19 [Vol. xxxiii. 



his mind , for he writes that Grimm, the Swiss artist who 

 eventually executed the plates for the ' Natural History/ 

 ' has not appeared : the reason is because he has been 

 detained so long in Nottinghamshire ' (Bell, vol. ii. p. 45). 

 And in February 1776 he writes to his nephew, Samuel 

 Barker, 'Mr. Barr[ington] wants me to join with him in 

 a Nat. Hist, publication ; but if I publish at all I shall come 

 forth by myself/ A few weeks later Grimm was at Sel- 

 borne taking views of the ' Hermitage ' and other places, 

 subsequently engraved for the volume, and remaining there 

 twenty-seven clays. In 1777 White was in consultation 

 with an engraver as to the cost of producing Grimm's 

 drawings in quarto, and in this same year he suffered from 

 a severe illness in London which must have seriously 

 interfered with his work, on which he was now earnestly 

 engaged. Mulso, writing under date June 1st, 1777, says : 

 ' As I do not see any advertisement in the Papers, I 

 conclude by ye time of year that you have deferred your 

 Publication till next Winter. I wish you had not : Your 

 Brother Ben [ the publisher] is a timid man and you your- 

 self are too modest and nice' (cf. Mulso letters, p. 269). 

 To Mulso's regret White resolved to add the 'Antiquities' 

 to the 'Natural History' (cf. Mulso letters, p. 294), and 

 this no doubt considerably retarded the publication. In 

 the account of the antiquities White was greatly assisted 

 by Richard Chandler (1738-1810), the celebrated Greek 

 traveller and antiquary, and he also received valuable 

 assistance from Ralph Churton (1754-1831), as appears by 

 their correspondence first published by Bell. In 1780, 

 writing to Samuel Barker, his nephew, he complains of the 

 want of a good amanuensis, and that ' much writing and trans- 

 cribing always hurts me.' Progress was, however, very 

 slow, and it is not till early in 1788 that he informs the 

 same correspondent ' I have been very busy of late and 

 have at length put my last hand to my Nat. Hist.' 



However, the book did not appear till December of that 

 year (the date on the title-page is 1789), when Mulso, 

 writing to White, December 15th, 1788, says C I was obliged 



