It was singular, at the sale of the effects at Strawberry Hill, to see
this chest, with the MSS. in the clean _Horatian_ hand, and to reflect
how poignant would have been the anguish of the writer could he have
seen his Gothic Castle given up for fourteen days, to all that could
pain the living, or degrade the dead.

Peace to his manes, prince of letter-writers; prince companion of beaux;
wit of the highest order! Without thy pen, society in the eighteenth
century would have been to us almost as dead as the _beau monde_ of
Pompeii, or the remains of Etruscan leaders of the ton. Let us not be
ungrateful to our Horace: we owe him more than we could ever have
calculated on before we knew him through his works: prejudiced, he was
not false; cold, he was rarely cruel; egotistical, he was seldom
vain-glorious. Every age should have a Horace Walpole; every country
possess a chronicler so sure, so keen to perceive, so exact to delineate
peculiarities, manners, characters, and events.



GEORGE SELWYN.


A Love of Horrors.--Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother.--Selwyn's College
Days.--Orator Henley.--Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.--The Profession
of a Wit.--The Thirst for Hazard.--Reynolds's Conversation-Piece.--
Selwyn's Eccentricities and Witticisms.--A most Important
Communication.--An Amateur Headsman.--The Eloquence of Indifference.--
Catching a Housebreaker.--The Family of the Selwyns.--The Man of the
People.--Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.--True Wit.---Some of Selwyn's