" Or who can pass by Long Lythe without remembering
that it was a favourite with him too. 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. Presently benefice after benefice
was offered him but he refused them all, having made up his mind to
live and die at Selborne. Selborne must then have been a very secluded
place, the nearest town, Alton, often inaccessible in winter one may
think, judging from the description Gilbert White gives of the "rocky
hollow lane" that led thither, but it is perhaps to this very fact that
we owe more than a few of those immortal pages ever living and ever
new. Since he was cut off from men he was able to give himself wholly
to nature. He is less a part of the mere England of his day than any
man of that time; he belonged only to England of my heart. Yet the
events of his time, though they touched him so little, were neither few
nor unimportant.
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