xviii 
SELBORNE. 
his residence in his native village, where he spent the greater part 
of his life in literary occupations, and especially in the study of 
nature. This he followed with patient assiduity, and a mind ever 
open to the lessons of piety and benevolence, which such a study 
is so well calculated to afford. Though several occasions offered 
of settling upon a college living, he could never persuade himself 
to quit the beloved spot, which was indeed a peculiarly happy 
situation for an observer. Thus his days passed tranquil and 
serene, with scarcely any other vicissitudes than those of the sea- 
sons, till they closed at a mature age, on June 26, 1793.'* 
In addition to this, though there are still living in Selborne 
some old men who remember Mr. White, and who speak of his 
memory in terms of the highest respect, as an excellent and 
amiable man, they do not appear to be very strongly impressed 
with any overshadowing greatness of character which he exhibited 
when he sojourned among them. They do speak, however, of his 
kindness and familiarity with his fellow villagers, in his intercourse 
with whom he appears to have observed the doctrine of reciprocity 
with great strictness, and to have been, if possible, more warmly 
attached to the human inhabitants of the village than to its 
scenery, its antiquities, its plants, and its animals. White had 
numerous correspondents, and he paid many visits ; but Selborne 
appears always to have been the home of his affections, from which 
no enticement of science, and no blandishment of more fashion- 
able life, could wean him for any length of time. Yet, with all 
this fondness for the simplicity of his native village. White was an 
elegant scholar as well as an excellent man ; and some of his little 
poems, the themes of which are all rural, though they have no 
loftiness, and breathe not a whisper of the turbulent passions, are 
as soft and bland as the notes of the turtle. 
But, as White was both in the village and of the village, he was 
familiar with his fellow-villa.gers ; and, though there was the same 
mildness and moderation in all his habits which tells so beauti- 
fully in his writings, he was no anchorite. He loved the innocent 
village sports, as any one may readily see from the heartiness 
with which he alludes to the Playstow in his second letter to Pen- 
nant. One of his favourite villagers is understood to have been 
a shoemaker, who lived over the way, a man of some intelligence 
and humour, and of simple and primitive manners, but who had 
no objection to an occasional glass of good ale, in a place where 
water is so hard to get at, and so hard when it is gotten, as it is 
