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!'

Selwyn knew the vaults as thoroughly as old Anthony Wood knew the
brasses. The elder Craggs had risen by the favour of Marlborough, whose
footman he had been, and his son was eventually a Secretary of State.
Arthur Moore, the father of James Moore Smyth, of whom Pope wrote--

'Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,
Imputes to me and my damned works the cause'

had worn a livery too. When Craggs got into a coach with him, he
exclaimed, 'Why, Arthur, I am always getting up behind, are not you?'
Walpole having related this story to Selwyn, the latter told him, as a
most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin
chained to that of his mistress. 'Lord! how do you know?' asked Horace.
'Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's.' 'Oh! Your
servant, Mr. Selwyn,' cried the man who showed the tombs at Westminster
Abbey, 'I expected to see _you_ here the other day when the old Duke of
Richmond's body was taken up.'

Criminals were, of course, included in his passion. Walpole affirms that
he had a great share in bringing Lord Dacre's footman, who had murdered
the butler, to confess his crime. In writing the confession, the
ingenious plush coolly stopped and asked how 'murdered' was spelt. But
it mattered little to George whether the criminal were alive or dead,
and he defended his eccentric taste with his u