Gilbert White.

Gilbert White (1720-93), the most charming of all English writers on the natural history of their country, was born at Selborne in Hampshire, and educated with the Wartons at their father's vicarage at Basingstoke, whence he passed to Oriel College, Oxford. After obtaining a fellowship there, he took orders in 1747, and in 1751 became curate of his native parish. Next year he was back in Oxford, as senior proctor at the university, but in 1755 returned to Selborne, where he passed the rest of his uneventful life, enjoying, after the fashion of that comfortable age of pluralism, one or two college curacies as well as the equally sinecure living of Morton Pinkney in Northamptonshire. He was never married, but once fell deep in love with Miss Mulso (better known as the excellent and edifying Mrs Chapone), who declined his hand. The two series of letters to Thomas Pennant, the naturalist and traveller, and the Hon. Daines Barrington, which form his delightful Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, were begun in 1767, and published in 1789. The minuteness and general accuracy of his observation, and the simple skill and unaffected grace of his style, though not without a touch of eighteenthcentury formality here and there, have given White the same classic rank as Isaac Walton, and it is probable that the Natural History of Selborne has sent as many boys to intelligent bird-nesting as the Compleat Angler has to the rod and hook.

In one of the letters White tells that he used to carry a list in his pocket of the birds to be remarked on, and that, as he rode or walked about, he noted each day the continuance or omission of each bird's song.

Old Trees.

In the court of Norton farmhouse, a manor farm to the north-west of the village, on the white malms, stood within these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, Ulmus folio latissimo scabro of Ray, which, though it had lost a considerable leading bough in the great storm in the year 1703, equal to a moderate tree, yet, when felled, contained eight loads of timber; and, being too bulky for a carriage, was sawn off at seven feet above the butt, where it measured near eight feet in the diameter. This elm I mention to show to what a bulk planted elms may attain; as this tree must certainly have been such from its situation.

In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called 'The Plestor' [i.e. Pleystowe, or playingplace]. In the midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms extending almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in summer evenings; where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter frolicked and danced before them. Long might it have stood, had not the amazing tempest in 1703 overturned it at once, to the infinite regret of the inhabitants, and the vicar, who

bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again: but all his care could not avail; the tree sprouted for a time, then withered and died. This oak I mention to show to what a bulk planted oaks also may arrive: and planted this tree must certainly have been, as will appear from what will be said farther concerning this area when we enter on the antiquities of Selborne.

On the Blackmoor estate there is a small wood called Losel's, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for the repairs that were fifty feet long, without bough, and would measure twelve inches diameter at the little end. Twenty such trees did a purveyor find in this little wood, with this advantage, that many of them answered the description at sixty feet. These trees were sold for twenty pounds apiece.

In the centre of this grove there stood an oak, which, though shapely and tall on the whole, bulged out into a large excrescence about the middle of the stem. On this a pair of ravens had fixed their residence for such a series of years that the oak was distinguished by the title of the Raven Tree. Many were the attempts of the neighbouring youths to get at this eyry: the difficulty whetted their inclinations, and each was ambitious of surmounting the arduous task. But when they arrived at the swelling, it jutted out so in their way, and was so far beyond their grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknowledged the undertaking to be too hazardous: so the ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of February, when these birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt,— the wedges were inserted into the opening,-the woods echoed to the heavy blow of the beetle or mall or mallet, the tree nodded to its fall; but still the dam sat on. At last, when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and, though her parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs, which brought her dead to the ground.

Vanished Game.

This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the summer; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make excursions; and in particular, in the dry summers of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day.

But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, or grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed about thirty-five years ago; and within these ten years one solitary grey-hen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, ‘A hen pheasant!' but a gentleman present, who had often seen

grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a grey-hen.

Nor does the loss of our black-game prove the only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting-I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose great grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and self enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than a hundred years. This person assures me that his father has often told him that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and, reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer Pond, and still called Queen's Bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty years ago that His Highness sent down a huntsman, and six yeoman-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds; ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed extraordinary diversion but in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeomenprickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr Astley's riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations; though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.

