a great measure, on his poor, crazy, deformed body, which, he says, was a mere Pandora's box, containing all the ills that ever afflicted humanity. On the other hand, he compliments him on his charity and filial piety, and gives him credit, after seeing his mind in an undress for a week at a time, for being both agreeable and instructive. We can, therefore, easily believe that such a man, who was always in undress with his friend the Bishop of Rochester, was sincere and natural when he wrote thus to him on his (Pope's) indisposition to public life. "If I could bring myself to fancy what I think you do but fancy, that I have any talents for active life, talents for active life, I want health for it; and besides, it is a real truth, I have less inclination, if possible, than ability. Contemplative life is not only my scene, but my habit. I began my life where most people end theirs, with a disrelish of all that the world calls ambition. I don't know why it is called so, for it always seemed to me rather stooping than climbing. In my politics, I think no farther than how to preserve the peace of my life in any government under which I live; nor, in my religion, than to preserve the peace of my conscience in any church

with which I communicate. If I was born under an absolute prince, I would be a quiet subject." These are the sentiments of a man who desired not power, at least political power, to make him happy. If he had many drawbacks while pursuing the power he did seek, namely that to be derived from poetical fame, the fault was his own, for not showing the same

* To Atterbury, 20th Nov. 1717.

moderation in his literary career, as he certainly did in respect to courts and ministers. As to these, we find him as sincere as powerful in what he says of one of the greatest of them, in his privacy:

"Seen him I have; but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchang'd for power:
Seen him uncumber'd with the venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe."

Then, as to the felicity of middle life, take what he says of his father:

"Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife;
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walk'd innoxious through his age.
No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an oath, nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language but the language of the heart.
His life, though long, to sickness past unknown;
His death was instant, and without a groan.
Oh! grant me thus to live, and thus to die,

Who sprang from kings shall know less joy than I."*

In this we may believe him, as well as in the prose account of himself, when telling his friend Blount, on the death of the queen, that he was moved by the common curiosity of mankind, who leave their own business to be looking after other men's. "But I thank God," he says, that, as to myself, I am below all the accidents of state changes by my circumstances, and above them by my philosophy. Common charity of man to man, and universal goodwill to all, are the points I have most at heart; and I am sure these are not to be broken for the sake of any governors or

*Prol. to the Satire.

government." These were the sentiments of his adult age. The following is a still more pleasing picture of earlier years, of which the freshness delights us in every line. It is his boyhood he is talking of. "When I had done with my priests, I took to reading by myself. This I did without any design but of pleasing myself; I followed every where, as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fall in his way. These five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of my life."* This natural pleasure, so much excelling all that the most successful ambition can give, seems to have been fully shared by a great friend of his, whose stormy life and overbearing mind would not have taught us to expect it. Writing of his former delights, in an autumnal morning, Bishop Warburton says to his friend Hurd: "But I now enjoy little of this, compared to what I formerly had, when I used, with a book in my hand, to traverse the delightful lawns and hedgerows round about Newark, the unthinking place of my nativity."†

Pope's friend, Blount, who seems to have resembled him in parts of his mind, consoles both him and himself for being Papists, as ambition is a vice which their disabilities tend to mortify. In another letter he says: "It is many years since I fell in love with the character of Pomponius Atticus, and have contrived hitherto to be, like him, of no party, but to be a faithful friend to some of both; and I live in a certain peace of mind by it, which, I am persuaded, brings a man

*

Spencer.

† Hurd's Life of Warburton.

more content than all the perquisites of wild ambition." What we have said, however, of Pope applies to his sentiments rather than his practice, since, with all his independence of the rich and great, and all his honesty of purpose, he was, from irritation, too dependent upon opinions he affected to despise to be happy. I would, therefore, rather turn to the life of another far less celebrated, but happier man (in fact, one who was scarcely known beyond his village), but who seems to have realised all the dreams indulged, oftener without than with success, by the lovers of retirement. Persons who are unacquainted with him, or his charming work, may perhaps wonder when I name the author of the "Natural History of Selborne."

And who was he? and where, and what, is Selborne ? may be asked by some supercilious millionaire, or aristocratic peer, or busy commoner, exalted, but not yet sated, with the applause of listening senates, or popular factions; and he may feel like Gyges, as Cowley liked to tell the story, who exclaimed, when the oracle told him a happier man than himself was Aglais, a man unknown to fame, though known and loved by the Gods:

"But Gyges cried,

In a proud rage, Who can that Aglaüs be?

We've heard as yet of no such king as he."

And so, perhaps, some excited, ardent son of ambition, whom nothing will content, or who, for a time, thinks nothing will content him but

"To read his history in a nation's eyes,"

may in like manner express his wonder.

For these ardent labourers for the public, when guided by reason and supported by virtue, we have the most unfeigned and grateful respect; but meantime we will indulge ourselves in pursuing the, at least, quieter account of the historian of Selborne.

First, then, Selborne is a village in Hampshire, bordering on Sussex, obscure as to name, but teeming with food for the observer and admirer of nature, the lover of gardens, and the worshipper of Him who created their beauty.

Within this happy retreat dwelt Gilbert White. He was a clergyman, a scholar, and a pious man; but what perhaps, after what has been said, the reader may not expect, he was also a man of fortune, a gentleman, and a sportsman. He was educated under the father of the Wartons, and afterwards at Oriel College, Oxford. From education, therefore, or position in society, there was no reason why he should have shunned a career in public life, but the feeling that he could be happier in a private one. He seems, indeed, from his love of nature in the retired, though by no means solitary, life which he led, as if far more fitted, than he who wrote them, to be the author of those bewitching lines which make us, while reading, forget all but his genius in the character of their composer:

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture in the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more."

*Childe Harold, canto iv.