Mr. Selwyn. George Augustus Selwyn (1719-1791), M.P. for Gloucester; the celebrated wit and club-man. Though he sat in Parliament for about thirty years, Selwyn was notoriously apathetic towards politics. But since he returned two members besides himself, and always woke up in time to give his vote for the ministers when a division was called, Selwyn was amply rewarded by successive administrations. He was, wrote Sir George Otto Trevelyan,
at one and the same time surveyor-general of crown lands—which he never surveyed—registrar in chancery at Barbadoes—which he never visited—and surveyor of the meltings and clerk of the irons in the mint—where he showed himself once a week in order to eat a dinner which he ordered, but for which the nation paid (The Early History of Charles James Fox, New York, 1881, pp. 94-95).
his Honour Mr. Brudenell. James Brudenell (1725-1811), second son of the third Earl of Cardigan; M.P. for Marlborough; cr. Baron Brudenell of Deene, 1780; succeeded his brother as fifth Earl of Cardigan, 1790.
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Mr. Wilkes. John Wilkes (1727-1797), M.P. for Middlesex; the radical politician and hero of the London populace. He had a reputation for facetious wit, and he made a practice of sending his speeches in advance to the newspapers. Wilkes was another, like Fox and Burke, who enjoyed Tickell’s anticipation of his speech. Boswell reported Wilkes as saying to Tickell in April 1779: “Much obliged for your speech for me. If you’ll make me another for next session, I’ll be damn’d if I don’t speak it” (Private Papers of James Boswell, XIII, 231).
Here Sir Grey Cooper caught at a pen. Sir Grey Cooper (1726?-1801), third Baronet; M.P. for Saltash and a Secretary of the Treasury. The allusion is to Lord North’s habit of sleeping through Whig speeches and answering them from the notes of his favorite secretary. The following lines are from The London Magazine, XLVIII, 1779, 186:
Whilst B[ur]ke and B[arr]é strain their throats
The mild Sir Grey is taking notes;
And, wise as owl, is seen composing,