164 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



with its panelled rooms, its wide, dark oak staircase, its 

 fine plastered cornice-work of fruit and flowers en- 

 riched with heraldic shields, its enormous roof-beams, 

 which formerly had sheltered the Pilgrims' Hall, before 

 the thought of my predecessors began to occupy my 

 mind. A large number of prebendaries, some two 

 hundred and fifty, had lived in the Close since the dis- 

 solution of the monastery. All of them, it is true, were 

 not famous men. But the names of some are enshrined 

 in the Dictionary of National Biography ; a few were 

 known in the world of letters ; others were men of 

 character and distinction in their day and generation. 

 I began to wonder in which of the houses my more 

 celebrated predecessors had lived. Who had occupied 

 the pleasant residence which had fallen to my lot ? 

 Whose coat-of-arms, in seventeenth-century glass, 

 figured above the doorway leading into the garden ? 

 Several rectors of Droxford, my old living in the Meon 

 Valley, had become prebendaries of the Cathedral 

 Nicholas Preston, and Dr Hawkins, and Archdeacon 

 Fulham, and William Garnier in which houses did 

 they reside ? So with that interesting group of Lati- 

 tudinarian divines Dr Alured Clarke, Dr Sykes, Dr 

 Balguy and others which residences did they respec- 

 tively occupy ? Or John Mulso, the lifelong and intim- 

 ate friend of Gilbert White it would be interesting 

 to know in which house the prebendary was wont to 

 receive the great naturalist of Selborne. Or Dr Wart on, 

 the celebrated Headmaster of Winchester College and 

 the friend of Dr Johnson which was his residence, in 

 which he produced the famous editions of Pope and 

 Dryden ? Above all, which was the house occupied by 

 Dr William Hawkins ? For Dr Hawkins was the son- 



