GEORGE SELWYN.*
IT is almost better to be known for a dunce than for a wit. A dunce expects nothing of posterity, and may win a higher reputation than he deserves. A wit is secure of misunder- standing. The faithful will repeat his jokes until he becomes a sort of Joe Miller, and until his fame has attached to itself an indelible disgrace. For admirers will not remember that a repeated jest is like yesterday's champagne, that its life and spirit evaporate very soon after the cork is drawn. Think what a delightful experience is a swift, well-delivered repartee ! But reflect that it depends upon eye and hand, as well as upon voice, and that if it be uttered ten seconds too late it is of no effect. How, then, should it be effective if it be kept a hundred years, and pinned to a sheet of paper like a dead butterfly ? No, the best and only epitaph for a wit is "Here lies a wit." Posthumous proof is impossible, excuse is unnecessary. His talent must be taken on faith.
Alas ! the friends of George Selwyn have not been dis- creet. They have declared him a jester, and done their best to justify themselves. But justification being impossible, those who really respect his memory can only deplore the misplaced championship of his friends. "Many good things he did say," said a biographer at his death, "and many he was capable of saying, bat the number of good, bad, and indifferent things attributed to him as bon mots for the last thirty years were sufficient to stock a foundling hospital for wit." That is perfectly true, and since we can never associate the gay, intelligent, careless, discreet George Selwyn with a foundling hospital, we prefer to remember him as a polished gentleman, whose many and diverse qualities made him the friend and adviser of a distinguished generation.
And this is the point of view strenuously taken by the editors of his letters. They have shown the gentleman rather than the buffoon, and a more prudent, kindlier soul than George Selwyn cannot be imagined. He captured the friend- ship of his great contemporaries, because he understood supremely well how to be a friend. Though he lived the life of an egoist, yet he was never egoistical. His interest lies less in himself than in his correspondent. His inquiries are constant and sensitive; he understands the troubles of his friend before they have been expressed; and you feel that a sure instinct told him precisely what news was suited to the temper of Carlisle. To divine so much is a masterpiece of tact, and it may be said of Selwyn that tact was the quality which never failed him.
Happily he lived just before the dandies, and he did not share their vulgar vanity. Moreover, though a man of fashion, he kept the best company ; and even if he did not respect the politicians of his time, he knew them all. For how could any man afford not to boast an acquaintance with "George"? His letters, indeed, are a very valuable comment upon history, and he who would rightly appreciate the character of Charles James Fox cannot do better than con- sult this inestimable volume. The truth is that in one aspect • George Selwyn: his Letters and his Life. Edited by E. S. Roscoe and Helen- CIergue. London : T. Fisher Unwin. [ms. 6d.] Fox appears little better than a blackleg. Selwyn is never hard upon him ; it is even plain that he liked him despite his faults. But "Charles has destroyed his fortune," says Selwyn, "and his reputation also, and I am very much afraid that, let what will be done now, they will in a very few years be past all kind of redemption." Indeed, so far from being severe, Selwyn is anxious to find excuses for him. "I attribute it all," he writes about some trouble with Carlisle, "to a vanity that has, by the foolish admiration of his acquaint- ance, been worked up into a kind of phrensy. I shall be very unwilling to believe that he ever intended to distress a friend whom he loved as much as I believe he has done you." And beyond the lost reputation and the imagined frenzy, there was a charm and gaiety in Fox that none could resist. "This is being very candid to him," Selwyn goes on, "and yet I cannot help it. For I have passed two evenings with him at supper at Almack's, oh nous avons ete lies en conversation, and never was anybody more agree- able, and the more so for his having no pretensions to it, which is what has offended more people than even what Lady H—d is so good as to call his misconduct." That Fox should have won over so accomplished a man of the world as Selwyn, despite his unscrupulous conduct, is a surer tribute to his character than many a serious, heavy-handed defence.
Women did not like Fox, so says George Selwyn, and perhaps it was what M. Barbey d'Aurevilly terms to jalousie de femme it femme which prevented them. For there was a sort of femininity in the temperament of Fox, which gave him both his strength and his weakness. At any rate, the women found his situation "a good morsel for their invective disposition Lady Albemarle, who is not a wise woman, certainly, was at Lady Gower's the other evening, and was regretting only that Charles had not been consumed in the fire, instead of the linnets." But Fox did not care for adverse criticism ; he heard it with a smile, and continued his career of gambling and politics unper- turbed. Nor is Fox the only great man who flits through the correspondence of Selwyn. There is not a little comment upon Pitt, the real hero of his age, and it is noteworthy how speedily he conquered his public. "Few events in the annals of the House of Commons are more remarkable," say Selwyea editors, "than the sudden rise of Pitt. His maiden speech—in support of Burke's Bill for economical reform— placed- him at once in the first rank of Parliamentary orators." Upon this all men, from Lord North downward, were agreed. However, Selwyn was not present at his maiden effort, and when be did hear him, he suffered a kind of disappointment. "I heard yesterday young Pitt," he wrote in 1781; "I came down into the House to judge for myself. He is a young man who will undoubtedly make his way in the world by his abilities. But to give him credit for being very extraordinary, upon what I heard, yesterday, would be absurd." Yet, of course, his respect for the great statesman increased with experience, although he did not live to contemplate his real grandeur.
Of Selwyn himself we catch a very pleasant glimpse. His letters display a cultured gaiety, a refined sympathy, that we do not often find in the correspondence of the time. Yet by a kind of perversity he has stood to posterity for a symbol of those that attended executions. True, he was fond, like the rest, of seeing a man hanged. But this sport seemed no more cruel to him, as his editors are careful to point out, than pigeon-shooting does to the gentry of to-day. All men—in the late eighteenth century—found a certain pleasure in the gallows, and whatever disgrace attaches to their morbid fancy has been unjustly thrown upon Selwyn. But if in this respect he resembled his contemporaries, in another he was clearly divided from them. Though he was an eager man of fashion, and a half-reluctant gamester, nothing disturbed his romantic love of the little child whom he called Mie Mie. Surely this is one of the strangest episodes in social history,—this heart- broken affection of a man about town for a little girl. He adopted her when she was four; he took her everywhere with him; he was desperate at the mere thought that her mother—the Marchese, Fagniani—might claim her, and when he died he left her a share of his fortune. For her -no better fate was reserved than to marry Lord Hertford, the Steyne of Thackeray, the Monmouth of Disraeli; but her career cannot destroy or render less amiable
the memory of years spent under the kindly tutelage of George Selwyn.
We cannot close without some words of praise for the admirable work now being performed by the Historical Manuscript Commission. Without its careful reprints such books as the present would be impossible. There is material enough hidden away in private houses to furnish forth another and a more interesting history of England. Only we wish that the Commissioners would make the best of their material, and publish it by such a method as would command a general attention. At present it is difficult to discover what papers are, and what are not, available for study. But this reproach is trivial beside our gratitude, and we have already at our disposal a mass of documents which cannot easily be matched in the archives of other countries.
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