320 SOME OF SELWYN'S WITTY SAYINGS. occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had been the only opponent on a division. Selwyn afterward took him in his carriage to White's. "I have brought," said he, "the whole Opposition in my coach, and I hope one coach will always hold them, if they mean to take away the Board of Works." Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man to make it so popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. To string a list of them together: Lady Coventry showed him her new dress all covered with spangles as large as shillings. "Bless my soul," said he, "you'll be change for a guinea." Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with Fitzpatrick at an oilman's, in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the landlord, who would certainly be ruined. "Not a bit of it," quoth George; "he'll have the credit of keeping at his house the finest pickles in London." Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. When "High Life Below Stairs" was first acted, Selwyn vowed he would go and see it, for he was sick of low life above stairs; and when a waiter at his Club had been convicted of felony, "What a horrid idea," said he, "the man will give of us in Newgate!" Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveler, he heard him say, in answer to a question about musical instruments in the East, "I believe I saw one lyre there." "Ay," whispered the wit to his neighbor, "and there's one less since he left the country." Bruce shared the travelers' reputation of drawing the long-bow to a very considerable extent. Two of Selwyn's best mots were about one of the Foley family, who were so deeply in debt that they had "to go to Texas," or Boulogne, to escape the money-lenders. "That," quoth Selwyn, "is a pass-over which will not be much relished by the Jews." And again, when it was said that they would be able to cancel their father's old will by a new-found one, he profanely indulged in a pun far too impious to be repeated in our day, however it may have been relished in Selwyn's time. A picture called "The Daughter of Pharaoh," in which the princess royal and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of Moses and her handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a house opposite Brookes's, and was to be the companion-piece to Copley's "Death of Chatham." George said he could recommend a better companion, to wit-the "Sons of Pharaoh❞ at the opposite house. It is scarcely necessary to explain that pharaoh or faro, was the most popular game of hazard then played. Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 323 by a troop of small chimney-climbers, begging-Selwyn, after bearing their importunity very calmly for some time, suddenly turned round, and with the most serious face thus addressed them-"I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning." We can well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on the astonished youngsters. Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his friend went to the sale of his plate in 1755. "Lord," said the wit, "how many toads have been eaten off these plates!" The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the middle of the summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been twice married before, espoused the widow of the Earl of Rockingham, who was fearfully stout, Selwyn suggested that she had been kept in ice for three days before the wedding. So, too, when there was talk of another embonpoint personage going to America during the war, he remarked that she would make a capital breast-work. One of the few epigrams he ever wrote-if not the only one, of which there is some doubt-was in the same spirit. It is on the discovery of a pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed: "Well may Suspicion shake its head Well may Clorinda's spouse be jealous, Her very shoes-because they're fellows." Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit; and dozens more are dispersed through Walpole's Letters. As Eliot Warburton remarks, they do not give us a very high idea of the humor of the period; but two things must be taken into consideration before we deprecate their author's title to the dignity and reputation he enjoyed so abundantly among his contemporaries: they are not necessarily the best specimens that might have been given, if more of his mots had been preserved; and their effect on his listeners depended more on the manner of delivery than on the matter. That they were improvised and unpremeditated is another important consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as Warburton does, with the hebdomadal trash of "Punch,” though perhaps they would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force wit with plenty of time to invent and meditate it another to have so much wit within you that you can bring it out on any occasion; one thing to compose a good fancy for money-another to utter it only when it flashes through the brain. But it matters little what we in the present day may think of Selwyn's wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and 324 SELWYN'S LOVE FOR CHILDREN. should be drawn fresh when wanted. Selwyn's companions -all men of wit, more or less, affirmed him to be the most amusing man of his day, and that was all the part he had to play. No real wit ever hopes to talk for posterity; and written wit is of a very different character to the more sparkling, if less solid, creations of a moment. We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very creditable to him: first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy; next, a professed gambler and the associate of men who led fashion in those days, it is true, but then it was very bad fashion; then as a lover of hangmen, a wit, and a lounger. There is reason to believe that Selwyn, though less openly reprobate than many of his associates, was, in his quiet way, just as bad as any of them, if we except the Duke of Queensberry, his intimate friend, or the disgusting "Franciscans" of Medmenham Abbey, of whom, though not the founder, nor even a member, he was, in a manner, the suggester in his blasphemy. But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all these accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which his position, and the fashion of the day introduced him, a far better heart than any of his contemporaries, and in some respects a kind of simplicity which was endearing. He was neither knave nor fool. He was not a voluptuary, like his friend the duke; nor a continued drunkard, like many other "fine gentlemen" with whom he mixed; nor a cheat, though a gambler; nor a skeptic, like his friend Walpole; nor a blasphemer, like the Medmenham set, though he had once parodied profanely a sacred rite; nor was he steeped in debt, as Fox was; nor does he appear to have been a practiced seducer, as too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these negative qualities are to his praise; but if we look at the age and the society around him, we must, at least, admit that Selwyn was not one of the worst of that wicked set. But the most pleasing point in the character of the old bachelor-for he was too much of a wit ever to marry—is his affection for children-not his own. That is, not avowedly his own, for it was often suspected that the little ones he took up so fondly bore some relationship to him, and there can be little doubt that Selwyn, like every body else in that evil age, had his intrigues. He did not die in his sins, and that is almost all we can say for him. He gave up gaming in time, protesting that it was the bane of four much better thingshealth, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, perhaps, he cared little. Before his death he is said to have been a Christian, which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set |