The tour of Doctor Syntax, in search of the picturesque: a poem.

London: R, Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 101 Strand, 1813.

"Writer and adventurer, born in Bristol, England. He inherited a fortune in 1762, led the life of an adventurer, and spent much time in debtors' jails. He studied at Oxford, and wrote metrical satires such as The Diabolidad (1776), but made his name with his three verse satires on popular travel-books, introducing the character of Dr Syntax." (BIOGRAPHY).

"He was tall and handsome in person, an elegant scholar and highly accomplished in his manners and behavior. He lived in a most princely style, and though a bachelor, kept two carriages…He was generally recognised by the appellation of Count Combe" (Bristol Observer, 1823).

"Combe's first Dr. Syntax book and its successors, The Second Tour of Dr. Syntax, In Search of Consolation, and The Third Tour…in Search of a Wife, satirize the many 18th and early 19th century writers whose 'Tours', 'Travels', and 'Journeys', were vehicles for sententious moralizing, uninspired raptures, and sentimental accounts of amorous adventures. The popularity of Combe's work owed much to the illustrations of Thomas Rowlandson. Combe and Rowlandson also collaborated on The English Dance of Death, which contains some of Combe's best verse" (Britannica Online).

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