, 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 _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 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 a