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The Waltham Blacks were deer-stealers or poachers with blacked faces or masks, infesting Waltham Chase near Bishop's Waltham in Hants, the property of the Bishops of Winchester. Against them 'the Black Act' of 1723 was levelled.

Migration of the Swallows.

If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas Day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning; at first there was a vast fog; but by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swallows (Hirundines rustica) clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they were all on the wing at once, and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards

the sea; after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler.

I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once; only some stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton Wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December or the first week in January, he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere; is it owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to what else?

When I used to rise in the morning last autumn, and see the swallows and martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mortification: with delight, to observe with how much ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on their minds by their great Creator; and with some degree of mortification when I reflected that, after all our pains and inquiries, we are yet not quite certain to what regions they do migrate; and are still farther embarrassed to find that some do not actually migrate at all.

These reflections made so strong an impression on my imagination that they became productive of a composi tion that may perhaps amuse you for a quarter of an hour when next I have the honour of writing to you.

Rushlights.

'Hic . . . tædæ pingues, hic plurimus ignis

Semper, et assiduâ postes fuligine nigri.'

DEAR SIR,-I shall make no apology for troubling you with the detail of a very simple piece of domestic economy, being satisfied that you think nothing beneath your attention that tends to utility. The matter alluded to is the use of rushes instead of candles, which I am well aware prevails in many districts besides this; but as I know there are countries also where it does not obtain, and as I have considered the subject with some degree of exactness, I shall proceed in my humble story, and leave you to judge of the expediency.

The proper species of rush for this purpose seems to be the Juncus effusus, or common soft rush, which is to be found in most moist pastures, by the sides of streams, and under hedges. These rushes are in best condition in the height of summer; but may be gathered, so as to serve the purpose well, quite on to autumn. It would be needless to add that the largest and longest are best. Decayed labourers, women, and children make it their business to procure and prepare them. As soon as they are cut they must be flung into water and kept there, for otherwise they will dry and shrink, and the peel will not run. At first a person would find it no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel or rind, so as to leave one regular, narrow, even rib from top to bottom that may support the pith; but this, like other feats, soon becomes familiar even to children; and we have seen an old

woman, stone blind, performing this business with great dispatch, and seldom failing to strip them with the nicest regularity. When these junci are thus far prepared, they must lie out on the grass to be bleached, and take the dew for some nights, and afterwards be dried in the

sun.

Some address is required in dipping these rushes in the scalding fat or grease; but this knack also is to be attained by practice. The careful wife of an industrious Hampshire labourer obtains all her fat for nothing; for she saves the scummings of her bacon-pot for this use; and if the grease abounds with salt, she causes the salt to precipitate to the bottom, by setting the scummings in a warm oven. Where hogs are not much in use, and especially by the sea-side, the coarser animal-oils will come very cheap. A pound of common grease may be procured for fourpence, and about six pounds of grease will dip a pound of rushes, and one pound of rushes may be bought for one shilling; so that a pound of rushes, medicated and ready for use, will cost three shillings. If men that keep bees will mix a little wax with the grease, it will give it a consistency and render it more cleanly, and make the rushes burn longer; mutton-suet would have the same effect.

A good rush, which measured in length two feet four inches and a half, being minuted, burnt only three minutes short of an hour; and a rush of still greater length has been known to burn one hour and a quarter. These rushes give a good clear light. Watch-lights (coated with tallow), it is true, shed a dismal one, 'darkness visible;' but then the wick of those have two ribs of the rind, or peel, to support the pith, while the wick of the dipped rush has but one. The two ribs are intended to impede the progress of the flame and make the candle last.

In a pound of dry rushes, avoirdupois, which I caused to be weighed and numbered, we found upwards of one thousand six hundred individuals. Now suppose each of these burns, one with another, only half an hour, then a poor man will purchase eight hundred hours of light, a time exceeding thirty-three entire days, for three shillings. According to this account each rush, before dipping, costs of a farthing, and afterwards.

Thus a poor family will enjoy five and a half hours of comfortable light for a farthing. An experienced old housekeeper assures me that one pound and a half of rushes completely supplies his family the year round, since working people burn no candles in the long days, because they rise and go to bed by daylight.

