Wit has been called ‘the eloquence of indifference;’ no one seems ever to have been so indifferent about everything, but his little daughter, as George Selwyn.  He always, however, took up the joke, and when asked why he had not been to see one Charles Fox, a low criminal, hanged at Tyburn, answered, quietly, ’I make a point of never going to rehearsals.’

Selwyn’s love for this kind of thing, to believe his most intimate friend, Horace Walpole, was quite a fact.  His friend relates that he even bargained for the High Sheriff’s wand, after it was broken, at the condemnation of the gallant Lords, but said, ’that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not take it to light his fire with.’

The State Trials, of course, interested George more than any other in his eventless life; he dined after the sentence with the celebrated Lady Townshend, who was so devoted to Lord Kilmarnock—­

  ’Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died’—­Johnson.

that she is said to have even stayed under his windows, when he was in prison; but he treated her anxiety with such lightness that the lady burst into tears, and ‘flung up-stairs.’  ‘George,’ writes Walpole to Montague, ’cooly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and bade her sit down to finish the bottle.—­“And pray,” said Dorcas, “do you think my lady will be prevailed upon to let me go and see the execution?  I have a friend that has promised to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the night before.”  Could she have talked so pleasantly to Selwyn?’

His contemporaries certainly believed in his love for Newgatism; for when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a neighbour’s area, he immediately despatched a messenger to White’s for the philo-criminalist, who was sure to be playing at the Club any time before daylight.  It happened that the drawer at the ‘Chocolate-house’ had been himself lately robbed, and therefore stole to George with fear and trembling, and muttered mysteriously to him, ’Mr. Walpole’s compliments, and he has got a housebreaker for you.’  Of course Selwyn obeyed the summons readily, and the event concluded, as such events do nine times out of ten, with a quiet capture, and much ado about nothing.

The Selwyns were a powerful family in Gloucestershire, owning a great deal of property in the neighbourhood of Gloucester itself.  The old colonel had represented that city in Parliament for many years.  On the 5th of November, 1751, he died.  His eldest son had gone a few months before him.  This son had been also at Eton, and was an early friend of Horace Walpole and General Conway.  His death left George sole heir to the property, and very much he seemed to have needed the heritage.