"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: