The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1

The Natural History of Selborne,
Vol. 1, by
by Henry Morley

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by
Gilbert White, Edited by Henry Morley
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Title: The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1
Author: Gilbert White
Editor: Henry Morley
Release Date: March 29, 2007 [eBook #20933]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, VOL. 1***
This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE
BY THE REV. GILBERT WHITE A.M.
VOL. I.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK &
MELBOURNE. 1887

INTRODUCTION.
Gilbert White was born in the village of Selborne on the 18th of July,
in the year 1720. His father was a gentleman of good means, with a
house at Selborne and some acres of land. Gilbert had his school
training at Basingstoke, from Thomas Warton, the father of the poet of
that name, who was born at Basingstoke in 1728, six years younger
than his brother Joseph, who had been born at Dunsford, in Surrey.
Thomas Warton, their father, was the youngest of three sons of a rector
of Breamore, in the New Forest, and the only son of the three who was
not deaf and dumb. This Thomas, the elder, was an able man, who
obtained a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, became vicar of
Basingstoke, in Hampshire, and was there headmaster of the school to
which young Gilbert White was sent. He was referred to in Amhurst's
"Terrae Filius" as "a reverend poetical gentleman;" he knew Pope, and
had credit enough for his verse to hold the office of Professor of Poetry
at Oxford from 1718 to 1728. His genius for writing middling verse
passed on to his more famous sons, Joseph and Thomas, and they both
became in due time Oxford Professors of Poetry.
Gilbert White passed on from school to Oxford, where he entered Oriel
College in 1739. He became a Fellow of Oriel, graduated M.A. in 1746,
at the age of six-and-twenty, and six years afterwards he served as one
of the Senior Proctors of the University. His love of nature grew with

him from boyhood, and was associated with his earliest years of home.
His heart abided with his native village. When he had taken holy orders
he could have obtained college livings, but he cared only to go back to
his native village, and the house in which he was born, paying a yearly
visit to Oxford, and in that house, after a happy life that extended a few
years over the threescore and ten, he died on the 26th of June, 1793.
Gilbert White never married, but lived in peaceful performance of light
clerical duties and enjoyment of those observations of nature which his
book records. His brothers, who shared his love of nature, aided instead
of thwarting him in his studies of the natural history of Selborne, and as
their lives were less secluded and they did not remain unmarried, they
provided him with a family of young people to care about, for he lived
to register the births of sixty-three nephews and nieces.
It was one of his brothers, who was a member of the Royal Society, by
whom Gilbert White was persuaded, towards the close of his life, to
gather his notes into a book. It was first published in a quarto volume in
the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution with the fall of the
Bastile. He was more concerned with the course of events in a martin's
nest than with the crash of empires, and no man ever made more
evident the latent power of enjoyment that is left dead by those who
live uneventful lives surrounded by a world of life and change and
growth which they want eyes to see. Gilbert White was in his
seventieth year when his book appeared, four years before his death. It
was compiled from letters addressed to Thomas Pennant and the Hon.
Daines Barrington.
Thomas Pennant was a naturalist six years younger than Gilbert White.
He was born at Downing, in Flintshire, in 1726, and died in 1798, like
White, in the house in which he had been born. His love of Natural
History made him a traveller at home and abroad. He counted Buffon
among his friends. He had written many books before the date of the
publication of White's "Selborne." Pennant's "British Zoology," his
"History of Quadrupeds" and "Arctic Zoology," had a high reputation.