We have thus let Mr Jesse speak for himself. If the public are satisfied, so let it be. But people seldom read prefaces. The title is the thing, and that title is, "George Selwyn and his contemporaries." If it had been "Letters of the contemporaries of George Selwyn," we should have understood the matter.
Still we are not at all disposed to quarrel with the volumes. They contain a great deal of pleasant matter; and the letters are evidently, in general, the work of a higher order of persons than the world has often an opportunity of seeing in their deshabille. The Persian proverb, which accounted for the fragrance of a pebble by its having lain beside the rose, has been in some degree realized in these pages. They are evidently of the Selwyn school; and if he is not here witty himself, he is, like the "fat knight," the cause of wit in others. We are enjoying a part of the feast which his science had cooked, and then distributed to his friends to figure as the chefs-d'oeuvre of their own tables. At all events, though often on trifling subjects, and often not worth preserving, they vindicate on the whole the claim of English letter-writing to European superiority. Taking Walpole as the head, and nothing can be happier than his mixture of keen remark, intelligent knowledge of his time, high-bred ease of language, and exquisite point and polish of anecdote; his followers, even in these few volumes, show that there were many men, even in the midst of all the practical business and nervous agitation of public life, not unworthy of their master. We have no doubt that there have been hundreds of persons, and thousands of letters, which might equally contribute to this most interesting, and sometimes most brilliant, portion of our literature. The French lay claim to superiority in this as in every thing else; but we must acknowledge that it is with some toil we have ever read the boasted letters of De Sévigné—often pointed, and always elegant, they are too often frivolous, and almost always local. We are sick of the adorable Grignan, and her "belle chevelure." The letters of Du Deffand, Espinasse, Roland, and even of De Staël, though always exhibiting ability, are too hard or too hot, too fierce or too fond, for our tastes; they are also so evidently intended for any human being except the one to whom they were addressed, or rather for all human beings—they were so palpably "private effusions" for the public ear—sentiments stereotyped, and sympathies for the circulating library—that they possessed as little the interest as the character of correspondence.
Voltaire's letters are always spirited. That extraordinary man could do nothing on which his talent was not marked; but his letters are epigrammes—all is sacrificed to point, and all is written for the salons of Paris. What Talleyrand's might be, we can imagine from the singular subtlety and universal knowledge of that most dexterous player of the most difficult game which was ever on the diplomatic cards. But as his definition of the excellence of a letter was—"to say any thing, but mean nothing," we must give up the hope of his contribution. Grimm's volumes are, after all, the only collection which belongs to the style of letters to which we allude. They are amusing and anecdotical, and, in our conception, by much the most intelligent French correspondence that has fallen into our hands. But they are too evidently the work of a man writing as a task, gathering the Parisian news as a part of his profession, and in fact sending a daily newspaper to his German patron.
Of the German epistolary literature we have seen nothing which approaches to the excellence of the English school. The conception is generally vague, vapourish, and metaphysical. And this predominates absurdly through all its classes. The poet prides himself on being as much a dreamer in his prose as in his poetry; the scholar is proud of being perplexed and pedantic; the statesman is naturally immersed in that problematic style, which belongs to the secrecy of despotic governments, and to the stiffness of circles where all is etiquette. But Walpole and his tribe have fashion wholly to themselves, and possess force without heaviness, and elegance without effeminacy.
We are strongly tempted to ask, whether there may not be letters of the gay, the refined, and the sparkling George Canning. He was constantly writing; knew every thing and every body; was engaged in all the high transactions of his time; saw human nature in all possible shades; and was a man whose talent, though capable of very noble efforts "on compulsion," yet naturally loved a more level rank of times and things. It is perfectly true to human experience, that there are minds, which, like caged nightingales and canary-birds, though their wings were formed with the faculty of cleaving the clouds, yet pass a perfectly contented existence within their wires, and sing as cheerfully in return for their water and seeds, as if they had the range of the horizon. Canning's whole song for thirty years was in one cage or another, and he sang with equal cheerfulness in them all. The moral of all this is, that we wish Mr Jesse, or any one else, to apply himself, without delay, to the depositaries of George Canning's familiar correspondence, and give his pleasant, piquant, and graceful letters (for we are sure that they are all these) to the world.
Lord Dudley's letters have disappointed every body: but it is to be observed, that we have only a small portion of them; that they were written to a college tutor, a not very exciting species of correspondent at any time, and who in this instance having nothing to give back, and plodding his way through the well-meant monotony of college news, allowed poor Lord Dudley not much more chance of brilliancy, than a smart drummer might have of producing a reveillé on an unbraced drum. We must live in hope.
Lord Holland, we think, might, as the sailors say, "loom out large." The life of that ancient Whig having been chiefly employed in telling other men's stories over his own table—and much better employed, too, than in talking his original follies in public—a tolerable selection from his journals might furnish some variety; for when Whigs are cased up no longer in the stiff braces and battered armour of their clique, they may occasionally be amusing men. But Walpole still reigns: his whims, his flirtings, his frivolities will disappear with his old china and trifling antiquities; but his best letters will always be the best of their kind among men.
George Selwyn was a man of fashionable life for the greater part of the last century, or perhaps we may more justly say, he was a man of fashionable life for the seventy-two years of his existence; for, from his cradle, he lived among that higher order of mankind who were entitled to do nothing, to enjoy themselves, and alternately laugh at, and look down upon the rest of the world. His family were opulent, and naturally associated with rank; for his father had been aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough—a great distinction even in that brilliant age; and his mother was the daughter of a general officer, and woman of the bedchamber to Queen Caroline. She is recorded as a woman of talents, and peculiarly of wit; qualities which seem frequently connected with long life, perhaps as bearing some relation to that good-humour which undoubtedly tends to lengthen the days of both man and woman. If the theory be true, that the intellect of the offspring depends upon the mother, the remarkable wit of George Selwyn may be adduced in evidence of the position.
George, born in 1719, was sent, like the sons of all the court gentlemen of his age and of our own, to Eton. After having there acquired classics, aristocracy, and cricket, all consummated at Oxford, he proceeded to go through the last performance of fashionable education, and give himself the final polish for St James's; he proceeded to make the tour of Europe. What induced him to recommence his boyhood, by returning to Oxford at the ripe age of twenty-five, is among the secrets of his career, as also is the occasion of his being expelled from the university; if that occasion is not to be found in some of the burlesques of religion which he had learned amongst the fashionable infidels of the Continent, similar to those enacted by Wilkes in his infamous monkery. But every thing in his career equally exhibits the times. At an age when he was fit for nothing else, he was considered fit to receive the salary of a sinecure; and, at twenty-one, he was appointed to a brace of offices at the mint. His share of the duty consisted of his enjoying the weekly dinners of the establishment, and signing the receipts for his quarter's pay.
Within a few years more, he came into parliament; and in his thirty-second year, by the death of his father and elder brother, he succeeded to the family estates, consisting of three handsome possessions, one of which had the additional value of returning a member of parliament. Nor was this all; for his influence in Gloucestershire enabled him to secure, during many years, his own seat for Gloucester, thus rendering his borough disposable; and thus, master of a hereditary fortune, an easy sinecurist, the possessor of two votes, and the influencer of the third—a man of family, a man of connexion, and a man of the court—George Selwyn began a path strewed with down and rose leaves.