The Author of “Dr. Syntax”
Dr. Syntax’s Tour in Search of the Picturesque was a large prize in the lottery of publication and was also a novelty in origin and writing. It was written to a set of designs instead of the designs being made to illustrate the poet: in other words, the artist preceded the author by making a series of drawings, in which he exhibited his hero in a succession of places, and in various associations, calculated to exemplify his hobby-horsical search for the picturesque. Some of these drawings, made by Rowlandson, than whom no artist ever expressed so much with so little effort, were shown at a dinner-party at John Bannister’s, in Gower Street, when it was agreed that they should be recommended to Ackermann, in the Strand, for publication. That gentleman readily purchased, and handed them, two or three at a time, to William Combe, who was then confined in the King’s Bench Prison for debt. He fitted the drawings with rhymes, and they were first published in the Poetical Magazine, where they became so popular that they extended to three tours in as many volumes, and passed through several editions. The work reminds one of Drunken Barnaby’s Journal by its humour: it has been called “rhyming, rambling, rickety, and ridiculous,” but by a very inexperienced critic. The illustrations were, doubtless, the attraction, which was so great, that the demand kept pace with the supply. Hence Syntax was succeeded by the Dance of Life, the Dance of Death, Johnny Quægenus, and Tom Raw the Griffin, all of the same class and character, and ultimately extending to 295 prints, with versified letter-press “by Dr. Syntax.” Of late years these works have been republished at reduced prices.
Combe, the author of these strange works was of good family connection, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, and very early came into possession of a large fortune, in ready money. He started in the world by taking a large mansion at the west end of London, furnished it superbly hired servants, and bought carriages, and assembled around him a set of sycophants and parasites, who made short work of it, for from the commencement to the drop-scene of the farce did not exceed one year. The consequence was disgraceful ruin, and Combe fled from his creditors and from society. We next hear of him as a common soldier, and recognized at a public-house with a volume of Greek poetry in his hand. He was relieved; but he still lived a reckless life, by turns in the King’s Bench Prison and the Rules, the limits of which do not appear to have been to him much punishment. Horace Smith, who knew Combe, refers to the strange adventures and the freaks of fortune of which he had been a participator and a victim: “a ready writer of all-work for the booksellers, he passed all the latter portion of his time within the Rules, to which suburban retreat the present writer was occasionally invited, and never left without admiring his various acquirements, and the philosophical equanimity with which he endured his reverses.” Mr. Smith further states, that if there was a lack of matter occasionally to fill up the columns of their paper, “Combe would sit down in the publisher’s back-room and extemporize a letter from Sterne at Coxwould, a forgery so well executed that it never excited suspicion.” Mr. Robert Cole, the antiquary, had among his autographs a list of the literary works and letters of Combe.
Combe was principally employed by Ackermann, who, for several years, paid him at least 400l. a-year. On the first lithograph stone which Mr. Ackermann printed, when he had prepared everything for working, Combe wrote:—
“I have been told of one
Who, being asked for bread,
In its stead
Return’d a stone.
“But here we manage better.
The stone we ask
To do its task,
And it returns in every letter.”
“William Combe, Jan. 23, 1817.”
Combe was often a guest at Ackermann’s table; he proved a friend to him during his last illness, and contributed to the expenses of his funeral, tomb, &c. Subsequent to his death, in 1823, a small volume was published, entitled Letters to Marianne, said to have been written by him after the age of seventy, to a young girl. We remember to have visited him in the Rules, near New Bethlem Hospital, when we learnt that he had written a memoir of his chequered life. Campbell, in his Life of Mrs. Siddons, states that Combe lived nearly twenty years in the King’s Bench, and never quitted that prison; which is not correct. Combe had nearly been Mrs. Siddons’s reading preceptor.
Rowlandson, who designed the Syntax illustrations, was as improvident as Combe: he had a legacy of 7,000l., and other property, bequeathed to him by an aunt: this he dissipated in the gaming-houses of Paris and London, where he alternately won and lost without emotion several thousand pounds. When penniless, he would return to his professional duties, sit down coolly to make a series of new designs, and exclaim stoically, “I’ve played the fool, but (holding up his pencils) here is my resource.” To Rowlandson, as well as Combe, Ackermann proved a warm and generous patron and employer.
Dr. Doran, in his piquant Notes to the Last Journals of Horace Walpole, tells us that “Combe burst on the world as a wonderfully well-dressed beau, and was received with éclat for the sake of his wealth, talents, grace, and personal beauty. He was popularly called ‘Count Combe,’ till his extravagance had dissipated a noble fortune; and then, addressing himself to literature, the Count was forgotten in the Author. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for May, 1862, there is a list of his works, originally furnished by his own hand. Not one was published with his name, and they amount in number to sixty-eight. Combe was a teetotaller in the days when drunkenness was in fashion, and was remarkable for disinterestedness and industry. He was the friend of Hannah More, whom he loved to make weep by improvised romances, in which he could ‘pile up the agony’ with wonderful effect. Religious faith and hope enabled William Combe to triumph over the sufferings of his latter years. His second wife, the sister of the gentle and gifted Mrs. Cosway, survived him.”
Horace Walpole, 1779, speaking of the poem, The World as it Goes, describes it as “by that infamous Combe, the author of the Diabolical. It has many easy poetic lines, imitates Churchill, and is fully as incoherent and absurd in its plan as the worst of the latter’s.”
Again, in 1778, Walpole describes “Combe” as “a most infamous rascal, who had married a cast mistress of Lord Beauchamp, and wrote many satiric poems not quite despicable for the poetry, but brutally virulent against that Lord, and others, particularly Lord Irnham.” But, as Dr. Doran aptly observes, “Walpole however fond of satire, hated satirists, particularly when they were fearless and outspoken, like Combe.”