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Updated: June 3, 2025
They were reading in every spare moment, twelve plays of Shakespeare, Goethe's works, Wilhelm Meister, Götz von Berlichingen, Hermann and Dorothea, Iphigenia, Wanderjahre, Italianische Reise, and others; Heine's poems; Lessing's Laocoön and Nathan the Wise; Macaulay's History of England; Moore's Life of Sheridan; Brougham's Lives of Men of Letters; White's History of Selborne; Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences; Boswell; Carpenter's Comparative Physiology; Jones' Animal Kingdom; Alison's History of Europe; Kahnis' History of German Protestantism; Schrader's German Mythology; Kingsley's Greek Heroes; and the Iliad and Odyssey in the original.
One summer afternoon, many years ago but I know the exact date: July 1st, 1897 I was drinking tea on the lawn of a house at Kew, when the maid brought the letters out to her mistress, and she, Mrs. E. Hubbard, looking over the pile remarked that she saw the Selborne Magazine had come and she would just glance over it to see if it contained anything to interest both of us.
Notwithstanding, however, the dissimilarity of species, the studies of this old naturalist are directed with a nice particularity, and are colored with an unaffected homeliness, which are very charming; and I never hear the first whisk of a swallow's wing in summer but I feel an inclination to take down the booklet of the good old Parson, drop into my library-chair, and follow up at my leisure all the gyrations and flutterings and incubations of all the hirundines of Selborne.
The minute observations of White, and his records of them, extending over forty years, were almost entirely confined to the district of Selborne. He says that he finds that "that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined." The thoroughness with which he examined his own locality is attested by his "Natural History of Selborne."
Nevertheless, so rudimentary was scientific knowledge one hundred and thirty years ago, that Pennant's pretentious book was received with acclamation. The patient man at Selborne sat and smiled, even courteously joining with mild congratulations in the rounds of applause. Fortunately Pennant did not remain his only correspondent. The Hon.
For biography, read Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's Life of Nelson, Lockhart's Life of Burns, Moore's Life of Sheridan, Moore's Life of Byron, Wolfe's Remains. For natural history, read Bewick and Audubon, and Goldsmith and White's history of Selborne. For divinity, your brother will advise you there.
For he loved this place so well, that as Jacob waited for Rachel so he for Selborne. He had been born there, where his grandfather being then vicar, aged seventy-two years and eleven months, he was to die in 1720. He went to school at Farnham and Basingstoke, and then in 1739 to Oriel College, Oxford, where in 1744 he was elected to a Fellowship.
"All Itchen's valley lay, Saint Catherine's breezy side and the woodlands far away, The huge Cathedral sleeping in venerable gloom, The modest College tower, and the bedesmen's Norman home." Lord Selborne. Very early in the morning, even according to the habits of the time, were Stephen and Ambrose Birkenholt astir.
There can be little doubt that it was intended to cast away the yacht as Mrs. Selborne had explained to me, and to drown those who were not meant to share in the spoil, but who knew too much to be allowed to go free. I should certainly have been amongst the missing, and young Squires, too, probably.
He instructs while smiling; and he is a savant while a light-hearted friend. Few English naturalists are as genial not even White of Selborne and few as wide in didactics. To know him is a profit indeed; but just as surely a pleasure. From 'Curiosities of Natural History'
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