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 _empochée_, 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