That Selwyn was a gossip, no one knew better than himself, and he has incurred the censure of Sir George Trevelyan for repeating tittle-tattle, as he calls it, about Fox and his gambling.  But posterity desires to see the real Fox, not an ideal statesman—­to see a man as he lived, not only a political figure.  Looking back for more than a century we may very well appreciate to the full Fox’s great qualities and yet be aware of his weaknesses and his vices, in which he showed the strength of a passionate and virile character in contact with certain characteristics of the society of the age.  Instead, therefore, of blaming Selwyn for repeating to correspondents the minor incidents of the time, we ought to be thankful to him for enabling us to picture so many of the leading personages of that day as they were.  If we look to a period before or after that of Selwyn, we see an immortal gossip in Pepys, and in Greville another who will be read after the works of eminent historians have been put on upper shelves as out of date.  The detailing of the minor facts of life without malice and with absolute truth enables posterity to form a sound judgment on a past age.

Among the amusements of the society in which Selwyn delighted was one which now seems both morbid and cruel:  that of attending the execution of those condemned to capital punishment.  Even to his friends and immediate successors, no less than to those who have written of him, the fact that a man so full of kindness, who took pleasure in the innocent companionship of children, could with positive eagerness witness the hanging of a thief at Tyburn, has been a cause of surprise.  When one is conversant with the history of the time the astonishment is ridiculous.  The sight of a man on the gallows no more disturbed the serenity of the most good-natured of men at the end of the eighteenth century than do the dying flutters of a partridge the susceptibilities of the most cultured of modern sportsmen.  Selwyn was ever trying to get as much amusement out of life as possible, and he would have been acting contrary to all the ideas of the fashionable society of his age if he had sat at home when a criminal was to die.  It was said of Boswell, just as it was of Selwyn, that he was passionately fond of attending executions.  We need not therefore be surprised that Selwyn did as others of his time.  Gilly Williams was a kind and good-natured man, yet we find him writing to Selwyn: 

“Harrington’s porter was condemned yesterday.  Cadogan and I have already bespoken places at the Braziers, and I hope Parson Digby will come time enough to be of the party.  I presume we shall have your honour’s company, if your stomach is not too squeamish for a single serving.”