descriptions are lively and animated. The marriage of his only daughter with Paul Banfield involved him in the misfortunes of that adventurer. He afterwards obtained a place in the newly ceded settlement of Trinidad, where he died in 1803.—W. J. P.
SWITHIN (Saint), born at the beginning of the ninth century, was a native of Wessex, and is said to have been educated in, and to have become provost of, the monastery of Winchester, then the metropolis of England. Egbert made him his chaplain, tutor to his son Ethelwulf, and bishop of Winchester. Under Ethelwulf he was made chancellor, and is said to have had the care of the young Alfred's education. When dying he directed that he should be buried, not in the church, but the churchyard of Winchester, beneath the tread of the passers-by. He died in 862, and in 964 it was resolved that his remains should be transferred from the churchyard to a shrine under the high altar. According to tradition, the saint, displeased at this infraction of his dying injunctions, sent heavy rains for forty days, to prevent the translation, which was to have taken place on the 15th July. Hence the belief that if it rain on St. Swithin's day (the 15th of July) it will rain for forty days afterwards.—F. E.
SYDENHAM, Charles Edward Poulett Thomson, Lord, an English statesman, who attained to high office with unusual rapidity by virtue of his personal qualifications alone, was born in 1799 at Waverley abbey, Roehampton. His father was the head of a wealthy firm of Russia merchants, to whose branch establishment in St. Petersburg young Thomson was sent out when only sixteen years old. All the previous education he had received, had been at a private school. This early introduction into real life contributed to foster and develop the independence and decision of character which always distinguished him. Forced by ill health to quit Russia in 1817, he travelled for some months in the warmer regions of Europe, and on his return to London engaged in the business of the firm with his elder brother. He had been disappointed in an attempt he made to enter into the diplomatic service, for which he seemed peculiarly qualified by the union of a very pleasing address, a prepossessing appearance, and a mastery of the principal European languages. In 1821 he again went to St. Petersburg as a partner in the firm, and returning after a sojourn of two years, settled as a merchant in London in 1825, the year that was so fatal to many commercial undertakings. He lost money by speculations in mines, but gained that experience and knowledge on the subject of trade, for which there began to be a demand in parliament. He studied political economy with Bentham, Bowring, Hume, Macculloch, and James Mill; and with the zealous co-operation of these friends he was in 1826 returned to parliament as member for Dover, though at an expense of £3000. His first set speech was made, after careful preparation, in May, 1827, and drew warm commendations from Mr. Huskisson. His partisanship for the whigs was most hearty, and was promptly rewarded. In a book recently published by the Rev. Erskine Neale, 1862, it is said that Mr. Thomson and three others published the mischievous placard which in May, 1832, caused a run on the Bank of England, by the ominous words "To stop the duke, go for gold." Mr. Thomson became a member of the ministries of Lord Grey and of Lord Melbourne, as vice-president and then president of the board of trade, in which office his unceasing attention to business and his innovating spirit accomplished many great improvements. He was admitted into the cabinet in 1834. But his health was failing; and when in 1839 he was offered his choice between the post of chancellor of the exchequer and that of governor-general of Canada, he chose the latter. His government of Canada in difficult times was very creditable to his energy and talent, though it brought him into collision with that extreme section of the liberal party to which he seemed at one time to belong. He was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Sydenham for his services in Canada, and made a G.C.B. He was overworked, however, and in a state of health that made him long for home, when on the 4th of September, 1831, his leg was broken by the falling of his horse upon him. Though no danger was apprehended at first, he died on the 18th of the same month, and was buried in Canada on the very day he had fixed for his departure to England.—(See Scrope's Life of Lord Sydenham, West. Rev., xl.; Fraser, xxviii.)—R. H.
