xxiv INTEODUCTION 



of the bustle of the man who carries on a wide correspondence, 

 none of the hurry and excitement of the discoverer who fears to 

 be forestalled. I can find no indication that White ever left 

 England, and his travels were confined, for all that we know, 

 to the southern and central counties. He visited Devonshire 

 in 1750. In one place he speaks of having seen Eldon Hole 

 in Derbyshire, but he has not been traced further north. 

 Nor did he greatly enlarge his knowledge of the world by 

 books. I have met with no proof that he was in the habit of 

 reading any modern foreign language. Selborne was to White 

 a kind of Robinson Crusoe^s island, which comprehended with- 

 in itself all his daily interests. Whatever a pair of particularly 

 quick eyes could discover there is set down for us, but the 

 outer world, though not shut out, is seen only on the horizon. 

 We have glimpses of London smoke and Oxford spires ; letters 

 come in now and then from distant parts of the country, but 

 there is no distraction or complication. All White's letters 

 breathe the same air and reflect one mind. 



While Gilbert White was penning letters at Selborne 

 Horace Walpole was penning letters at Strawberry Hill. 

 Walpole's life overlaps White's a little at both ends. How 

 totally unlike are the two collections unlike in bulk, in style 

 and in the topics chosen ! They might have been written in 

 different centuries. That WaJpole cares nothing for natural 

 history is easy to understand, but it is singular that White 

 should care so little for what was passing in the outer world. 

 Not only the fashionable circles, which were so much to Horace 

 Walpole, but the conquest of Canada, the conquest of India, 

 and the loss of the American colonies are at most barely 

 mentioned in any letter of his. The French Revolution does 

 indeed suggest a remark or two in his letters to Marsh am, 

 but White gets back immediately to the wet fallows and the 

 woodpeckers. I do not know that he ever names Chatham 

 or William Pitt, Clive, Warren Hastings, Burke or John 

 Wesley. 1 Gibbon is mentioned once or twice as a Hampshire 

 gentleman, who is about to publish a work on the later 

 Roman Empire. It is an element in the rustic charm of 



1 This statement will very likely require modification if more of White's 

 letters should appear in print. 