Little farmers use rushes much in the short days both morning and evening, in the dairy and kitchen; but the very poor, who are always the worst economists, and therefore must continue very poor, buy a halfpenny candle every evening, which in their blowing open rooms does not burn much more than two hours. Thus have they only two hours' light for their money instead of eleven.

While on the subject of rural economy, it may not be improper to mention a pretty implement of housewifery that we have seen nowhere else; that is, little neat besoms which our foresters make from the stalks of the Polytrichum commune, or great golden maiden hair, which they call silk-wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When this moss is well combed and dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of a beautiful bright-chestnut colour; and, being soft and pliant, is

very proper for the dusting of beds, curtains, carpets, hangings, &c. If these besoms were known to the brush-makers in town, it is probable they might come much in use for the purpose above-mentioned.

The Rooks returning to their Nests.

The evening proceedings and manœuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk, they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of the Deity, that 'He feedeth the ravens who call upon Him.'

Among the hundred and twenty or more editions are those of Jesse (1851), Frank Buckland (1875), Harting (1875), Bell (1877), Richard Jefferies (1887), Burroughs (1895), Grant Allen (1900), and Bowdler Sharpe (1901). White's MS. journal (1768-89) was found in 1880. See bibliographies by Richard Hooper in Notes and Queries for 1877-78, and by E. A. Martin (1897). The Life and Letters published by White's great-grand-nephew, Mr Rashleigh Holt-White (2 vols. 1901), contains a good deal of new matter, serving to minimise the charge of pluralism; the united revenues were not large. In 1893 White's centenary was celebrated at Selborne, where his house, 'The Wakes,' still stands.

Arthur Young (1741-1820), author of Travels in France, and famous for the work he did in promoting the interests of agriculture, was born in London, but was the son of the rector of Bradfield near Bury St Edmunds. Bred for a countinghouse, he in 1763 rented a farm of his mother's, on which he made 3000 experiments and lost much money. A large farm in Essex (1766-77) nearly ruined him; for two years he was in Ireland, and then resumed farming at Bradfield, but without any financial success. But he had learnt much, and was well-inspired to turn his knowledge to good account. In 1767 he made the first of his famous tours, the record of which, A Six Weeks Tour, expounded to the public for the first time the facts and principles of Norfolk husbandry; tours in the south of England, the northern counties, &c., followed; in 1771 he issued The Farmer's Calendar (which reached a twenty-first edition in 1862). After 1783 he edited a periodical, The Annals of Agriculture, to which King George III. was an occasional contributor. A list of his published Letters of a Farmer, essays, pamphlets, &c. on subjects of rural economy, the poor laws, taxation, &c., would fill a page; but the most important of Young's works are his Tour in Ireland (1780) and

the much more famous Travels in France during 1787, '88, '89, and 1790, in which he gives impressions of an acute observer during the Revolution. He was author also of surveys of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Hertford, Essex, and Oxford; with reports on waste lands, enclosures, manures, soils, rotation of crops, &c. The French Revolution alarmed Young with respect to its probable effects on the English lower classes, and he wrote several warning treatises and political tracts. Sir John Sinclair-another enthusiastic agriculturist-having prevailed on Pitt to establish a Board of Agriculture, Arthur Young was appointed its secretary (1793), with a salary of £400, and he was indefatigable in his exertions to carry out the views of the association. To the end of his long life, even after he was afflicted with blindness and had become an earnest -even morbid-convert to extreme evangelical views, his attention was given to public interests. He was a correspondent of Priestley and Bentham, the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton, a friend of Dr Burney, and latterly of Wilberforce and his set. Young is deservedly regarded as the greatest English writer on agriculture. More than any man he compelled his contemporaries to realise the shameful mismanagement of this great national interest, and induced landlords to carry into farming the same spirit of enterprise as capitalists did into industrial undertakings; and in spite of the lamentable failure of his own attempts at practical farming, it was largely his doing that agriculture was seen to depend on science and insight rather than on tradition. His Travels in France from the first took rank as a literary classic and a first-hand authority on the state of France at the time of the Revolution. He had his limitations and made many mistakes-thus he blamed the Government indirectly for all the ills of the country. But his acute observation, vivacious description, and sympathetic comment are as charming as they are illuminative. Of the Travels in France the second part only deals with agriculture in specific detail. Young's works were not merely translated into French, but into Russian and German, and exercised a wide influence in all three tongues. For his pithy, lively, direct English style Young has been compared with Cobbett.

