It is impossible for a bibliographer who writes on Gilbert White to
resist the pleasure of mentioning the name of his best editor and
biographer. It was unfortunate that Thomas Bell, who was born eight
months before the death of Gilbert White, and who, quite early in life
began to entertain an enthusiastic reverence for that writer, did
not find an opportunity of studying Selborne on the spot until the
memories of White were becoming very vague and scattered there. I
think it was not until about 1865 that, retiring from a professional
career, he made Selborne--and the Wakes, the very house of Gilbert
White--his residence. Here he lived, however, for fifteen years,
and here it was his delight to follow up every vestige of the great
naturalist's sojourn in the parish. White became the passion of
Professor Bell's existence, and I well recollect him when he was
eighty-five or eighty-six years of age, and no longer strong enough
in body to quit his room with ease, sitting in his arm-chair at the
bedroom window, and directing my attention to points of Whiteish
interest, as I stood in the garden below. It was as difficult for Mr.
Bell to conceive that his annotations of White were complete, as it
had been for White himself to pluck up courage to publish; and it was
not until 1877, when the author was eighty-five years of age, that his
great and final edition in two thick volumes was issued.
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