ii 3. vm. OCT. is, i9i3.i NOTES AND QUERIES.
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LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1913.
CONTENTS.—No. 199.
Notes.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG'S
MANUSCRIPTS:
REPRODUCTION IN FACSIMILE.
The successful session of the International Swedenborg Congress at the Holborn Restaurant, London, in July, 1910, was fitly followed by a meeting at the Swedenborg Society's House, No. 1, Bloomsbury Street, on the 11th of the same month, between the 'Committee of that Society and authorized representatives of several American publishing institutions. At this gathering a comprehensive scheme for the completion of the reproduction of Swedenborg's MSS. in facsimile was discussed, and arrangements, financial and other, for carrying it into effect, were initiated. The chief agent appointed for this purpose was Mr. Alfred H. Stroh, M.A. (of the University of Pennsylvania), and he attended the recent annual meeting of the Swedenborg Society, on 24 June, to present in person the report of his third year's work, and to exhibit some of its tangible results.
But Mr. Stroh has been engaged upon work of the same kind, especially at Stockholm, and generally in Scandinavia, since the year 1902. It may be convenient to preface these brief notes by a sketch of the position of affairs at the time of his undertaking the task.
A note previously contributed by the present writer (11 S. ii. 22), headed 'Swedenborg Manuscript Missing,' treated also upon the whole of the MSS. left by the author, and mentioned the presentation of them by his heirs, in October, 1772, to the Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. (It may here be interjected that the "missing MS." must still, unfortunately, be so described.) In 1780 Augustus Nordenskiöld—of a family later well-known in other fields—made a careful examination of the Swedenborg MSS., most of which were in loose sheets. All these sheets he had well bound at his own expense, so that their preservation is in a great measure due to him. An "interview" with Mr. Stroh, reported in the Stockholms Tidningen for 2 April last—an English translation of which appeared in Morning Light for 19 April—enabled him to tell the readers of those newspapers of his recent trip to the ancestral home of the Nordenskiöld family, at Frugård, near Helsingfors, where he found, and obtained the loan of, the most complete Swedenborgian collections in existence covering the years 1770 to 1790. Among these are the records of the "Societas pro Fide et Charitate," an organization which, founded in Swedenborg's own time, included many members who were his personal friends.
But, returning to the eighteenth century, it may be noted that three of Swedenborg's smaller MSS. were printed respectively in 1780, 1784, and 1785: the first at the expense of A. Nordenskiöld, the second and third at the cost of their printer, Robert Hindmarsh. The enthusiastic admirer last named printed, and, conjointly with four friends, edited, Swedenborg's 'Apocalypsis Explicata,' 4 vols., 4to, in 1785-9, the financial responsibility being chiefly borne by one of the five co-operators, Henry Peckitt. In 1813 and 1815 James Augustus Tulk produced Swedenborg's Index to 'Apocalypsis Revelata' and to 'Arcana