posterity as a wit. It is a dismal reputation. Jokes collected in
contemporary memoirs fall flat after a century's keeping; the
essential of their success is spontaneity, appropriateness, the
appreciation even of their teller, often also a knowledge among
those who hear them of the peculiarities of the persons whom they
mock. When we read one of them now, we are almost inclined to wonder
how such a reputation for humour could be gained. Wit is of the
present; preserved for posterity it is as uninteresting as a faded
flower, nor can it recall to us memories sunny or sad. But Selwyn
was a man who while filling a conspicuous place in the fashionable
life of the age was also so intimate with statesmen and politicians,
and so thoroughly lives in his correspondence, that in following his
life we find ourselves one of that singular society which in the
last half of the eighteenth century ruled the British Empire from
St. James's Street.

Selwyn's life, though passed in a momentous age, was uneventful, but
the course of it must be traced.

George Augustus Selwyn, second son of Colonel John Selwyn, of
Matson, in Gloucestershire, and of Mary, daughter of General
Farrington, of Kent, was born on the 11th of August, 1719. His
father, aide-de-camp to Marlborough and a friend of Sir Robert
Walpole, was a man of character and ability, well known in the
courts of the first and second Georges. Selwyn, however, probably
inherited his wit and his enjoyment of society from his mother, who
was Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Horace Walpole
writes of her as "Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and
herself of much vivacity, and pretty."