The Old Régime.

The 29th [Aug. 1787]. To Barbesieux, situated in a beautiful country, finely diversified and wooded; the marquisate of which, with the château, belongs to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, whom we met here; he inherits this estate from the famous Louvois, the minister of Louis XIV. In this thirty-seven miles of country, lying between the great rivers Garonne, Dordonne, and Charente, and consequently in one of the best parts of France for markets, the quantity of waste land is surprising; it is the predominant feature the whole way. Much of these wastes belonged to the Prince de Soubise, who would not sell any part of them. Thus it is whenever

you stumble on a grand seigneur, even one that was worth millions, you are sure to find his property desert. The Duke of Bouillon's and this prince's are two of the greatest properties in France; and all the signs I have yet seen of their greatness are wastes, landes, deserts, fern, ling. Go to their residence, wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boars, and wolves. Oh! if I was the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip again. We supped with the Duke de la Rochefoucauld; the provincial assembly of Saintonge is soon to meet, and this nobleman, being the president, is waiting for their assembling.

The 25th [Oct].

Paris in 1787.

This great city appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen, and vastly inferior to London. The streets are very narrow, and many of them crowded, nine-tenths dirty, and all without foot-pavements. Walking, which in London is so pleasant and so clean that ladies do it every day, is here a toil and fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a well-dressed woman. The coaches are numerous, and, what are much worse, there are an infinity of one-horse cabriolets, which are driven by young men of fashion and their imitators, alike fools, with such rapidity as to be real nuisances, and render the streets exceedingly dangerous, without an incessant caution. I saw a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been myself many times blackened with the mud of the kennels. This beggarly practice, of driving a one-horse booby hutch about the streets of a great capital, flows either from poverty or a wretched and despicable œconomy; nor is it possible to speak of it with too much severity. If young noblemen at London were to drive their chaises in streets without footways as their brethren do at Paris, they would speedily and justly get very well threshed or rolled in the kennel. This circumstance renders Paris an ineligible residence for persons, particularly families, that cannot afford to keep a coach; a convenience which is as dear as at London. The fiacres, hackney-coaches, are much worse than at that city; and chairs there are none, for they would be driven down in the streets. To this circumstance also it is owing that all persons of small or moderate fortune are forced to dress in black, with black stockings; the dusky hue of this in company is not so disagreeable a circumstance as being too great a distinction; too clear a line drawn in company between a man that has a good fortune and another that has not. With the pride, arrogance, and ill-temper of English wealth this could not be borne; but the prevailing good humour of the French eases all such untoward circumstances. Lodgings are not half so good as at London, yet considerably dearer. If you do not hire a whole suite of rooms at an hotel, you must probably mount three, four, or five pair of stairs, and in general have nothing but a bed-chamber. After the horrid fatigue of the streets, such an elevation is a delectable circumstance. You must search with trouble before you will be lodged in a private family, as gentlemen usually are at London, and pay a higher price. Servants' wages are about the same as at that city. It is to be regretted that Paris should have these disadvantages, for in other respects I take it to be a most eligible residence for such as prefer

a great city. The society for a man of letters, or who has any scientific pursuit, cannot be exceeded. The intercourse between such men and the great, which, if it is not upon an equal footing, ought never to exist at all, is respectable. Persons of the highest rank pay an attention to science and literature, and emulate the character they confer. I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle at London because he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris; he is sure of a good reception everywhere. Perhaps this contrast depends in a great measure on the difference of the governments of the two countries. Politics are too much attended to in England to allow a due respect to be paid to anything else; and should the French establish a freer government, academicians will not be held in such estimation, when rivalled in the public esteem by the orators who hold forth liberty and property in a free parliament.

A French Family Party.

