Vol. xxxiii.] 22 



on Natural History which has attained the rank of an 

 English classic is admitted by general acclamation, as well 

 as by competent critics, and numerous have been the 

 attempts to discover the secret of its ever-growing repu- 

 tation. Scarcely two of them agree, and no explanation 

 whatever offered of the charm which invests it can be 

 accepted as in itself satisfactory. If we grant what is 

 partially true, that it was the first book of its kind to appear 

 in this country, and therefore had no rivals to encounter 

 before its reputation was established, we find that alone 

 nsufficient to account for the way in which it is still wel- 

 comed by thousands of readers, to many of whom — and this 

 especially applies to its American admirers — scarcely a plant 

 or an animal mentioned in it is familiar, or even known but 

 by name. Goldsmith's ' Animated Nature ' was begun in 

 1769, two years after the commencement of White's cor- 

 respondence with Pennant, and in the very year in which 

 White first wrote to Barrington. That book appeared in 

 1774, when the correspondence was all but concluded and 

 the monographs were ready for the Royal Society. One 

 author could not have been influenced by the other. Gold- 

 smith's work was one of the most profitable of his literary 

 undertakings, and was at once popular beyond anything of 

 the kind before published ; but no one reads it now, and, 

 what is more, no one could conscientiously edit it without 

 having to add notes that would expose the author to ridicule 

 on one point after another. He could only ti'anslate and 

 travesty Buff on, and the man who on so many subjects 

 1 wrote like an angel ' could not touch the works of Nature 

 without deforming them. Yet none can deny there is a 

 charm, an old-fashioned fragrance even, in Goldsmith's 

 ' Animated Nature/ the only work of that age with which 

 White's can be compared. But taking the latter's ' Selborne,' 

 of the hundreds of statements therein recorded, the number 

 which are undoubtedly mistaken may be counted almost on 

 the fingers of one hand. The gravest is perhaps that on the 

 formation of honey dew (Letter LXIV.to Barrington); but it 

 was not until some years later that the nature of that sub- 



