author occasionally refers, but without naming him) was a wholesale ironmonger in London; but quitting business with an ample fortune devoted much of his time to literary pursuits, especially on subjects connected with meteorology and natural history. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and author of numerous essays which appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine" between the years 1780 and 1790, under the signature of T. H. W. Among these a series of articles on the trees of Great Britain are particularly deserving of notice, for the extensive information, good taste, and variety of reading which they display. His mantle has descended upon his son, Thomas Holt White, Esq. of Enfield in Middlesex: in the "Notes on Shakspeare" in which the father sometimes indulged, we find the same spirit which induced the son to inscribe his name on the list of commentators in the variorum Shakspeare of Isaac Reid; and in his "Vindication of Milton from the censure of Dr. Johnson" is contained the germ of the vigorous and masterly "Review of Johnson's criticisms on the style of Milton's English Prose," and of an edition, truly classical, of the most perfect specimen of that prose, the "Areopagitica," in all the purity of its original text, and clothed with all the panoply of critical illustration, copious, erudite, and profound.

A third brother, Benjamin, the publisher of the first edition of the present work, was during much of the latter half of the past century the principal publisher of English books on Natural History. On the death of Gilbert he succeeded to the estate

at Selborne, and transferred his business to his second son, John, who continued it until within a few years of the present time. From this establishment emanated, among many other important publications, most of the works of Ellis, Pennant, Montagu, Latham, Donovan, Andrews, the elder Sowerby, Curtis, Lightfoot, Lambert, and Smith. The house in which the business was carried on was originally distinguished, according to the fashion of the times, by the sign of the Horace's Head, a misreading of which gave rise to a whimsical mistake on the part of Scopoli, who, in dedicating the several plates of his "Delicia Floræ et Fauna Insubrica" to various patrons of natural history, inscribed one of them as published "Auspiciis DD. DD. Beniamini Withe, et Horatii Heal, Bibliopol. Londinensium." It may be added, that in his "Vitæ suæ Vices," published at the end of the third and last part of the work just quoted, the same writer enumerates among the "eruditi viri cum quibus commercium litterarium colui," the name of "D. Withe, ex Gibraltariâ." Many passages in the present work prove how highly Scopoli was esteemed by our author, with whose family these circumstances, trivial as they are, serve in some degree to connect his name.

In Gilbert White's diaries mention is also made of a "brother Harry." He too was in the church, and rector of Fyfield, near Andover, in the county of Hants, whence one of the letters to Daines Barrington is dated, and where, as appears by various references in the course of the volume, a series of meteorological observations were made for com

parison with those registered at Selborne, South Lambeth, and Lyndon, in the county of Rutland.

The author of the observations last mentioned, those made at Lyndon, (which were continued for more than half a century, and regularly published in the "Philosophical Transactions," being communicated while he lived by Thomas White, who occasionally added to them the comparative observations made by himself and his brothers,) was Thomas Barker, brother-in-law of our author, through marriage with his sister Ann. A brief account of this gentleman, who was distinguished also as a theological critic and astronomer, will be found in the note at p. 17.

In the commencement of his tenth letter to Pennant, the earliest in date of the entire series, Gilbert White laments the want of neighbours whose studies led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge. But from his continued correspondence with the relatives just enumerated, from his occasional visits to most of them, and from the return of those visits to himself, (for his house, although that of a bachelor, was always open to his family and friends,) he must, in his latter years, have felt this want much less sensibly, than at the period when it was noted as an apology for the slender progress which he then conceived himself to have made in the science. Few men have the good fortune to possess so many near connexions engaged in pursuits so congenial with their own.

The first edition of "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne"-a work destined, from the quiet simplicity of its style, the calm benevo

lence of its spirit, and the close and accurate observation evinced in almost every page, to become more extensively popular than any other publication on a similar subject that has yet appeared—was given to the world in quarto, in 1789, four years before the death of its amiable author. In 1795 Dr. Aikin selected from Gilbert White's Natural History Journals, which had been regularly kept for a period of five-and-twenty years, closing only with his death, numerous additional observations, and compiled from the same source a calendar of the appearances of nature, which together formed a thin octavo volume under the title of "A Naturalist's Calendar, with Observations in various Branches of Natural History." The "Calendar" and "Observations" were added, in 1802, to a reprint of the "Natural History," with some further extracts from the Journals, also selected and incorporated with the previous Observations by Dr. Aikin. In this edition, in two volumes octavo, the "Antiquities" were omitted; many notes were added by Mr. Markwick, who supplied a comparative Calendar founded on his own observations; and the "Biographical Records" of the author, which have been copied in all subsequent reprints, were prefixed by his nephew John, the publisher of the new edition.

A second edition in quarto of the "Natural History" and "Antiquities" combined, together with the "Calendar" and the enlarged "Observations," was published in 1813; and in this appeared for the first time a few of the author's poems, of no great critical pretensions, but strongly illus

trative of his benevolent disposition and observant habits. There were also added a series of agreble notes, chiefly of a classical and literary character, by the Rev. John Mitford, of Benhall in the county of Suffolk, the author of a Life of Gray, and of an Essay on his Poems, prefixed to an edition of the works of that poet, published in 1816.

In 1825, the "Antiquities" were again discarded, and the Natural History" with its appendages resumed the octavo form, and again appeared in two volumes. From this and the preceding editions have originated several reprints of a larger or smaller portion of our author's works, (but always omitting the "Antiquities,") which have been edited from time to time by Sir William Jardine and Captain Brown, whose notes and illustrations have contributed to diffuse more widely the popularity of the original.

A new edition of the entire work, in which the "Antiquities" again assumed their station, appeared in 1833 in the same form as the present, under the superintendence of Mr. Rennie, who added many notes of his own to those which were then for the first time contributed by the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, and to a series of observations by the late Mr. Sweet on the food of soft-billed birds and their treatment in captivity, a subject to which the attention of that able horticulturist had long been extensively and practically directed. In this edition several additional sketches of local scenery were introduced, from the pencil of a gentleman who had taken great interest in the publi