WILLIAM

See also:

• COMBE, ANDREW (1797-1847)
• COMBE, GEORGE (1788-1858)
• WILLIAM COMBE (1741–1823)
• COMBE, or COOMB

COMBE (1741–1823)  , English writer, the creator of " Dr Syntax," was born at Bristol in 1741 . The circumstances of his birth and parentage are somewhat doubtful, and it is questioned whether his father was a rich Bristol merchant, or a certain William Alexander, a London alderman, who died in 1762 . He was educated at Eton, where he was contemporary with Charles James Fox, the 2nd Baron Lyttelton and William Beckford . Alexander bequeathed him some £2000—a little fortune that soon disappeared in a course of splendid extravagance, which gained him the nickname of Count Combe; and after a chequered career as private soldier, cook and waiter, he finally settled in London (about 1771), as a law student and bookseller's hack . In 1776 he made his first success in London with The Diaboliad, a satire full of bitter personalities . Four years afterwards (178o) his debts brought him into the King's Bench; and much of his subsequent life was spent in prison . His spurious Letters of the Late Lord Lyttelton' (178o) imposed on many of his contemporaries, and a writer in the Quarterly Review, so late as 1851, regarded these letters as authentic, basing upon them a claim that Lyttelton was " Junius." An early acquaintance with Lawrence Sterne resulted in his Letters supposed to have been written by Yorick and Eliza (,779) . Periodical literature of all sorts—pamphlets, satires, burlesques, " two thousand columns for the papers," " two hundred biographies "—filled up the next years, and about 1789 Combe was receiving £200 yearly from Pitt, as a pamphleteer . Six volumes of a Devil on Two Sticks in England won for him the title of " the English le Sage "; in 1794–1796 he wrote the text for Boydell's History of the River Thames; in 1803 he began to write for The Times . In 1809–1811 he wrote for Ackermann's Political Magazine the famous Tour of Dr Syntax in search of the Picturesque (descriptive and moralizing verse of a somewhat doggerel type), which, owing greatly to Thomas Rowlandson's designs, had an immense success . It was published separately in 1812 and was followed by two similar Tours, " in search of Consolation," and " in search of a Wife," the first Mrs Syntax having died at the end of the first Tour . Then came Six Poems in illustration of drawings by Princess Elizabeth (1813), The English Dance of Death (1815–1816), The Dance of Life (1816-1817), The Adventures of Johnny Quae Genus (1822)—all written for Rowlandson's caricatures; together with Histories of Oxford and Cambridge, and of Westminster Abbey for Ackermann; Picturesque Tours along the Rhine and other rivers, Histories of Madeira, Antiquities of York, texts for Turner's Southern Coast Views, and contributions innumerable to the Literary Repository .

In his later years, notwithstanding a by no means unsullied

character, Combe was courted for the sake of his charming conversation and inexhaustible stock of anecdote . He died in London on the 19th of June 1823 . Brief obituary memoirs of Combe appeared in Ackermann's Literary Repository and in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1823; and in May 1859 a list of his works, drawn up by his own hand, was printed in the latter periodical . See also Diary of H . Crabb Robinson, Notes and Queries for z86g . ' Thomas, and Baron Lyttelton (1744-1779), commonly known as the " wicked Lord Lyttelton," was famous for his abilities and his libertinism, also for the mystery attached to his death, of which it was alleged he was warned in a dream three days before the event .