Charles Townshend, and George Selwyn.  The old house was burnt down in 1733.  It was at White’s—­or as Hogarth calls it in his pictorial squib, Black’s—­that, when a man fell dead at the door, he was lugged in and bets made as to whether he was dead or no.  The surgeon’s operations were opposed, for fear of disturbing the bets.  Here, too, did George Selwyn and Charles Townshend pit their wit against wit; and here Pelham passed all the time he was not forced to devote to politics.  In short it was, next to Brookes’, the club of the day, and perhaps in some respects had a greater renown than even that famous club, and its play was as high.

In Brookes’ and White’s Selwyn appeared with a twofold fame, that of a pronouncer of bon-mots and that of a lover of horrors.  His wit was of the quaintest order.  He was no inveterate talker, like Sydney Smith; no clever dissimulator, like Mr. Hook.  Calmly, almost sanctimoniously, he uttered those neat and telling sayings which the next day passed over England as ‘Selwyn’s last.’  Walpole describes his manner admirably—–­his eyes turned up, his mouth set primly, a look almost of melancholy in his whole face.  Reynolds, in his Conversation-piece, celebrated when in the Strawberry Collection, and representing Selwyn leaning on a chair, Gilly Williams, crayon in hand, and Dick Edgecumbe by his side, has caught the pseudo-solemn expression of his face admirably.  The ease of the figure, one hand empochee, the other holding a paper of epigrams, or what not, the huge waistcoat with a dozen buttons and huge flaps, the ruffled sleeve, the bob-wig, all belong to the outer man; but the calm, quiet, almost enquiring face, the look half of melancholy, half of reproach, and, as the Milesian would say, the other half of sleek wisdom; the long nose, the prim mouth and joined lips, the elevated brow, and beneath it the quiet contemplative eye, contemplative not of heaven or hell, but of this world as it had seen it, in its most worldly point of view, yet twinkling with a flashing thought of incongruity made congruous, are the indices of the inner man.  Most of our wits, it must have been seen, have had some other interest and occupation in life than that of ’making wit:’  some have been authors, some statesmen, some soldiers, some wild-rakes, and some players of tricks:  Selwyn had no profession but that of diseur de bons mots; for though he sat in the House, ne took no prominent part in politics; though he gambled extensively, he did not game for the sake of money only.  Thus his life was that merely of a London bachelor, with few incidents to mark it, and therefore his memoir must resolve itself more or less into a series of anecdotes of his eccentricities and list of his witticisms.