cassell’s nationallibrary.
by
THE REV. GILBERT WHITE A.M.
Vol. I.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london,paris,new york & melbourne.
1887
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 ahouse at Selborne and some acres of land. Gilbert had his schooltraining at Basingstoke, from Thomas Warton, the father of the poet of thatname, who was born at Basingstoke in 1728, six years younger than hisbrother Joseph, who had been born at Dunsford, in Surrey. ThomasWarton, their father, was the youngest of three sons of a rector ofBreamore, in the New Forest, and the only son of the three who was not deafand dumb. This Thomas, the elder, was an able man, who obtained afellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, became vicar of Basingstoke, inHampshire, and was there headmaster of the school to which young GilbertWhite was sent. He was referred to in Amhurst’s“Terræ Filius” as “a reverend poeticalgentleman;” he knew Pope, and had credit enough for his verse to holdthe office of Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1718 to 1728. Hisgenius for writing middling verse passed on to his p. 6more famous sons, Josephand Thomas, and they both became in due time Oxford Professors ofPoetry.
Gilbert White passed on from school to Oxford, where he entered OrielCollege 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 ofthe Senior Proctors of the University. His love of nature grew withhim from boyhood, and was associated with his earliest years of home.His heart abided with his native village. When he had taken holyorders he could have obtained college livings, but he cared only to go backto his native village, and the house in which he was born, paying a yearlyvisit to Oxford, and in that house, after a happy life that extended a fewyears over the threescore and ten, he died on the 26th of June, 1793.
Gilbert White never married, but lived in peaceful performance of lightclerical duties and enjoyment of those observations of nature which hisbook records. His brothers, who shared his love of nature, aidedinstead 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 livedto register the births of sixty-three nephews and nieces.
It was one of his brothers, who was a member of the Royal Society, bywhom Gilbert White was persuaded, towards the close of his life, to gatherhis p.7notes into a book. It was first published in a quarto volumein the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution with the fall of theBastile. He was more concerned with the course of events in amartin’s nest than with the crash of empires, and no man ever mademore evident the latent power of enjoyment that is left dead by those wholive uneventful lives surrounded by a world of life and change and growthwhich they want eyes to see. Gilbert White