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’, 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 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!’

[Illustration:  SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES THE “SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE.”]

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,
  When the dear wanton takes to bed
  Her very shoes—­because they’re fellows.

Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn’s wit; and dozens more are dispersed though Walpole’s Letters.  As Eliot Warburton remarks, they do not give us a very high idea of the humour 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