wit:' some have been authors, some statesmen, some soldiers, some
wild-rakes, and some players of tricks: Selwyn had no profession but
that of _diseur de bons mots_; for though he sat in the House, ne took
no prominent part in politics; though he gambled extensively, he did not
game for the sake of money only. Thus his life was that merely of a
London bachelor, with few incidents to mark it, and therefore his memoir
must resolve itself more or less into a series of anecdotes of his
eccentricities and list of his witticisms.

His friend Walpole gives us an immense number of both, not all of a
first-rate nature, nor many interesting in the present day. Selwyn, calm
as he was, brought out his sayings on the spur of the moment, and their
appropriateness to the occasion was one of their greatest
recommendations. A good saying, like a good sermon, depends much on its
delivery, and loses much in print. Nothing less immortal than wit! To
take first, however, the eccentricities of his character, and especially
his love of horrors, we find anecdotes by the dozen retailed of him. It
was so well known, that Lord Holland, when dying, ordered his servant to
be sure to admit Mr. Selwyn if he called to enquire after him, 'for if I
am alive,' said he, 'I shall be glad to see him, and if I am dead, he
will be glad to see me.' The name of Holland leads us to an anecdote
told by Walpole. Selwyn was looking over Cornbury with Lord Abergavenny
and Mrs. Frere, 'who loved one another a little,' and was disgusted with
the frivolity of the woman who could take no interest in anything worth
seeing. 'You don't know what you missed in the other room,' he cried at
last, peevishly. 'Why, what?'--'Why, my Lord Holland's picture.'--'Well,
what is my Lord Holland to me?' 'Don't you know,' whispered the wit
mysteriously, 'that Lord Holland's body lies in the same vault in
Kensington Church with my Lord Abergavenny's mother?' 'Lord! she was so
obliged,' says Walpole, 'and thanked him a thousand times!'