SELBORNE. 
xix 
in Selborne. White rather piqued himself upon the quahty of his 
ale, and generally employed the shoemaker in the capacity of 
taster when a fresh barrel was put on tap. But some how or other 
the shoemaker never could come to a decision on the first glass, 
yet never failed to decide that the second one was excellent : nor 
do the reports say that either the one or the other moved for a 
new trial after the second glass had been decided on. 
Of these httle traits there are, however, very few ; and it would 
seem that this delightful child of nature was so perfectly contented 
with enjoying and dispensing rustic happiness that he cared no- 
thing how the opinions of the fashionable world went or the gales 
of ambition blew. 
As an observing naturalist, White stands unrivalled for the 
minute accuracy of his facts, and the clearness with which he ren- 
dered them ; and, if some of his conjectures were a little visionary, 
this was more owing to the state of science at the time, and his 
perfect deference to the opinions of others, than to any want of 
natural acumen in the historian of Selborne. In his fortieth 
letter to the Hon. Daines Barrington, and in a few other places, he 
shows the soundest critical taste, and how well he understood the 
difference between trifling with the nomenclature of a science and 
grasping the reality. It has sometimes been started as a sort of 
objection that White was not systematic ; but this would have 
been defeating his object, which was to describe his native district 
in its true colours ; and it would not be more absurd to twist a 
systematic geography of the whole globe into a topographical 
sketch of a single parish than it would have been to blend a 
system of natural history with the natural history of Selborne. 
White, as we have hinted, did more to the actual extending of 
natural history than almost any man of his time ; and he had the 
rare merit of setting an example which might be followed with 
certainty and delight in every parish in the empire, if those who 
have ability and leisure would hght their lamps at his unquench^ 
able flame. 
