Peter was not emulous to shine as a wit in his colloquial intercourse, either with strangers or his most intimate associates. Indeed, his usual manner exhibited so little of that character which strangers had imagined of the writer of his lively satires, that they were commonly disappointed. The wife of a player, at whose house Wolcot often passed an evening, used to say that "his wit seems to lie in the bowl of a teaspoon." Angelo, in his Reminiscences, tells us that he could not guess the riddle, until one evening he observed that each time Peter replenished his glass goblet with brandy-and-water, in breaking the sugar, the corners of his lips were curled into a satisfactory smile, and he began some quaint story, as if, indeed, the new libation begot a new thought. To prove the truth of the discovery, one night, after supper, at his own home in Bolton Row, Angelo made the experiment. One of the party being in the secret, and fond of practical joking, came provided with some small square pieces of alabaster. Peter's glass waning fast, the joker contrived to slip the alabaster into a sugar-basin provided for the purpose; when the Doctor, reaching the hot water, and pouring in the brandy, the sugar-tongs were handed to him, and then the advanced basin of alabaster. "Thank you, my boy," said Peter, putting in five or six pieces, and taking his teaspoon, began stirring as he commenced his story. Unsuspicious of the trick, Peter proceeded, "Well, sirs,—and so the old parish priest. What I tell you (then his spoon was at work) happened when I was in that infernally hot place, Jamaica (then another stir). Sir, he was the fattest man on the island (then he pressed the alabaster); yes, d——, sir, and when the thermometer, at ninety-five, was dissolving every other man, this old slouching, drawling son of the church got fatter and fatter, until, sir—(curse the sugar! some devil-black enchanter has bewitched it.) By ——, sir, this sugar is part and parcel of that old pot-bellied parson—it will never melt;" and he threw the contents of the tumbler under the grate. The whole party burst into laughter, and the joke cut short the story. The mock sugar was slipped out of the way, and the Doctor, taking another glass, never suspected the frolic.
Peter, on seeing West's picture of Satan in the Exhibition, broke out in the following couplet:—
"Is this the mighty potentate of evil?
'Tis damn'd enough, indeed, but not the Devil."
[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."