Charles swain biography

Charles Swain (4 January 1801 – 22 September 1874) was an English poet and engraver, born in Manchester. He was honorary professor of poetry at the Manchester Royal Institution, and in 1856 was granted a civil list pension. His friends included Robert Southey. Swain's epitaph for John Horsefield is noted by English Heritage as an element of their rationale for listing Horsefield's tomb as a Grade II monument.

Quotes

• Time to me this truth has taught
    ('Tis a treasure worth revealing),
  More offend from want of thought,
    Than from any want of feeling.
  • "Want of Thought", quoted in Notes and Queries, 5th s., vol. 4 (11 December 1875), p. 464

• Tripping down the field-path,
    Early in the morn,
  There I met my own love
    'Midst the golden corn;
  Autumn winds were blowing,
    As in frolic chase,
  All her silken ringlets
    Backward from her face;
  Little time for speaking
    Had she, for the wind,
  Bonnet, scarf, or ribbon,
    Ever swept behind.Still some sweet improvem
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  Charles Swain
  
  

  Charles Swain (1801-1874 circa 1833 by William Bradley)
  
  

  With credits to Alan Jennings on Facebook

  Charles was born on the 4th January 1801 in Every Street, Manchester to John Swain and his wife Caroline, daughter of Dr. Daniel Nünes de Tavarez. Charles was baptised at St Ann's in Manchester, and was educated at a school run by Unitarian minister William Johns - with whom the physicist John Dalton tutored and lodged. Johns and Dalton were friends and joint secretaries of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (founded in the Cross Street Chapel, Manchester).
  
  [Although his grave stone records his birth year as 1803, the church registers records it as 1801]
  
  Charles began work aged 15 as a clerk in a dyeworks, part owned by his uncle Charles Tavaré, an accomplished linguist. In January 1827 he married Ann Glover and the couple went on to have five daughters and a son of whom four daughters survived in to adulthood.
  
  [Upto 1813 his Uncle, Charles Tavaré, had operated a Dye works in Pendleton, in partnership with Roger Smith. he also p

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  Charles Swain (4 January 1801 - 22 September 1874) was an English poet, known as the "Manchester poet."

  Life[]

  Youth and education[]

  Swain was born in Every Street, Manchester, son of John Swain and his wife Caroline, daughter of Dr. Daniel Nünes de Tavarez.^[1]

  He was educated at a school run by Unitarian minister William Johns.^[2]

  Career[]

  At the age of 15 he began work as a clerk in a dye-house, of which his uncle, Charles Tavaré, an accomplished linguist, was part-proprietor, working there until about 1830. After 1830 he was employed by an engraving and lithography firm in Manchester,^[2] Lockett & Co., a portion of whose business, that of engraving and lithographing, he soon purchased and carried on to the end of his life.^[1]

  On 8 January 1827 he married Anne Glover of Ardwick, who died on 7 April 1878.^[1]

  The leisure hours of his long business career he occupied in literary pursuits. His earliest published poem came out in the Iris, a Manchester magazine, in 1822. His initial volume of verse appeared in 1827,