sual wit; when rallied by
some women for going to see the Jacobite Lord Lovat's head cut off, he
retorted, sharply--'I made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on
again.' He had indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker's
a touch of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done
his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of
the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, 'My Lord Lovat, you may
_rise_.' He said a better thing on the trial of a confederate of
Lovat's, that Lord Kilmarnock, with whom the ladies fell so desperately
in love as he stood on his defence. Mrs. Bethel, who was famous for a
_hatchet-face,_ was among the fair spectators: 'What a shame it is,'
quoth the wit, 'to turn her face to the prisoners before they are
condemned!' Terrible, indeed, was that instrument of death to those men,
who had in the heat of battle so gallantly met sword and blunderbuss.
The slow, sure approach of the day of the scaffold was a thousand times
worse than the roar of cannon. Lord Cromarty was pardoned, solely, it
was said, from pity for his poor wife, who was at the time of the trial
far advanced in pregnancy. It was affirmed that the child born had a
distinct mark of an axe on his neck. _Credat Judaeus_! Walpole used to
say that Selwyn never thought but _a la tete tranchee_, and that when he
went to have a tooth drawn, he told the dentist he would drop his
handkerchief by way of signal. Certain it is that he did love an
execution, whatever he or his friends may have done to remove the
impression of this extraordinary taste. Some better men than Selwyn have
had the same, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The best
known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of
Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by
four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed,
George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and managed to press
forward close to the place of torture. The executioner observing him,
eagerly cried out, '_Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un
amateur_;' or, as another version goes, he was asked if he was not
himself a _bourreau_.--'_Non, Monsieur,_' he is said to have answered,
'_je n'ai pas cet honneur, je ne suis qu'un amateur._' The story is more
than apocryphal, for Selwyn is not the only person of whom it has been
told; and he was even accused, according to Wraxall, of goin