prison. His spurious
_Letters of the Late Lord Lyttelton_[1] (1780) 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_ (1779). 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 L200 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 1869_.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton (1744-1779), commonly known as the
"wicked Lord Lyttelt