George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life

E-text prepared by Marjorie Fulton
Edited by
London T. Fisher Unwin Paternoster Square
1899
IN the histories and memoirs of the eighteenth century the name of George Selwyn often occurs. The letters which he received have afforded frequent and valuable material to the student of the reign of George the Third. A large number of these were published by the late Mr. Jesse in the four volumes entitled George Selwyn and his Contemporaries. Except, however, that Selwyn was regarded as the first humourist of his time, little was known about him, for scarcely any letters which he wrote had until recently been found. But in the Fifteenth Report of the Historical Manuscript Commission there were printed, amongst a mass of other material, more than two hundred letters from his untiring pen which had been preserved at Castle Howard. No one who has had an opportunity of examining the originals can fail to recognise the skill and labour with which the Castle Howard correspondence of Selwyn—wanting in most instances the date of the year—was arranged by Mr. Kirk on behalf of the Commission.
A correspondence, however, which illustrates vividly phases of an interesting and important period of English history, appeared to be deserving of presentation to the public in a separate volume, and with the explanations necessary to make the allusions in it fully understood.
A selection has therefore, in the following pages, been made from the Castle Howard letters. The aim of the editors has been to choose those which appeared most interesting and representative, and to place them in definite groups, supplementing them with such a narrative, remarks, and notes as would, without enveloping the correspondence in a quantity of extraneous material, enable the whole to present the life of Selwyn, and at the same time add another to the pictures of the age in which he lived.
The dates of the letters are those ascribed to them by Mr. Kirk.
The frequently incorrect spelling of proper names has not been altered.