Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 | Page 2

Revealed, p.
22., quotes a paragraph from one of Wray's letters to Lord Hardwick
with reference to the proceedings at the Royal Society:
"Dr. Swinney, your Lordship's friend, presented his father-in-law
Howell's book."
Swinney's father-in-law, here called Howell, was John Zephaniah
Holwell, a remarkable man, whose name is intimately associated with
the early history of British India, one of the few survivors of the Black
Hole imprisonment, the successor of {214} Clive as governor, and a
writer on many subjects connected with Hindoo antiquities. Swinney
enrols him amongst his heroes,
"Holwell, Clive, York, Lawrence, Adams, Coote, Of Draper,
Bath-strung for his baffled suit."
And he refers, in a note, to those

"Ungrateful monsters (heretofore in a certain trading company), who
have endeavoured to vilify and sully one of the brightest characters that
ever existed."
I learn farther, from a volume of Fugitive Pieces, published by Dr.
Swinney, that he was the son of Major Mathew Swinney, whom after
his flourishing fashion he calls on another occasion "Mathew Swinney
of immortal memory;" from one of his dedications that the Doctor
himself was educated at Eton; from the books of the Royal Society that
he was of Clare Hall, Cambridge; from dates and dedications, that from
1764 to 1768, he was generally resident at Scarborough; and from the
Gentleman's Magazine, that he died there 12th November, 1783.
That Swinney had been chaplain to the Russian Embassy I have no
reason to believe; but that he had been in the East for a time, possibly
as chaplain to the Embassy at Constantinople, is asserted in the brief
biographical notice in the Gentleman's Magazine, and would seem to be
proved by a work which he published in 1769, called--
"A Tour through some parts of the Levant: in which is included An
Account of the Present State of the Seven Churches in Asia. Also a
brief Explanation of the Apocalypse. By Sidney Swinney, D.D."
Nothing, however, can be inferred from a title-page of Swinney's. Here
we have two or three distinct works referred to:--A Tour, including "An
Account of the Seven Churches," and the "Explanation of the
Apocalypse." Now I must direct attention to the fact, that from the
peculiar punctuation and phraseology--the full-stop after Asia in this
title-page--it may have been Swinney's intention to indicate, without
asserting, that the Account of the Apocalypse only was by Sidney
Swinney. If so, though Swinney's name alone figures in the title-page
of the work, he is responsible only for one or two notes!
I would not have written conjecturally on this subject if I could have
avoided it; but though Swinney was a F.A.S. F.R.S., and though the
work is dedicated to the Fellows of those Societies, no copy of it is to
be found in the libraries of either, or in the British Museum. I cannot,
therefore, be sure that my own copy is perfect. What that copy contains

is thus set forth in half a dozen lines of introduction:
"Before I [S. S.] enter upon the more important part of my dissertation
[The Explanation of the Apocalypse], it may not be improper to give
you some account of the present state of the Seven Churches in Asia, as
they are, which was communicated to me by a certain friend of mine, in
the description of a short tour which he made through the principal
parts of the Levant: should they be accompanied with a few casual
notes of my own, I trust the work will not be less acceptable to you on
that account."
It must be obvious, after this declaration, that the Tour set forth so
conspicuously in the title-page, was not written by Swinney. Now the
"Itinerary" which follows is advowedly "wrote by the author of the
preceding account," and this brings the reader and the work itself to
"The End!"
The truth I suspect to have been this:--Swinney was not prudent and
was poor, and raised money occasionally, after the miserable fashion of
the time, by publishing books on subscription, and receiving
subscriptions in anticipation of publication.
About this time, from 1767 to 1769, he published a Sermon; The Ninth
Satire of Horace, a meaningless trifle of a hundred lines, swollen, by
printing the original and notes, into a quarto; a volume of Fugitive
Pieces; and the first canto of The Battle of Minden, a Poem in three
Books, enriched with critical Notes by Two Friends, and with
explanatory Notes by the Author. Of the latter work, as of the Tour, I
have never seen but one copy, a splendid specimen of typography,
splendidly bound, containing the first and second canto. Whether the
third canto was ever published is to me doubtful; some of your
correspondents may be able to give you information. My own
impression is that it was not, and for