COMBE, WILLIAM English writer, the creator of "Dr. Syntax," was born in Bristol in 1741. He was educated at Eton, where he was contemporary with Charles James Fox, the 2nd Baron Lytteltor, and William Beckford. William Alexander, a London alderman and his reputed father, bequeathed him some £2,000 (a little fortune that soon disap peared in a course of splendid extravagance which gained him the nickname of Count Combe) and after a chequered career as private soldier, cook and waiter, he finally settled in London (about 1771), as a law student and bookseller's hack. In 1776 he made his first success in London with The Diaboliad, a satire full of bitter personalities. Four years afterwards (178o) his debts brought him into the King's Bench; and much of his sub sequent life was spent in prison. 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 f 200 yearly from Pitt, as a pamphleteer. In 18o9-11 he wrote for Ackermann's Political Magazine the famous Tour of Dr. Syntax in search of the Pic turesque (descriptive and moralizing verse of a somewhat dog gerel 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 Con solation," 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 Eng lish Dance of Death (1815-16), The Dance of Life (1816-17), The Adventures of Johnny Quae Genus (182 2 )—all written for Rowlandson's caricatures. In his later years, notwithstanding a by no means unsullied character, Combe was sought out for the sake of his charming conversation and inexhaustible stock of anecdote. He died in London, June 19, 1823.