brought off about L1500. All things are exaggerated, I am
supposed to have won at least twice as much.' In 1765 he is said to
have won two thousand louis of a German at billiards. Writing to Selwyn,
Gilly Williams says of him: 'I did not know he was more an adept at
that game than you are at any other, but I think you are both said to be
losers on the whole, at least Betty says that her letters mention you as
pillaged.'

Among the numerous occasions on which the name of the Duke of
Queensberry came before the public in connection with sporting matters,
may be mentioned the circumstance of the following curious trial, which
took place before Lord Mansfield in the Court of King's Bench, in 1771.
The Duke of Queensberry, then Lord March, was the plaintiff, and a Mr
Pigot the defendant. The object of this trial was to recover the sum of
five hundred guineas, being the amount of a wager laid by the duke With
Mr Pigot--whether Sir William Codrington or _OLD_ Mr Pigot should die
first. It had singularly happened that Mr Pigot died suddenly the _SAME
MORNING_, of the gout in his head, but before either of the parties
interested in the result of the wager could by any possibility have
been made acquainted with the fact. In the contemporary accounts of the
trial, the Duke of Queensberry is mentioned as having been accommodated
with a seat on the bench; while Lord Ossory, and several other noblemen,
were examined on the merits of the case. By the counsel for the
defendant it was argued that (as in the case of a horse dying before the
day on which he was to be run) the wager was invalid and annulled. Lord
Mansfield, however, was of a different opinion; and after a brief charge
from that great lawyer, the jury brought in a verdict for the plaintiff
for five hundred guineas, and he sentenced the defendant to defray the
costs of the suit.(143)

(143) Jesse, George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, vol. i. p. 194.

This prince of debauchees seems to have surpassed every model of
the kind, ancient or modern. In his prime he reproduced in his own
drawing-room the scene of Paris and the Goddesses, exactly as we see
it in classic pictures, three of the most beautiful women of London
representing the divinities as they appeared to Paris on Mount Ida,
while he himself, dressed as the Dardan shepherd holding a _GILDED_
apple (it should have been really golden) in his hand, conferred the
prize on her whom he deemed the fairest. In his decr