The 27th [Sept. 1788]. Among my letters, one to Mons. de la Livoniere, perpetual secretary of the Society of Agriculture here. I found he was at his country-seat, two leagues off at Mignianne. On my arrival at his seat, he was sitting down to dinner with his family; not being past twelve, I thought to have escaped this awkwardness; but both himself and madame prevented all embarrassment by very unaffectedly desiring me to partake with them, and making not the least derangement either in table or looks, placed me at once at my ease, to an indifferent dinner, garnished with so much ease and cheerfulness that I found it a repast more to my taste than the most splendid tables could afford. An English family in the country, similar in situation, taken unawares in the same way, would receive you with an unquiet hospitality and an anxious politeness; and after waiting for a hurryscurry derangement of cloth, table, plates, sideboard, pot and spit, would give you perhaps so good a dinner that none of the family, between anxiety and fatigue, could supply one word of conversation, and you would depart under cordial wishes that you might never return. This folly, so common in England, is never met with in France the French are quiet in their houses, and do things without effort.-Mons. Livoniere conversed with me much on the plan of my travels, which he commended greatly, but thought it very extraordinary that neither Government, nor the Academy of Sciences, nor the Academy of Agriculture, should at least be at the expense of my journey. This idea is purely French; they have no notion of private people going out of their way for the public good, without being paid by the public; nor could he well comprehend me when I told him that everything is well done in England, except what is done with public money. I was greatly concerned to find that he could give me no intelligence concerning the residence of the late Marquis de Tourbilly, as it would be a provoking circumstance to pass all through the province without finding his house, and afterward hear perhaps that I had been ignorantly within a few miles of it. In the evening returned to Angers.-20 miles.

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See Young's French tour, edited, with memoir, by Miss Betham Edwards (1890), and Young's Autobiography by the same editor (1898); also A. W. Hutton's edition of the Irish tour (1892).

Francis Grose (1731-91), antiquary, was born at Greenford in Middlesex, son of a rich Swiss jeweller settled at Richmond. In the Heralds' College from 1755 till 1763, he next became adjutant of the Hampshire and Surrey Militiaa historic service, for it was in the Hampshire Militia that Gibbon and Mitford served—and, when his easy habits had cost him his fortune, put to profit the favourite studies of his youth and his excellent draughtsmanship. His Antiquities of England and Wales (1773-87) proved a success, and in 1789 he set out on an antiquarian tour through Scotland. His splendid social qualities, his rich humour and good nature, made him friends everywhere-Burns one of them. He went to Ireland on a like errand, but died suddenly in Dublin. Grose's work on the antiquities of Scotland (to which Burns contributed 'Tam o' Shanter,' commended by the friendly editor as a 'pretty poem'!) appeared 1789-91; that on Ireland in 1791. Other works were A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785; new ed. with Memoir by Pierce Egan, 1823), A Provincial Glossary (1787), Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (1785-89), Military Antiquities (1786–88), The Grumbler (1791), and The Olio (1793).

Richard Gough (1735-1809), antiquary, born in London, published British Topography (1768), Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain (1786–99), an English version of Camden's Britannia (1789), and more than a score of other works, historical, archæological, topographical, and numismatical.

Dr Richard Farmer (1735-97), born at Leicester, and ultimately master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, published an Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare (1767), which put an end to the dispute concerning the classical attainments of the great dramatist. Farmer certainly showed that Shakespeare had implicitly followed English translations of the ancient authors-as North's Plutarch-copying even their errors. He was indolent, but was a brilliant talker as well as an accomplished scholar.

Edmund Malone (1741-1812), editor of Shakespeare, was born in Dublin, the son of an Irish judge, and graduated at Trinity College. Called to the Irish Bar in 1767, he fell into a fortune, and from 1777 devoted himself to literary work in London, his first publication being a 'supplement' to Steevens's version of Johnson's edition of Shakespeare (1778); see Vol. I. of this work, p. 376. Malone's own edition of the great dramatist (1790) was warmly received, and deservedly so; his learned dissertations on the history of the stage and on the genuineness of the three plays of Henry VI. especially attracted notice. He had been one of the first to express his disbelief in Chatterton's Rowley Poems, and in 1796 he denounced Ireland's forgeries. He wrote a Life of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds; he edited Dryden, with a memoir; and he left behind a large mass of