Erin O’ Connor has further thoughts on Gilbert White:
There is a special relationship between the words here–minimal, sharp, observant but not effusive, descriptive but not lingering or self-conscious–and the experience they describe, which is not only essentially non-verbal, but elementally impersonal. The pleasure evoked by these descriptions is not a linguistic pleasure, or even a particularly thoughtful one, though it is a knowledgeable and aware one. You might call it a modest pleasure, or at least one that is not in the least ego-centric. There is no self in White’s entries, though there is an outlook; he reduces himself to a pair of eyes and impartially records what they see.
And Delicious Pundit throws in another Larkin birthday selection, “Essential Beauty.”