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Ornithology in this country than any other work that has been written, nay, 
more than all the other works except one [Bewick] put together. . . The 
severely scientific reader can scarcely find an error in any statement it contains, 
whether of matter of fact or opinion. It is almost certain that more than half 
the zoologists of the British Islands for the past seventy years or more have been 
infected with their love of the study by Gilbert White ; and it can hardly be 
supposed that his influence will cease.” Mr. Lane has certainly given us a 
noble edition of this classic, and one which, considering its wealth of illustrations 
and the general excellence of its “ get up,” is by no means dear at a guinea ; but 
the Selbornian is naturally jealous for his hero in every particular. Portrait of 
White there could not be ; but those of Pennant and Daines Barrington are 
given. An Oliver Twist-like greed regrets the absence of the “ Antiquities of 
Selborne ; ” and a love of the old-world atmosphere of Selborne, while recog- 
nising that the editor’s notes are not excessive, .somewhat re.sents the critical 
modernity of their tone. The most ardent evolutionist does not want the work 
of Darwin advertised on page after page of White. It becomes almost as tire- 
some as Warburton’s marginalia on Pope. Mr. Grant .\llen has not, in fact, 
caught the atmosphere of Selborne in his text as Mr. New has done in the 
illustrations. Needless to say, his “Introduction” is charmingly written -few 
things from his prolific and versatile pen, now for ever laid aside, are not so— 
but it hardly seems sympathethic and cannot be called an adequate presentment 
of Gilbert While as a man. Mr. Allen was perhaps too impatient of detail for 
a biographer. Mr. New gives us Basingstoke Grammar School, where White 
was as a boy ; why not, therefore, also Oriel College, Oxford, where he mostly 
lived from 1739 to 1752? Failing a picture, we cannot refrain from giving here 
the following exquisite sketch by Mr. Andrew Lang* : — 
“ In 1752 Gilbert White of Selborne was Proctor, and may have fined young 
Gibbon of Magdalen, who little thought that O.xford boasted an official who was 
to become an F'nglish classic. White paid some attention to dress, and got a 
feather-tipp’d grizzled wig from London ; cost him £7. 5.S. lie bought ‘moun- 
tain wine, very old and good,’ and had his crest engraved on his tea-spoons, 
that everything might be handsome about him. When he treated the Masters of 
Arts in Oriel Hall they ate a hundred pounds weight of biscuits — not, we trust, 
without marmalade. ‘A bowl of rum-punch from Ilorsman’s’ cost half-a-crown. 
Fancy a jolly Proctor sending out for bowls of rum-punch, and that in April ! 
Eggs cost a penny each, and ‘ three oranges and a mouse-trap ’ ninepence. 
White, a generous man, gave the Vice-Chancellor ‘seven pounds of double- 
refined white sugar.’ I like to fancy my learned friend, the Proctor, going to the 
present Vice-Chancellor’s with a donation of white sugar ! Manners have 
certainly changed in the direction of severity. ‘ Share of the expense for Mr. 
Butcher’s release ’ came to ten and sixpence. What had Mr. Butcher been 
doing? The Proctor went ‘to Blenheim with Nan,’ and it cost him fifteen and 
sixpence. Perhaps she was one of the ‘ Oxford Toasts ’ of a contemporary satire. 
Strawberries were fourpence a basket on the ninth of June ; and on November 6, 
White lost one shilling ‘ at cards ; in common room. ’ He went from Selborne 
to Oxford, ‘ in a post-chaise with Jenny Croke ; ’ and he gave Jenny a ‘round 
china turene.’ Tea cost eight shillings a pound in 1752, while rum-punch was 
but half-a-crown a bowl. White’s highest terminal battels were but £\2, though 
he was a hospitable man, and would readily treat the other Proctor to a bowl of 
punch. It is well to remember White and Johnson when the Gibbon of that or 
any other day bewails the intellectual poverty of O.xford.” 
Each of the many editions of White’s “Selborne” has its distinctive peculiarities, 
most of them some distinctive merit. The present edition is memorable as 
containing marginalia by Samuel Taylor Coleridge never before printed. 
The following, on instinct, is characteristic: — “I would rather say, that 
instinct is the wisdom of the species, not of the individual ; but that let any 
circumstance occur regularly through many generations that then its every-time- 
felt inconvenience would by little and little act through the blind sensations on 
the organic frame of the animals, till at length they were born wise in that 
From “Oxford ” (Seeley & Co.), 1896. 