SYDENHAM, Floyer, an English scholar, celebrated as much for his misfortunes as for his learning, was born in 1710. He was educated at Wadham college, Oxford, where he took his degree of M.A. on the 30th of April, 1734. In 1759 he published proposals for the translation of the works of Plato, with notes explanatory and critical, and a new argument at the head of each dialogue, which was followed by a first instalment—the Greater Hippias, a dialogue of Plato's concerning the beautiful. In 1761 appeared the Lesser Hippias, a dialogue concerning voluntary and involuntary error. Notwithstanding the extensive learning displayed in these two samples, and the low price of each (7s. 6d. the first quarto and 2s. 6d. the second), the subscriptions languished, and many who had given their names as subscribers did not fulfil their engagement to the author. The work did not proceed, and Sydenham sank into great poverty. His studies were still of his favourite philosopher, and in 1775 he published a dissertation on the doctrine of Heraclitus, so far as it is alluded to by Plato. Nine years later he brought out "Onomasticon Theologicum," an essay on the divine names according to the Platonic philosophy. He was so small a gainer in money by these works, that spite of his advanced age he was arrested for debt incurred at a dining-room he frequented, and died soon after, on the 1st of April, 1787. The sympathy for poor authors aroused by Sydenham's lamentable end led to the formation of the literary fund.—R. H.
SYDENHAM, Thomas, one of the greatest names in the history of medicine, was born, the son of a country gentleman, at Winford-Eagle, Dorsetshire, in 1624. He was admitted a commoner of Magdalen hall, Oxford, in 1642, but he suffered a temporary interruption of his studies in consequence of that city's being turned into a garrison by Charles I. Some have asserted that Sydenham served for some time with the royalists during the civil war; but as all his connections were of the popular party, and as no evidence can be adduced in proof of his assumed loyalty to the king, the assertion may be allowed to pass for what it is worth. His brother William was, we know, a colonel in the parliamentary army, and filled some of the highest posts of the Commonwealth. Nothing, however, can be certainly concluded from such a fact as this, seeing in that age of strife and distraction it was the commonest thing in the world for the brother to be divided against the brother, and the father against the son. It has nevertheless been affirmed on the other hand, that Sydenham served in the army of the parliament; nay, the writer of the article "Sydenham" in the Encyclopædia Britannica says that, "from an anecdote known generally as Dr. Lettsom's, but which appears first in a curious old controversial book by Dr. Andrew Brown, the Vindicatory Schedule, published two years after Sydenham's death, it is made quite certain that he did." But be that as it may, Sydenham at any rate returned to Oxford after it was surrendered to the parliamentary forces, and took his degree of bachelor of physic, when Lord Pembroke became chancellor of the university. He resided several years longer, indefatigably pursuing his studies, and laying the foundation of his future eminence in his profession, though, strange enough, he left the university without taking any other degree. The facts of his life have unfortunately become somewhat scant and obscure, his biography being but a short one for so great a man, especially considering that his age is not so very remote from our own. Disappointing though it be, there is yet something seemingly appropriate to his great and unostentatious character in this very absence of biographical detail. As an instance of the extremely scanty knowledge we now have of the incidents of his life, we may mention that it is only from the French surgeon Desault we learn that he resided some time at Montpellier, apparently for the purpose of attending the lectures of the celebrated Barbeyrac. This visit to France must, we suppose, have been made between his leaving Oxford and his settling in London, or rather Westminster, for it was there, probably before the year 1661, that he set up his home and began the proper business of his life. In 1663 he was admitted a licentiate (he was never a fellow) of the College of Physicians. Little or nothing is known of his London life, except the mere fact of the almost unexampled distinction he attained as a medical practitioner. It is said that during the reigns of the second Charles and of James he was the reverse of a favourite with the court; nor did the College of Physicians ever regard him with favour. Sydenham was not a likely man to become a tool of the great, and it is not in the least surprising that he should have come to be suspected and disliked by the miserable bigots and pedants who at that time were in league with all the diseases that prey upon humanity. But in spite of court and college—words which in that age savoured nothing either of
