g_." But what man of his day escaped the gout, and the natural
termination of that torturing disease in dropsy? After seven years'
suffering from both, with occasional intervals of relief, he sank at last.
Walpole, almost the only survivor among his early friends, thus wrote on
the day of his expected death:--"I have lost, or am on the point of losing,
my oldest acquaintance and friend, George Selwyn, who was yesterday at the
extremity. Those misfortunes, though they can be so but for a short time,
are very sensible to the old: but him I loved, not only for his infinite
wit, but for a thousand good qualities." He writes a few days after, "Poor
Selwyn is gone; to my sorrow; and no wonder. Ucalegon feels it."

Selwyn, with all his pleasantry, had evidently a quick eye for his own
interest. He contrived to remain in parliament for half a century, and he
gathered the emoluments of some half dozen snug sinecures. Among those
were the Registrar of Chancery in Barbadoes, and surveyor-general of the
lands. Thus he lived luxuriously, and died rich.

Orator Henley is niched in an early part of this correspondence. The
orator was known in the last century as a remarkably dirty fellow in his
apparel, and still more so in his mind. He was the son of a gentleman, and
had received a gentleman's education at St John's, Cambridge. There, or
subsequently, he acquired Hebrew, and even Persian; wrote a tragedy on the
subject of Esther, in which he exhibited considerable poetic powers; and
finished his scholastic fame by a grammar of ten languages! On leaving
college, he took orders, and became a country curate. But the decency of
this life did not suit his habits, and he resolved to try his chance in
London for fortune and fame. Opening a chapel near Newport market,
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, he harangued twice a-week, on theological subjects
on Sundays, and on the sciences and literature on Wednesdays. The audience
were admitted by a shilling ticket, and the butchers in the neighbourhood
were for a while his great patrons. At length, finding his audience tired
of common sense, he tried, like other charlatans since his day, the effect
of nonsense. His manner was theatrical, his style eccentric, and his
topics varied between extravagance and buffoonery. The history of such
performances is invariably the same--novelty is essential, and novelty
must be attained at all risks. He now professed to reform all literature,
and all religion. But even this