"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."
[Mrs. Radcliffe and the Critics.]
It is singular that although Mrs. Radcliffe's beautiful descriptions of foreign scenery, composed solely from the materials afforded by travellers, collected and embodied by her own genius, were marked in a particular degree with the characteristics of fancy portraits, yet many of her contemporaries conceived them to be exact descriptions of scenes which she had visited in person. One report transmitted to the public by the Edinburgh Review, stated that Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe had visited Italy; that Mr. Radcliffe had been attached to one of the British embassies in that country; and that it was here his gifted consort imbibed the taste for picturesque scenery, and for mouldering ruins, and for the obscure and gloomy anecdotes which tradition relates of their former inhabitants. This is so far a mistake, as Mrs. Radcliffe never was in Italy; but it has been mentioned, in explanation, that she probably availed herself of the acquaintance she formed in 1793 with the magnificent scenery on the banks of the Rhine, and the frowning remains of feudal castles with which it abounds. The inaccuracy of the reviewer is of no great consequence; but a more absurd report found its way into print, namely, that Mrs. Radcliffe, having visited the fine old Gothic mansion of Haddon House, had insisted upon remaining a night there, in the course of which she had been inspired with all that enthusiasm for Gothic residences, hidden passages, and mouldering walls, which marks her writings. Mrs. Radcliffe, we are assured, never saw Haddon House; and although it was a place excellently worth her attention, and could hardly have been seen by her without suggesting some of those ideas in which her imagination naturally revelled, yet we should suppose the mechanical aid to invention—the recipe for fine writing—the sleeping in a dismantled and unfurnished old house, was likely to be rewarded with nothing but a cold, and was an affectation of enthusiasm to which Mrs. Radcliffe would have disdained to have recourse.
These are the opinions of Sir Walter Scott; appended to them are these somewhat depreciatory remarks made by Dunlop, in his History of Fiction:—