lously attended the clubs and the Convention. Returning to England, in August of that year he married Miss Coutts, whose two sisters had been educated at Paris in 1787. John Kemble also, introduced probably by Talma, repeatedly met Barère.
Erskine was presented by Bonaparte with his portrait, and was perhaps accompanied to the Tuileries by Alderman Combe, M.P. and ex-Lord Mayor of London. At any rate a caricaturist depicted the Consul receiving Fox, Erskine, and Combe in a very unceremonious fashion:
"Fox! ha, how old are you? A brewer. Lord Mayor! ha, great pomp. Mr. Brief! ha, a great lawyer, can talk well. There, you may go."[1]
Grotesque as this was, it was hardly more so than what actually happened at the reception of Mackintosh. Bonaparte, with that desire to be thought omniscient which made him "cram" for a visit to the Paris Library by getting up the question of the interpolated passage in Josephus, had made inquiries about his visitors, but forgetting which was which, or the order of presentation being inverted, the compliment prepared for Mackintosh on his "unanswerable answer to Burke" was offered to the friend who preceded him. "I have got your compliment," whispered the friend as he made
- ↑ "English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon." By John Aston, 1884.
