it in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' which, speaking of it highly as it deserved, yet betrayed no excess of fraternal partiality. John Mulso, whose taste and critical faculty, originally keen, seem to have been blunted by the lazy life he had now so long led as a well-beneficed ecclesiastic, expressed his approval in warm though not very enthusiastic terms, partly, perhaps, because he seems to have before read the natural history portion of the 'piece,' and he lamented that his own name, as that of the friend at Sunbury mentioned by the author, did not 'stand in a book of so much credit and respectability.' The correspondence with Churton, whence most information of White's life at this period is obtainable, contains no letter between the beginning of December 1788 and the end of July 1789, and it was not until the following October that he says he was reading the book with avidity, this being after White had written to him (Bell, ii. 214): 'My book is still asked for in Fleet Street. A gent, came the other day, and said he understood that there was a Mr. White who had lately published two books, a good one and a bad one; the bad one was concerning Botany Bay ['A Voyage to New South Wales,' by John White (no relation), published in 1790], the better respecting some parish.' Churton justly complained that the index was not more copious, and the same complaint may be made in regard to every edition that has since appeared. Soon after this, White wrote that Oxford appeared every year to recede further and further from Selborne, and it is clear that the infirmities of age had come upon him. For at least ten years he had suffered from deafness, and his letters, though showing no indication of decay in mental power, seem to have been written at longer intervals. Yet in March 1793 Churton canvassed him for his vote in favour of George Crabbe [q.v.] as professor of poetry at Oxford, and appeared to think he might come to the university to give it.
Whatever may have been its reception on the part of White's family and friends, the merits of the book were speedily acknowledged by naturalists who were strangers to him. Within six months of its appearance George Montagu (1751-1815) [q. v.], hardly then Known to fame, but not many years after recognised as a leading British zoologist, wrote that he had been 'greatly entertained' by it (ib., ii. 236), plying its author with inquiries which were sympathetically answered. Another letter of the same kind followed a few weeks later, telling White 'Your work produced in me fresh ardour, and, with that degree of enthusiasm necessary to such investigations, I pervaded the interior recesses of the thickest woods, and spread my researches to every place within my reach that seemed likely.' The next year brought another correspondent, and one whose scientific reputation was assured. This was Robert Marsham of Stratton-Strawless in Norfolk (the place where Stillingfleet had written his 'Tracts'), White's senior by twelve years, who (introduced to the new work by his neighbour, William Windham the statesman) wrote that he could not deny himself 'the honest satisfaction' of offering the author his thanks for 'the pleasure and information' he had received from it. Most fortunately the correspondence which thereupon began between these two men is almost complete, there being but two of White's letters missing. It has been published by Mr. Southwell in the 'Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society' for 1875-6 (ii. 133-95), was thence reprinted by Bell (ii. 243-303), and White's side of it by Mr. Harting as an appendix to his second edition. Here we see that White's interest in all branches of natural history was to the very end as keen as ever—for his last letter to Marsham was dated but eleven days before his death—while every characteristic of his style, its unaffected grace, its charming simplicity, and its natural humour is maintained as fully as in the earliest examples which have come down to us, so that this correspondence is a fitting sequel to that between himself and Pennant and Barrington. White's pleasure at Marsham's approval is unmistakable. 'O that I had known you forty years ago!' is one of White's exclamations to Marsham, the significance of which may be seen when read in connection with that passage in his earliest letter to Pennant (10 Aug. 1767), wherein he wrote: 'It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge.'
During White's last years there his sister-in-law, widow of his brother John, continued to keep house for him at Selborne. On the death of his aunt Mrs. Snooke in 1780 he had become possessed of property which could not have been inconsiderable, including 'the old family tortoise,' and he was thereby enabled the more easily to gratify his disposition towards hospitality. From his correspondence with his niece 'Molly,' the Barkers, and Churton—who seems to have usually passed Christmas with him—we see how open his door was to members of his family and to his friends, despite his increasing deafness. Mulso, writing to him in
