GILBERT WHITE AND SELBORNE 89 



The first thing I did was to climb the " zig-zag " 

 (constructed in White's time) of Selbome Hangar, to 

 wander on the common. Birds (except wood-wrens) do 

 not frequent the beech which White called " the most 

 lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its 

 smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful 

 pendulous boughs," for the simple reason that its woods 

 permit no undergrowth, and nowadays there are no 

 honey-buzzards (as there were in 1780) to build upon 

 the canopy of foliage. But there were none on the 

 common, a wild, desolate, and untamed land, com- 

 manding many a fine prospect of the irregular, rolling, 

 fecund Hampshire country, though I found a throstle's 

 nest, and that went some way towards compensating 

 me. How wonderfully beautiful the eggs are in their 

 natural home — blue oval skies, powdered at the poles 

 with black stars and with a greenish tinge over the 

 blue, as if the earth had stained the heavens ! In 

 the collector's cabinet they look and are no more than 

 pebbles or coloured marbles. When I find a throstle's 

 nest I am often reminded of John Clare's sonnet, 

 " The Thrush's Nest " : — 



I watched her secret toil from day to day — 

 How true she warped the moss, to find a nest. 



And modelled it within with wood and clay ; 

 And by and by like heath-bells gilt with dew. 



There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers. 

 Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue. 



And there I witnessed in the sunny hours, 

 A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly. 



Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky. 



Clare * has none of Barnes's fastidiously and exquisitely 

 learned secrets of melody. But they are alike not only 

 in being both good, precise naturalists, but in clothing 

 their verse in a certain lovingkindness. It is not fan- 

 tastic to tie their qualities up together. The absorbed 

 watchfulness of these poets upon the beauty of the visible 



^ Clare's spirit (and above all things he was a lover, a poet 

 of the spirit), with its keen particularity, survives not only by its 

 own virtue but in the poetry of a modern, £. C. Blunden. 



