VI 



GILBEKT white's BOOK 



~r WAS moved to take down my White's "Sel- 

 -*- borne " and examine it again for the source of 

 the delight I had had in it, on hearing a distin- 

 guished literary man, the late Richard Grant White, 

 say it was a book he could not read with any degree 

 of pleasure: to him its pages were a bare record of 

 uninteresting facts. It was not because he felt no 

 interest in or sympathy with the kind of literature 

 to which White's " Selborne " belongs, for he con- 

 fessed a liking for certain other writers in this field, 

 but because both White's matter and manner were 

 void of interest to him. The book was doubtless 

 pitched in too low a key for him: it was tame and 

 commonplace, like the country itself. There is 

 indeed something a little disappointing in White's 

 book when one takes it up for the first time, with 

 his mind full of its great fame. It is not seasoned 

 quite up to the modern taste. White is content 

 that the facts of nature should be just what they 

 are; his concern alone is to see them just as they 

 are. When I myself first looked into his book, 

 many years ago, I found nothing in it that attracted 

 me, and so passed it by. Much more recently it 



