SWINNY
SYME
recognition of his genius. He had settled
in London, and come under the influence
of D. G. Eossetti, in 1860 ; and in 1862 he
had gone to live with Eossetti and Meredith
at Chelsea. His Poems and Ballads (1866)
caused a sensation and a scandal, one
brilliant poem after another breathing the
most profound disdain for Christianity and
its ethic. Swinburne now surpassed even
George Meredith in his impatience of all
religion. At the same time he took an
ardent interest in the emancipation of
Italy (Songs Before Sunrise, 1871), and he
was in 1878 invited to France to represent
English poetry at the commemoration of
the death of Voltaire. In the same year
he published the second series of Poems
and Ballads. In 1879 Mr. Theodore
Watts-Dunton took Swinburne, who was
ruining his health, to live with him at
Putney, and the great poet spent the
remaining thirty years of his life in comfort
there. He continued to write abundantly
until 1889, when he issued the third series
of Poems and Ballads. Except that he
developed ethically one of his last poems
was a profoundly ethical piece entitled
" The Altar of Eighteousness " Swinburne
never altered the opinions which had
inspired the magnificent work of his
twenties and thirties. No poet was ever
less religious, or showed more plainly how
little religion is needed for great artistic
inspiration. " Glory to Man in the highest,
for Man is the master of things," is his
key-note. D. Apr. 10, 1909.
SWINNY, Shapland Hugh, Positivist. B. Dec. 30, 1857. Ed. Cambridge (St. John s College). Mr. Swinny has been President of the London Positivist Society since 1901, and of the English Positivist Committee since 1904. He has edited the Positivist Beview since 1905. A member of the Council of the Sociological Society since its foundation, he was chairman from 1907 to 1909, and was treasurer of the Nationalities and Subject Eaces Committee from 1908 to 1913. His chief work is a History of Ireland (1890), and he has 775
written a few pamphlets on Positivist
subjects (The Day of All the Dead, 1892 ;
Rationalism and International Righteous
ness, 1913 ; etc.).
SYERS, Edgar, writer. B. Mar., 1863. Ed. Fowey Grammar School and Turner Square, Brighton. Mr. Syers entered the army, and was a lieutenant in the Middlesex Eegiment. After leaving the army he was for some time a member of the Compton Comedy Company. He has contributed frequently to the magazines, and has- written various works on figure-skating.. He is a Director and generous supporter of the Eationalist Press Association.
SYME, David, Australian writer and philanthropist. B. Oct. 2, 1827. Ed. by his father, a schoolmaster, and Heidelberg and Vienna Universities. Syme (his bio grapher says) abandoned his Scottish faith at Heidelberg and became a Eationalist. On his return to Scotland he entered the journalistic world at Glasgow, but he shortly afterwards sailed for the American goldfields (1851). From America he passed to Australia, and in 1856 he bought the Melbourne Age, of which his brother was editor. David was engaged in road-con tracting until his brother died in 1860, when he began to edit the Age. He became one of the most influential leaders of the progressives of Victoria, and made his paper a great power. He declined the honour of knighthood. Syme, who left 50,000 at his death to the various charities of Victoria, was an assiduous reader and careful thinker. Besides his Outlines of an Industrial Science (1877), he wrote two works (On the Modi fication of Organisms, 1890, and The Soul, 1903) on philosophy and religion, in which he attacks both Materialism and Chris tianity, and professes himself a Pantheist. His biographer, Ambrose Pratt, says that " his religion was humanity," and that he had " emancipated himself from the thraldom of theological superstitions " (David Syme, 1908, p. 257). D. Feb. 14,. 1908.
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