CHAPTER IV 

 GILBERT WHITE AND SELBORNE 



GILBERT WHITE was born at Selborne— the 

 straggling village in Hampshire, lying in a hollow 

 beneath the " hangars " or hanging beech woods which 

 stretch for many miles across the county, with some 

 few dips into the valleys — on July 18, 1720. Natura- 

 lists and men of letters alike have been puzzled to 

 account for his immense popularity. The life of the 

 Rector of Selborne was monastic in its seclusion, and 

 the greater part of it was spent in his native village 

 in tranquil observation of " the works of God in the 

 creation," with occasional excursions into Lincolnshire, 

 Ringmer by the Sussex Downs, Switzerland, Rutland- 

 shire, and eighty miles afield to fetch home his tortoise, 

 Timothy. He died in 1793, having accomplished 

 nothing in his life but a series of letters to his naturalist 

 friends, Daines Barrington and Thomas Pennant, which 

 were published in quarto, apparently upon their per- 

 suasion, in 1789, and dealt with the natural history of 

 his parish, particularly its birds, with some account 

 of parochial antiquities of no value whatever, and 

 perhaps only written as a concession to the Gothic 

 play-acting of the age. Yet this shy, unpretentious 

 little book, businesslike, strictly limited to the subject- 

 matter, utterly free from flourishes, intellectualisms and 

 philosophic speculation, and as quiet as a windless mid- 

 summer night, is not only cherished and venerated by 

 the naturalist, who turns a blind eye to its obsolete 

 errors, and the man of letters, who turns his to its natural 

 history, but is really the source of an illustrious phylum. 

 It flowed through Edward Jesse of the Gleanings (who 

 published a portion of White's MSS.) and his like, and 

 forked into two branches about the middle of last century, 



78 



