'BOLD AND NERVOUS' -- FROM THE PRIVATE LETTERS OF GILBERT WHITE

Garden at Selborne

To Samuel Barker

[With a copy of ‘The Invitation To Selborne.’]

                         Selborne, Nov. 3, 1774.

       Dear Sam,

When I sat down to write to you in verse, my whole design was to show you how easy a thing it might be with a little care for a nephew to excell his uncle in the business of versification ; but as you have so fully answered that intent by your excellent lines, you must for the future excuse my replying in the same way, and make some allowance for the difference of ages.


However, at any time when you find your muse propitious, I shall always rejoice to see a copy of your performance, and shall be ready to commend, and what is more rare and more sincere, even to object and criticise when there is occasion. 

John Dryden



A little turn for English poetry is no doubt a pretty accomplishment for a young gentlemen, and will not only enable him to read and relish our best poets, but will, like dancing to the body, have an happy influence even upon his prose compositions.  Our best poets have been our best prose writers ; of assertion Dryden and Pope are notorious instances.  It would be in vain to think of saying much here on the art of versification ; instead of the narrow limits of a letter, such a subject would require a large volume.  However, I must say in a few words that the way to excel is to copy only from our best writers.  The great grace of poetry consists in a perpetual variation of your cadences : if possible no two lines following ought to have their pause at the same feet.

 

Alexander Pope  



Another beauty should not be passed over ; and that is throwing the sense and power into the third line, which adds a dignity and freedom to your expressions.  Dryden introduced this practice, and carried it to great perfection ; but his successor, Pope, by his over exactness, corrected away that noble liberty, and almost reduced every sentence within the narrow bounds of a couplet.  Alliteration, or the art of introducing words beginning with the same letter in the same or following line, has also a fine effect when managed with discretion.  Dryden and Pope practised this art with wonderful success.  As, for example, where you say “the polished needle,” the epithet “burnished” would be better for the reason above.  But then you must avoid affectation in this case, and let the alliteration slide in, as it were, without design ; and this secret will make your lines bold and nervous.  There are also in poetry allusions, similes and a thousand nameless graces, the efficacy of which nothing can make you sensible of but the careful reading of our best poets, and a nice and judicious application of their beauties.  I need not add that you should be careful to seem not to take any pains about your rhimes ; they should fall in, as it were, of themselves.  Our old poets laboured as much formerly to lug in two rhiming words as a butcher does to drag an ox to be slaughtered ; but Pope has set such a pattern of ease in that way, that few composers now are faulty in the business of rhiming . . .

 

Stream at Selborne


NOTE:  I think this charming letter of Gilbert White (of Selborne) to his nephew Samuel Barker speaks for itself.  This Samuel Barker was the grandson of the noted 18th century English Hebraist Samuel Barker, about whom see HERE for more.

One of three known images of Gilbert White.

Sussex Tortoise Time (April 21, 1780, Gilbert White of Selborne)

Sussex tortoise

LETTER L

TO THE SAME

                                                                                                Selborne, April 21, 1780

Dear Sir,

     The old Sussex tortoise, that I have mentioned to you so often, is become my property.  I dug it out of its winter dormitory in March last, when it was enough awakened to express its resentments by hissing ; and, packing it in a box with earth, carried it eighty miles in post-chaises.  The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out on the border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden ; however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, who was familiar with Sussex tortoises. 

     As it will be under my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of enlarging my observations on its mode of life, and propensities ; and perceive already that, toward the time of coming forth, it opens a breathing place in the ground near its head, requiring I conclude, a freer respiration, as it becomes more alive. This creature not only goes under the earth from the middle of November to the middle of April, but sleeps great part of the summer ; for it goes to bed in the longest days at four in the afternoon, and often does not stir in the morning till late.  Besides it retires to rest for every shower ; and does not move at all in wet days.

Portway Patent Tortoise Slow Combustion Stove, Brightling church, Brightling, East Sussex, England.   Late 19th century stove, often seen in churches. Designed to burn coal slowly, to extract maximum heat, and designed by Charles Portway. A tortoise logo with motto "Slow but sure combustion."

     When one reflects on the date of this strange being, it is a matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that seems to relish it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in a joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months altogether in the profoundest of slumbers.

Brave (or foolish) girl leaping across “an haha” in West Sussex.

     Because we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt to undervalue his abilities, and depreciate his power of instinct.  Yet he is, as Mr Pope says of his lord,

 “Much too wise to walk into a well” :

and has so much discernment as not to fall down an haha ; but to stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution.

Intelligent cattle cautiously approaching “an haha” in West Sussex.

     Though he loves warm weather he avoids the hot sun ; because his thick shell, when once heated, would, as the poet says of solid armour – “scald with safety.”  He therefore spends the more sultry hours under the umbrella of a large cabbage-leaf, or amidst the waving forests of an asparagus-bed.

Cabbage leaf in Sussex

     But as he avoids the heat in summer, so, in the decline of the year, he improves the faint autumnal beams, by getting within the reflection of a fruit-wall ; and, though he has never read that planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth, he inclines his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray.

Another Sussex tortoise

     Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embarrassed reptile :  to be cased in a suit of ponderous armour, which he cannot lay aside ; to be imprisoned, as it were, within its own shell, must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and predisposition for enterprise.  Yet there is a season of the year (usually the beginning of June) when his exertions are remarkable.  He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning ; and, traversing the garden, examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, through which he will escape if possible : and often has eluded the care of the gardener, and wandered to some distant field.  The motives that impel him to undertake these rambles seem to be of the amorous kind : his fancy then becomes intent on sexual attachments, which transport him beyond his usual gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn deportment. 

  Sussex shell-snail

       While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, with the thermometer at 50, brought forth troops of shell-snails ; and at the same juncture the tortoise heaved up the mould and put out its head ; and the next morning came forth, as it were raised from the dead ; and walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious coincidence! a very amusing occurrence!  to see such a similarity of feelings between the two фєρєοκοι! for so the Greeks called both the shell-snail and the tortoise.

     Summer birds are, this cold and backward spring, unusually late :  I have seen but one swallow yet. The conformity with the weather convinces me more and more that they sleep in the winter.

Sussex spring swallow

From:  The Essential Gilbert White of Selborne (ed. H.J. Massingham), Boston, David R. Godine, 1985

Note:  There’s nothing, really, that one profitably can add to Gilbert White’s extraordinary accounts of nature, even after the passage of 232 years (exactly!), but I just wanted to say that the smell of the blooming lilac in our garden this morning is divine.  Two nights ago at dusk on  Church Road in Devon, Jane and I saw a creature racing across and quickly ducking under the fence into fields.  Neither of us could identify it as one of the usual suspects, i.e., ground hog, opossum, fox, squirrel, raccoon.  Possibly a beaver?   Oddly, since moving to Chester County five years ago, we've never seen a tortoise.

NOVEMBER 26, 1791: BRANDY DELIVERY TO SELBORNE

November 26.  

3 gallons of brandy from London.

  

The zig-zag path, Selborne Hanger and Common.  The zig-zag path leads from Selborne village to Selborne Common and the hanger. It was cut by Gilbert White and his brother in 1753, and is now maintained by the National Trust.

220 Years Ago Today -- Gilbert White -- The Naturalist's Journal, 1791

November 25.  Well rises very fast.

From:: The Essential Gilbert White of Selborne.  Boston.  David R. Godine, 1985.

Book illustration from Tacuinum Sanitatis,  14^th century, Unknown Master.