: "Were it not for want of a good amanuensis, I think I
should make more progress." He was now sixty years of age. Eight years
later he was preparing the Index, and at last, in the autumn of 1789,
the volume positively made its appearance, in the maiden author's
seventieth year. Few indeed, if any, among English writers of high
distinction, have been content to delay so long before testing the
popular estimate of their work. His book was warmly welcomed, but the
delightful author survived its publication less than four years, dying
in the parish which he was to make so famous. Gilbert White was, in a
very peculiar sense, a man of one book.

Countless as have been the reprints of _The Natural History of
Selborne_, its original form is no longer, perhaps, familiar to many
readers. The first edition, which is now before me, is a very handsome
quarto. Benjamin White, the publisher, who was the younger brother of
Gilbert, issued most of the standard works on natural history which
appeared in London during the second half of the century, and his
experience enabled him to do adequate justice to _The History of
Selborne_. The frontispiece is a large folding plate of the village
from the Short Lythe, an ambitious summer landscape, representing the
church, White's own house, and a few cottages against the broad sweep
of the hangar. On a terrace in the foreground are portrait figures of
three gentlemen standing, and a lady seated. Of the former, one is a
clergyman, and it has often been stated that this is Gilbert White
himself; erroneously, since no portrait of him was ever executed;[1]
the figure is that of the Rev. Robert Yalden, vicar of Newton-Valence.
The frontispiece is unsigned, and I find no record of the artist's
name. It is not to be doubted, however, that the original was painted
by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, the Swiss water-colour draughtsman, who
sketched so many topographical views in the South of England.

[Footnote 1: That discovered in 1913 has yet to prove that it
represents Gilbert White in any way.]

The remaining illustrations to this first edition, are an oval
landscape vignette on the title-page, engraved by Daniel Lerpiniere;
a full-page plate of some fossil shells; an extra-sized plate of
the _himantopus_ that was shot at Frensham Pond, straddling with
an immense excess of shank; and four engravings, now of remarkable
interest, displaying the village as it then stood, from various points
of view. They ar