Combe, WILLIAM

Combe, WILLIAM, author of Dr Syntax, was born at Bristol in 1741, and educated at Eton and Oxford, which he quitted without a degree. 'Godson' (or natural son) of a rich London alderman, who died in 1762, leaving him £2150, he led for some years the life of an adventurer, now keeping a princely style at the fashionable watering-places, anon a cook at Douai, and a common soldier. The last forty-three years of his life were passed mostly within the 'rules' of the King's Bench debtors' prison; but he died at Lambeth, 19th June 1823. In the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xi., 1887) Professor Tout enumerates eighty-six works by Combe, published between 1774 and 1824; of these, the Three Tours of Dr Syntax (1812-21) alone are remembered, and even they owe much to Rowlandson's illustrations.