nowledge 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."

Selwyn's elder brother died in 1751, and grief at his loss seems to
have hastened the death of his father, which occurred in the same
year.

His sister Albinia married Thomas Townshend, second son of Charles
Viscount Townshend. By this marriage the families of Selwyn and
Walpole were connected.

The home of the family was at Matson, a village two and a half miles
south-east of Gloucester, on the spurs of the Cotswold hills,
looking over the Severn valley--once called Mattesdone. There is a
good deal of obscurity as to the ownership of the manor in mediaeval
times, but it appears to have been in the possession of what may
popularly speaking be called the family of Mattesdone. The landowner
described himself by the place; "Ego Philippus de Mattesdone" are
the words of an ancient document preserved among the records of the
Monastery of St. Peter at Gloucester.*

* "Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestria,"
edited by W. Hart, vol. i. p. 100.

To come to more recent times, the manor house was built in