On the 6th we dined at Lansdown House. Ld. L. received me with cordiality. I hope his terrors of my machinations are dissipated. Ld. Wycombe is gone to Ireland. Thursday.—Dined with Mrs. Wyndham. Friday.—Lds. Bor. and Digby, Mr. Adderley and General Fitzpatrick dined. Saturday.—Mrs. W.
Ld. and Ly. Macartney called this morn. It is the first time I have seen him since his return from the Cape. He looks well, tho’ he says he is confiscated. The climate of the Cape, he says, is unfavourable to a gouty habit. He told me the people at the Cape look upon Vaillant[248] as a vagrant, lying sort of a gentleman, who undertook to describe places he never saw, and boast of friends he never had: his secretary is going to publish his travels, and has annexed an accurate map he made himself to the work.
LORD MACARTNEY
Ld. M. is remarkable for a retentive memory. He remembers the minutest circumstance, tho’ I half-suspect he plays tricks, and frequently makes his recollection dwell upon strange objects, that as you find he remembers them, you may give him credit for knowing the commonest. When he went Minister to Russia, Mr. Grenville, in giving him instructions upon commercial arrangements, advised him to take the Navigation Act, as it might be of service to him. ‘To avoid encumbering myself, as I knew its use, I have learnt it by heart,’ and true it was he could say every tittle. Louis XVIII. is remarkable for a strong memory; when Ld. M. went to Verona, somebody said, ‘Ah! quels assauts de mémoire il y aura entre eux.’
14th March.—Sunday. Dumont[249] came and slept. He has all the good, and none of the bad qualities of a Génevois. A sarcastic person might ask, ‘What are the good qualities of a Génevois?’ To be candid, I protest I know of none but their enthusiastic admiration of Rousseau, and when I made that éloge of Dumont by giving them to him, I meant in truth to say he was a Frenchman; for all the agréments I bestow on him are the due of an amiable, enlightened, polished homme de lettres of Paris.
Tuesday, we dined with Mrs. W. and went to the play: I found Lewis in my box. Mrs. W. in her quaint manner asked him, ‘How he could have such a horrid imagination with such a comical face?’ Thursday, Dr. Ash and Mr. Moore dined here. To-day, the weather has been horrible, and we have not seen a soul, but have stayed snugly alone at home. I read two acts of Buonarotti’s Tancia. It is very difficult, and to a foreigner has no merit but simplicity and poetry. Its wit and truth are lost where the language and allusions are unknown, and the names ideal; for the vera lingua Fiorentina, as spoken by the peasants, is a distinct idiom from the common Italian, and the proverbs are local, nor is it possible for a foreigner resident in the country to obtain so exact a notion of the rustic manners of the contadini, as to be able to judge of the justness of the picture. I have been reading several of Hurd’s[250] Dialogues; his style is frigid, and, though correct, insipid. It was of him and Warburton that Dr. Parr said, ‘He has blundered into sublimity; you have refined into littleness.’
22nd March.—On Friday, 15th, we had an uncommonly pleasant party—Mrs. W., Lds. Mor., Bor., Thanet, General Fitz., Lord Robert, Mr. Hare, and (by chance) little Lewis.
25th March,’99.—On Sunday, 17th, Ld. H. dined with Mr. Francis. Mr. Marsh and Hamilton[251] dined here with me. At Francis’s they drank a good deal of wine. The joke was to exhaust his cellar. It succeeded, much to the mirth of Ld. Thanet, who is the promoter of all fun and mischief. On Monday Ld. Bor., Misses Fox and Vernon came to sleep, and some others.
DEBATE ON THE UNION
On Tuesday the House of Lds.; Miss Fox and I dined at home with Hodges only. Ld. H. and Marsh went to the H. of Lds. The debate was upon the Union. It was conducted, as Ld. Carlisle said, in a very gentlemanlike manner, which in plainer language means dully. Ld. L. spoke. The tenor of his speech was ambiguous, and none could judge how he would have voted had the question come to a division. He deprecated the principle of confiscation, and urged strongly the injustice of the Fitzgerald Attainder Bill. He illustrated his argument by several political cases, one of which the world say he intended for his own situation; but he certainly did not. He said any of their Lordships might be cursed with a Republican son, and by this system of confiscation their grandchildren would be beggars. Ld. H. spoke, but out of good nature he let the others speak before him, so that he was obliged to curtail his arguments on account of the lateness of the hour. We did not get to bed until 6 o’clock.