[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 _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