VIII Gilbert White of Selborne 221 



cannot be too thankful that here, as always, he 

 followed his natural instincts. 



The letters to Pennant and Barrington, doubtless 

 revised carefully for publication, must have been 

 originally written with greater care and attention 

 than he would bestow on his brothers, for both 

 correspondents were men of mark in the literary 

 and scientific world. Pennant was the most volumi- 

 nous writer of his time ; Barrington was a strange 

 compound of lawyer, antiquary, and naturalist. To 

 them no doubt White was at first an interesting and 

 useful curiosity, and in his eyes they were great 

 figures, men who had published books and knew 

 the great world beyond Selborne. But whether his 

 correspondents were great men or small. White coiild 

 not but write to them in his own happy way. There 

 is not a pompous or affected sentence in all these 

 letters, which number exactly a hundred. The 

 influence of the age on his language is of course 

 visible enough, but he is always simple and natural, 

 never lofty or pedantic. Compared with many later 

 writers on the same subjects, he is a classic. He 

 calls a spade a spade, and never affects fine writing ; 

 with him a bird flies, instead of " winging its way," 

 as some ornithological authors will have it. 



Oddly enough, the only overweighted sentence I 

 can discover was probably the last one he wrote for 

 the book. Prefaces often give their writers much 



