#william combe

[illustratus]

Death's Dance

I love dispatch I strike at once

The wit, the wise, the fool, the dunce;

The steel-clad soldier, stout and bold,

The miser with his treasur'd gold;

The studious sage, and matron grave,

The haughty noble, and the slave,

I strip, with unrelenting paw,

The ermine from the man of law:

Disrobe the prelate of his his lawn;

And dim with clouds the op'ning dawn...

[uwmspeccoll]

Spotlight: Dr. Syntax

British author William Combe and artist Thomas Rowlandson are responsible for the original series of Dr. Syntax publications, which include: The Tour of Dr. Syntax: In Search of the Picturesque; The Second Tour of Dr. Syntax: In Search of Consolation; and The Third Tour of Dr. Syntax: In Search of a Wife. The popularity of the series led to many imitators. such as our copy of The Tour of Doctor Syntax Through London, or, The Pleasures and Miseries of the Metropolis, the third edition published in 1820 by J. Johnston, Cheapside, and printed by W. Shackell of Fleet Street, London. It is speculated that these illustrations, all hand-colored etchings, may have been done by Robert Cruikshank, the son of the Scottish caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank and brother of the more well-known George Cruikshank.

The poem follows Dr. Syntax and his wife on a tour of London. The tour is not just for pleasure, Dr. Syntax has written a Tragedy and looks to have it done on the London stage. While in the city they experience a number of events; art exhibitions; the risking of life and limb by "shooting” through the fast-moving waters at London Bridge; the House of Commons; a wet and windy day in St. Paul’s Churchyard; being presented at court; and finally the reading and presentation of his play.

[seasons-in-hell]

Thomas Rowlandson ( William Combe) 'The English Dance of Death' (1815-16)

[dlk26589]

The shipwreck.  Etching by Thomas Rowlandson for William Combe’s book, The English Dance of Death, volume 1, published in 1815.

[wilsonlibunc]

The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque: A Game is a parlor game based on William Combe’s satirical poem The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque.

Combe’s poem skewered the aesthetic ideal of the picturesque, which was ascendant at the time of the poem’s publication in 1809, by detailing the misadventures of a fictional Don-Quixote-style hero who was so enthralled by his search for picturesque landscapes that he lacked any awareness of his immediate surroundings.

Read more on the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog, and see the game in person on March 22 at the Rare Book Collection’s Recent Acquisitions Evening.

[amphibious-thing]

Sometime in 1791, a full 14 years after William Combe first hinted in The First of April that Anne Damer might be joining Lady Harrington in (presumably lesbian) 'joys that blooming Widows share', he got the notion to publish a revised edition of his early works in which he would excise the derogatory references to Damer and include an apology. Considering how long it had been, it can be assumed that his motive was not repentance so much as profit and renewed publicity. Combe - by now working as a propagandist for William Pitt's Tory government - was an acquaintance of the minor writer Edward Jerningham, who at this period wrote to various aristocrats to ask them to let Combe visit and write about their estates on the Thames for a travel book. Jerningham, who interestingly had been accused of a same-sex preference himself, had been Anne Damer's warm friend and correspondent since 1777. Combe now asked Jerningham to play go-between. 'On my unfortunate subject I have a curious circumstance to tell you, which I learned from Jerningham the other morning,' Damer confides in Berry (still abroad) on 21 June 1791. A few days later, she reports that Jerningham - rather awkwardly - had told her how guilty Combe felt for having believed baseless rumours about Damer in 1777 and repeated them (not only in pamphlets such as The First of April and the second part of The Diaboliad, but in newspapers too), and how Combe had now started inserting favourable references to Damer into his journalism. Sensing that this was a bad idea, Damer tells Berry, 'Jerningham, as my friend, desired he would not make any apology, if he did reprint his works, thinking it would only be bringing up old stories which, he fancies, lose ground daily.'

Emma Donoghue, ‘Random Shafts of Malice’: The Outings of Anne Damer, from Lesbian Dames p137

[noelcollection]

April is National Poetry Month, so we'll be featuring some verse gems each week. First up are The Dance of Life and The English Dance of Death, written in the early 1800s by William Combe, a satirist.

(images from Combe's The Dance of Life (PR3359 .C5 D2 1903, exhibit) and The English Dance of Death (PR3359 .C5 E5 1903, exhibit))

[uwmspeccoll]

Spotlight: April 1

‘Twas on the Morn when April doth appear, And wets the Primrose with its maiden tear; 'Twas on the Morn when laughing Folly rules, And calls her Sons around, and dubs them Fools; Bids them be bold, some untry'd path explore, And do such deeds as Fools ne'er did before . . . .

Then Folly titter'd, and the joyful Croud Burst forth in laughing shouts so shrill and loud, The affrighted vision fled in haste away, And my glad eyes beheld the chearful day.

The First of April or: The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem. Dedicated to a Celebrated Duchess (i.e., Duchess of Devonshire). By the Author of the Diaboliad (i.e., William Combe), London: Printed for J. Bew, 1777.