Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/197

 Westminster. In 1834, having taken up oil painting, he visited The Hague and Paris to study and copy in the galleries there. In Paris he painted much and also tried his hand successfully at wood engraving. He engraved in mezzotint Rembrandt's ‘Spanish Officer,’ also a picture by himself entitled ‘The Dutch Governess,’ and a portrait of A. J. Kempe. In 1837 he etched a plate of the altar window at Hampton-Lucy in Warwickshire. Swaine was a versatile artist of great promise, but died at the age of twenty-three in Queen Street, Golden Square, London, on 28 March 1838 (Gent. Mag. 1838, i. 552).

&#91;Gent. Mag. 1861 i. 337; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Stanwell Par. Reg.] 

SWAINSON, CHARLES ANTHONY (1820–1887), theologian, was the second son of Anthony Swainson, a descendant of an old Lancashire family, and a merchant and alderman of Liverpool, where the son was born on 29 May 1820. After passing some time at a private school at Christleton, near Chester, where he was an unusually studious boy, he entered that of the Royal Institution at Liverpool, under Dr. Iliff. [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Durham, became a pupil at the same school a few years later, and was a lifelong friend. Swainson began residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1837, under the tuition of (1791–1858) [q. v.], afterwards dean of Ely. He became scholar of his college in 1840, and in 1841 graduated as sixth wrangler in a distinguished year, when the senior wrangler was the present Sir George Gabriel Stokes. On 23 June 1841 he was elected to a fellowship at Christ's College. In 1847 he became one of the tutors. He was ordained by the bishop of Ely on his college title, deacon in 1843, and priest in the following year. In 1849 Bishop Blomfield appointed him Cambridge preacher at the chapel royal, Whitehall. In 1851 he resigned his tutorship, and after serving curacies at St. George's, Hanover Square, and at Mortlake, he assumed the post of principal of the theological college at Chichester in February 1854. He was appointed by Bishop Gilbert to a prebendal stall in the cathedral in 1856. In 1857 and 1858 he delivered the Hulsean lectures at Cambridge. Unwilling to relinquish altogether the practical work of the ministry, he undertook in 1861 the charge of two small parishes, St. Bartholomew's and St. Martin's, at Chichester. When, in 1861, the beautiful spire of Chichester Cathedral fell, he became secretary of the committee for its restoration. While this work was still in progress the dean and canons residentiary, exercising a privilege which probably they alone among the English chapters retained, co-opted Swainson as a residentiary. For several years he represented the chapter in convocation. In 1864, on the preferment of Professor Harold Browne to the see of Ely, Swainson succeeded him as Norrisian professor of divinity. Resigning his other appointments, he retained his canonry, and also became warden of St. Mary's Hospital in Chichester, where he spent the whole of the income of his office in adding to the comforts of the aged inmates and restoring the chapel. In 1879, on the preferment of Dr. Lightfoot to the see of Durham, Swainson was chosen, without opposition, to succeed him as Lady Margaret's reader in divinity. In 1881 he was elected by the fellows of Christ's College to the mastership, and thereupon resigned his canonry. He was an active and genial master, acquainting himself by personal visits with the condition of the college estates, and giving great attention to the business occasioned by the introduction of the new code of statutes, which came into operation immediately after his accession to the mastership, and required, among other things, a complete change in the method of keeping the accounts. He was chosen vice-chancellor in 1885. His health from this time declined, and he died on 15 Sept. 1887.

In 1852 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Inman of Liverpool, and sister of Thomas and [q. v.]

In his theological opinions Swainson, though he was not untouched by the philosophy of Coleridge and by the tractarian movement, was always in the main a disciple of Hooker and the older English divines. He had remarkable power of work, and was one of the most generous and unselfish of men. He exercised a beneficial influence on his pupils, and drew about him a large circle of attached friends.

In the midst of his constant labours as a theological teacher he produced a valuable series of books. His first publication, in conjunction with [q. v.], also fellow of Christ's College, was ‘Commonplaces read in Christ's College Chapel,’ 1848. In 1856 he published ‘An Essay on the History of Article xxix,’ a work of considerable research. His Hulsean lectures for 1857 were published (1858) under the title ‘The Creeds of the Church in their relation to the Word of God and the Conscience of the Christian;’ those for 1858 on ‘The Authority of the New Testament,