Author: [SWAN, J., Physician at Newcastle under Line (sic) in Staffordshire].
Title: A Seasonable ADDRESS to the Inhabitants of Staffordshire, Especially to the Lower Sort of PEOPLE.
Description: No printer or publisher, [1745]. Small 4to. 8pp, drop head title, printers ornament to final leaf verso (probably London rather than provincial). Disbound. Fold between first and last leaf professionally repaired. The 'seasonable address' ends on page 5 and is signed with a printed J; the additional information regarding authorship is written in ink in a contemporary hand. The concluding pages contain the song 'Briton strike home: or the Staffordshire Soldiers Resolutions against the Rebels'; here, the penultimate line of verse two has been altered in the same hand as above (perhaps the Author?) and there is an inked transposition in verse 3. A vigorous call to arms to ensure that Englishmen 'may live in Freedom and Safety'. Swan informs the lower orders that their loss, should the Pretender's party prevail, will be as great as that of the gentry, and that all need to put themselves forward for enlistment to prevent ruin throughout the nation should the Pretender's part prevail. With a 2pp TLS from the Antiquarian Bookseller Percy Dobell & Son to Kenneth Monkman, the renowned Sterne scholar, providing additional bibliographic details to his catalogue entry, and stating that the item had been sold to Peter Murray Hill. Not in ESTC, OCLC, or Simms 'Bibliotheca Staffordiensis.' There is nothing by Swan listed in either ESTC or OCLC and he is not in ODNB. He is recorded in Simms for his translation of Sydenham's Works in 1742 with the additional information that this edition contains a Memoir by Dr. Johnson - this is confirmed by Courtney [page 12, 1742(5)]. Swan and Johnson certainly knew each other. In 'Notes and Queries' May 4, 1907 Simms brought to readers' attention Swan's letter-book of c.1750 containing a recommendatory letter sent to Johnson for a Dr. Watts; this begins 'Give me leave upon ye footing of an old frd. & acquaintance to recom'end ye gentmn who delivers ye lettr to U...' In the subsequent August issue Simms added that Swan was 'the friend and correspondent of most of the literary men of the middle of the eighteenth century' - quite an accolade.

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