation in all his habits which tells so beauti- 

 fully in his writings, he was no anchorite. He loved the innocent 

 village sports, as any one may readily see from the heartiness 

 with which he alludes to the Playstow in his second letter to Pen- 

 nant. One of his favourite villagers is understood to have been 

 a shoemaker, who lived over the way, a man of some intelligence 

 and humour, and of simple and primitive manners, but who had 

 no objection to an occasional glass of good ale, in a place where 

 water is so hard to get at, and so hard when it is gotten, as it is 



