in Italy, and used to boast that he had supplanted
the sentimental divine in the good graces of Eliza. In 1789, Combe took
service under Pitt as a political pamphleteer, with a pension of L200 a
year. This salary ceased when Addington came into office in 1803, but he
then obtained a post on the staff of the _Times_. Crabb Robinson, who
met him in the _Times_ office, said that he had known few men to be
compared with Combe, and states that he was chiefly employed in
consultation, important questions being brought to him to decide in
Walter's absence.

Combe's connection with Ackermann began when he was about sixty years of
age, and it is remarkable that his greatest successes should have been
won when he was nearing seventy. That he was able to produce so much
popular work at his advanced age, was probably partly due to the fact
that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was a confirmed
water-drinker, and that his life within the Rules was free from anxiety
and responsibility. The Rules were jokingly said to extend as far as the
East Indies, and it is certain that they extended as far as Ackermann's
hospitable table in the Strand. Combe stoutly refused to allow his
friends to make any arrangement with his creditors, and no formal
contract regulated his dealings with his publisher. "Send me a
twenty-pounder," or "Send me a thirty-pounder," he wrote when funds were
low, and his employer knew his value too well to neglect his demands.
Besides contributing numerous articles to Ackermann's monthly, _The
Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, and Manufactures_ (1809-28),
Combe wrote the descriptive letterpress for several of the large
illustrated books published by the same firm, _The History of the
Thames_, _The History of Westminster Abbey_, and the third volume of the
splendid _Microcosm of London_, illustrated by Rowlandson and Augustus
Pugin (1762-1832),[1] the former being responsible for the figures, the
latter for the architecture. The first and second volumes were written
by W. H. Pyne, author of _Wine and Walnuts_, who is perhaps better known
by his pseudonym of "Ephraim Hardcastle." Combe is seen to most
advantage, however, in _The English Dance of Death_, which was published
in 1815, with illustrations by Rowlandson, and followed the succeeding
year by _The Dance of Life_.

Footnote 1: Father of the more celebrated Augustus Welby and Edward
Welby Pugin.

[Illustration: By Gamblers link'd in Folly's Noose,