Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/236

 Naples, and travelled in the two Sicilies, where they stayed for 1777 and 1778, and for the early months of 1779. Their return to England was by Vienna, Frankfort, and Brussels, and they arrived in London in July 1779, but after a few months in England passed once more through France to Italy. Their stay in that country was from March to July 1780, and they stopped from that month to the following November in Vienna. As lovers of antiquity and Roman catholics in religion, they formed acquaintance with the chief literati in each country, and received many compliments from the catholic sovereigns. At Vienna Maria Theresa conferred on Mrs. Swinburne the female order of ‘La Croix Étoilée,’ and the Emperor Joseph stood godfather to their son of that name. They were in Brussels from February to June 1781, and again crossed to England.

The first volume of Swinburne's ‘Travels in the two Sicilies, 1777–1780,’ was published in 1783, and the second came out in 1785, and the plates in both volumes were of great excellence. Swinburne's drawings were faithful to fact and elegant in design. A second edition appeared in 1790; a French translation of them by La Borde was issued at Paris in 1785, and in the same year a German translation by J. R. Forster was published at Hamburg. At a later date La Borde translated the supplementary ‘Journey from Bayonne to Marseilles.’

Hannah More met Swinburne in London society in May 1783, and described him as ‘a little genteel young man. He is modest and agreeable; not wise and heavy, like his books’ (, Hannah More, i. 282). By this time his wife's property in the West Indies had been ‘devastated and utterly laid waste by the French and Caribs.’ Having obtained letters of introduction to the French court from Vienna, he proceeded to Paris (1783), and through Marie-Antoinette's influence obtained ‘a grant of all the uncultivated crown lands in the island of St. Vincent,’ valued at 30,000l. In February 1785 Pitt offered half that sum for it, and on receiving a refusal passed through parliament a bill to impose heavy taxation upon the unproductive lands in all the West Indian islands. Swinburne then parted with his interest for 6,500l. From September 1786 to June 1788 Swinburne was again in Paris, and high in favour with Marie-Antoinette, who directed that his eldest son should be enrolled among the royal pages, and placed under the especial care of the Prince de Lambesc. Swinburne's last years were clouded by misfortune. His eldest daughter, Mary Frances, married on 7 Sept. 1793 Paul Benfield [q. v.], when magnificent settlements were made for her, but that adventurer's wealth crumbled away as rapidly as it grew, and Swinburne was involved in the ruin. His eldest son perished in a storm on his way to Jamaica in 1800.

In the meantime Swinburne was sent to Paris in September 1796 as commissioner to negotiate an exchange of prisoners with France, but, in consequence of difficulties arising from the capture by the French of Sir Sidney Smith, was unsuccessful, and in December 1797 was recalled to England. In December 1801 he went out to the lucrative post of vendue-master in the newly ceded settlement of Trinidad, and also as commissioner to deliver up the Danish West Indian islands to a Danish official, when he acquitted himself so well that the British merchants made him a handsome gift, and the king of Denmark presented his widow with 2,000l. He died from a sunstroke at Trinidad on 1 April 1803, and was buried at San Juan, where his friend, Sir Ralph Woodford, raised a monument to his memory. He had issue four sons and six daughters. His library was sold by Leigh & Sotheby in 1802, but the chief articles were bought in by his brother.

A portrait, painted by Richard Cosway, was engraved by Mariano Bovi in 1786 as a frontispiece to the ‘Journey from Bayonne’ (1787), and reproduced for ‘The Courts of Europe’ (1841). Another reproduction was made at Augsburg. A different portrait, engraved by W. Angus, possibly from that painted by T. Seaton, which in 1867 belonged to the family (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 165), is in the ‘European Magazine’ (1785). His wife's portrait, by Cosway, was also engraved by Bovi in 1786.

There were published in 1841, under the very inefficient editorship of Charles White, two volumes entitled ‘The Courts of Europe at the close of the last Century,’ which consisted of the letters of Henry Swinburne, mostly on foreign life (dating from March 1774, and chiefly addressed to his brother, Sir Edward Swinburne); many of the anecdotes and statements must be read with caution (Quarterly Review, lxviii. 145–76). They were reprinted in 1895. The copy of the original edition in the library of John Forster at the South Kensington Museum has, at the end of the first volume, manuscript notes for a new edition. Many extracts from this work are given by Philarète Chasles in his ‘Études sur la Littérature de l'Angleterre’ (pp. 67–74), by Albert Babeau in ‘Voyageurs en France’ (pp. 351–6), and