Charles Swain wrote a substantial body of poetry, which "received the unanimous eulogiums of the press, both English and American," according to a contemporary reviewer. Southey, then poet laureate, saluted his first volume: "If ever man were born to be a poet, you were." Swain's sensibility was especially alert to musical and visual stimuli, but it was responsive rather than creative. His strength was deemed to lie in "lucid enunciation of healthy truths"; his was "poetry for the million," reflecting the aesthetic norms of his age.

He was born in Manchester, the "Cottonopolis" of England's industrial north. His father, John Swain, was a northerner; his mother, Caroline Nünes de Tavarez Swain, was Dutch. When they died Swain turned to his maternal uncle, Charles Tavaré, a scholarly Manchester dyer, as his "friend in every adversity." He attended school in Manchester under William Johns, the author of...