d give himself
the final polish for St James's; he proceeded to make the tour of Europe.
What induced him to recommence his boyhood, by returning to Oxford at the
ripe age of twenty-five, is among the secrets of his career, as also is
the occasion of his being expelled from the university; if that occasion
is not to be found in some of the burlesques of religion which he had
learned amongst the fashionable infidels of the Continent, similar to
those enacted by Wilkes in his infamous monkery. But every thing in his
career equally exhibits the times. At an age when he was fit for nothing
else, he was considered fit to receive the salary of a sinecure; and, at
twenty-one, he was appointed to a brace of offices at the mint. His share
of the duty consisted of his enjoying the weekly dinners of the
establishment, and signing the receipts for his quarter's pay.

Within a few years more, he came into parliament; and in his thirty-second
year, by the death of his father and elder brother, he succeeded to the
family estates, consisting of three handsome possessions, one of which had
the additional value of returning a member of parliament. Nor was this all;
for his influence in Gloucestershire enabled him to secure, during many
years, his own seat for Gloucester, thus rendering his borough disposable;
and thus, master of a hereditary fortune, an easy sinecurist, the
possessor of two votes, and the influencer of the third--a man of family,
a man of connexion, and a man of the court--George Selwyn began a path
strewed with down and rose leaves.

In addition to these advantages, George Selwyn evidently possessed a very
remarkable subtlety and pleasantry of understanding; that combination
which alone produced true wit, or which, perhaps, would be the best
definition of wit itself; for subtlety alone may excite uneasy sensations
in the hearer, and pleasantry alone may often be vulgar. But the acuteness
which detects the absurd of things, and the pleasantry which throws a
good-humoured coloring over the acuteness, form all that delights us in
wit.

If we are to judge by the opinion of his contemporaries, and this is the
true criterion after all, Selwyn's wit must have been of the very first
order in a witty age. Walpole is full of him. Walpole himself, a wit, and
infinitely jealous of every rival in every thing on which he fastened his
fame, from a picture gallery down to a snuff-box, or from a history down
to an epigram, bows down t