whilst with great naïveté and candor he professes himself ready to indulge in that cheerful festive humor which made him the delight and ornament of society. Illud si verum sit, quod fama loquitur, stomachos vestros solidi omnis cibi pertasos, et dapium Rhetoricarum nauseam, et salubrioris Philosophiæ gravedinem usque adeo invasisse, ut præter futilia quædam bellaria, et putidissima nugarum fercula palato vestro nihil sapiat; nè ipsa sapientia, nisi insipida, neque veritas, nisi jocis condita, neque ratio, nisi ridiculo tincta; mala profecto sorte ego vobis coquus sum datus, ad illum inanium deliciarum apparatum neque ingenio factus, neque studio instiInnocentes jocos, tempestivos salės, liberales facetias, (ità me Musæ omnes et Gratia ament) nemo est usquam qui me sinceriùs diligat, nemo qui tetricam illam et inanem plerumque austeritatem vehementius detestetur.* tutus About this time he seems to have applied himself with considerable diligence to Latin versification; but the subjects selected for the exercise of his muse were, according to the taste of the age, better adapted to scholastic disputation than to the divine art of poesy.† Conceiving also that the times were unpropitious to men of his opinion in the affairs of church and state, he designed to follow the profession of medicine; accordingly for some years he bent the course of his studies that way, making great progress in the sciences of botany, chemistry, and anatomy. But after mature deliberation with himself, and frequent conference with his worthy uncle the Bishop of St. Asaph, he determined to make divinity the end and aim Opuscula, p. 136. + See his Opuscula, pp. 248–267. of all his labors; conceiving himself bound to this by the oath which he had taken when elected to a fellowship. Henceforward he never lost sight of this principle of action; and whether he dwelt with congenial spirits in the Academic groves, or with the barbaric spoilers of the Byzantine throne, we find him still engaged in theological inquiries, and imbibing sacred eloquence from the works of departed sages. With regard to the character which he established for himself amongst his contemporaries, nothing more amiable can well be imagined. He seems to have had no enemies all respected his manly independence; admired his integrity and urbanity; enjoyed the sunshine of his benevolent temper, and the enlivening eloquence of his discourse; whilst they were improved by the facility with which he communicated to them the riches of his wellstored mind, and by the instructive comments which he used to make, as well on the importance as on the truth of questions under discussion.* This combination of amiable and exalted qualities was the talisman which preserved him safe in all the conflicts of those disordered times; which rendered him beloved by all his associates whilst he was their equal, and unenvied when he became their superior. Barrow's tutor during his undergraduateship had been the celebrated Dr. Duport, Greek professor, and afterwards Dean of Peterborough; who, as one of his learned successors in both these pieces of preferment, has well observed,† appears to have been the main instrument by which literature was upheld in the seventeenth century; and who, * See his biography by Mr. A. Hill. Works vol. i. fol. edit. + Dr. Monk, now Bishop of Glocester. See his Memoir of Duport in the Museum Criticum, vol. ii, p. 672. though seldom named and little known at present, enjoyed an almost transcendent reputation for a great length of time amongst his contemporaries, as well as in the generation which immediately succeeded. This eminent scholar, though ejected from his prebendal stall at Lincoln, and his archdeaconry of Stowe, for refusing the Covenant, was yet suffered to retain his professorship, the duties of which he continued to discharge before a large audience during all the troubles and commotions of the civil war : but even this piece of well-merited preferment was taken from him in 1654 by the commissioners of University reform, who rejected from all offices, at discretion, such members as refused subscription to the Engagement. According to Mr. A. Hill's account, Duport resigned the professorial chair, and recommended his favorite pupil Barrow for his successor, who justified his tutor's good opinion of him by a very able probationary exercise, though he failed of success, through an opinion among the electors that he was inclined to Arminianism. It is stated however on better authority,* that the commissioners themselves conferred the office on Ralph Widdrington, fellow of Christ's College, † whose literary merits would probably not have had so much weight with those worthies, as his relationship to Sir Thomas Widdrington, Commissioner of the Great Seal, and Speaker of Cromwell's Parliament. Disappointed in this object of honorable ambition, and wishing to escape from the fanaticism which reigned in his own country, Barrow projected a scheme of foreign travel; nor can we wonder that a person with so cultivated a p. 683. * Memoir of Duport in Mus. Crit. vol. ii. He had been appointed in a similar manner Public Orator three years previous to this event. mind should be anxious to improve his knowlege of books by experience of the world; or that he should pant to survey the triumphs of modern art, and to traverse those delightful scenes where the Spirit of antiquity still seems to linger. Accordingly in the month of June* 1655, after having sold his books to provide means for his voyage, he left England, and proceeded in the first instance to Paris: there he found his father, at the court of his exiled sovereign, and made him a seasonable present out of his slender viaticum. Soon after his arrival he dispatched a long letter to his college,† in which he gives an amusing and instructive account of his journey, as well as of those objects which particularly interested him in the French capital. After a poetical though somewhat confused exordium, he prays that the Goddess of Health may wing her flight to his beloved Alma Mater, in some flowing lines, which contain a curious compliment to the sedgy Cam, as well as to the regal Seine. ‡ The vessel in which he left his native shores seems to have been scarcely sea-worthy; a wretched bark, more like a witch's sieve than an English packet. * See Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors, p. 158. It is a Latin letter, the first part written in hexameters, the second in prose: he calls it' Epistolæ ἐμμέτρου pariter ac ἀμέτρου quoddam rudimentum.' Ad doctos pontes, tumidis quos alluit acer Camus aquis; Camus, quo non dilectior alter -Theseâ puppis rugosior, Argûs Quæ numerare annos, Argique foramina posset; Accordingly old Nereus, in pity or contempt, indulges the crew with a calm, which operates with terrible effect on the stomach of our fresh-water sailor; though he revives at sight of the lofty cliffs of Normandy, in which fine province he first sets foot on a foreign soil. The vessel enters that port, into which, as Barrow observes, the great Henry IV. ran his bark when almost shipwrecked in the waves of political commotion; alluding to that great monarch's flight to Dieppe, as a last place of refuge in 1589, when he won the hearts of its citizens by his frank and manly address to them :-"Mes amis, point de cérémonie ; je ne demande que vos cœurs, bon pain, bon vin, et bon visage d'hôtes." Nor was it long before he who came a suppliant returned a conqueror, having gloriously defeated the army of the League, in the plain of Arques, when its commander the Duke de Mayenne retreated from forces ten times less than his own in numerical strength.* Henry then rebuilt the castle of Dieppe, and conferred honorable titles on the city-parvam titulis Diepam regalibus auxit. When our traveller lands, he is astonished at the crowd of women in the streets, and supposes that Henry, who was a great lover of the sex, was not unwilling to trust his fortune to such partisans: he notices, however, their * Henry's speech before this battle to his prisoner the Count de Belin, when asked by the latter how he could hope to resist so powerful an army with so small a force, is very characteristic of him. "Ajoutez aux troupes que vous voyez, mon bon droit, et vous ne douterez plus de quel côté sera la victoire.” |