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. [Sidenote: 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.’