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

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 the following reasons.
Swinney, it appears, had received subscriptions for the work, and promised in his prospectus a plan of the battle, and portraits of the heroes, which the work does not contain. "However, to make some little amends" to his "generous subscribers," Swinney announces his intention to present them with "three books instead of one."
The first book is dedicated to Earl Waldegrave, who commanded