John), a celebrated Portuguese historian, born at Viseo, in 1496. He was educated at the court of king Emanuel, among the princes of the blood, and made a great progress in Greek and Latin. The Infant John, to whom he attached himself, and became preceptor, having succeeded the king his father in 1521, Barros obtained a place in this prince's household; and in 1522, was made governor of St George del Mina, on the coast of Guinea. Three years after, the king having recalled him to court, made him treasurer of the Indies, and this post inspired him with the thought of writing his history; for which purpose he retired to Pompas, where he died, in 1570. His history of Asia and the Indies is divided into decades; the first of which he published in 1552, the second in 1553, and the third in 1563; but the fourth decade was not published till the year 1615, when it appeared by order of King Philip III.; who had the manuscript purchased of the heirs of John Barros. Several authors have continued it, so that we have at present 12 decades. He left many other works; some of which have been printed, and others remain in manuscript.

Barrow (Isaac), an eminent mathematician and divine, of the last century, was the son of Mr Thomas Barrow a linen draper in London, where he was born, in 1630. He was at first placed at the charterhouse school, for two or three years; where his behaviour afforded but little hopes of success in the profession of a scholar, he being fond of fighting, and promoting it among his school-fellows; but being removed from thence, his disposition took a happier turn; and having soon made a great progress in learning, he was admitted a pensioner of Peter house, in Cambridge. He now applied himself with great diligence to the study of all parts of literature, especially to that of natural philosophy. He afterwards turned his thoughts to the profession of physic, and made a considerable progress in anatomy, botany, and chemistry; after this he studied chronology, astronomy, and geometry. He then travelled into France and Italy, and in a voy- age from Leghorn to Smyrna, gave a proof of his bravery; for the ship being attacked by an Algerine pirate, he stood upon deck, and with the greatest intrepidity fought 'till the pirate, perceiving the stout resistance the ship made, sheered off and left her (n).

At Smyrna he met with a most kind reception from Mr Bretton, the English consul, upon whose death he afterwards wrote a Latin elegy. From thence he proceeded to Constantinople, where he received the like civilities from Sir Thomas Bendish the English ambassador, and Sir Jonathan Dawes, with whom he afterwards preserved an intimate friendship. At Constantinople he read over the works of St Chrysostom, once bishop of that see, whom he preferred to all the other fathers. When he had been in Turkey somewhat more than a year, he returned to Venice. From thence he came home in 1659, through Germany and Holland; and was episcopally ordained by bishop Brownrigg. In 1660, he was chosen to the Greek professorship at Cambridge. When he entered upon this province, he intended to have read upon the tragedies of Sophocles; but he altered his intention, and made choice of Aristotle's rhetoric. These lectures having been lent to a friend who never returned them, are irrecoverably lost. July the 16th, 1662, he was elected professor of geometry in Gresham college, by the recommendation of Dr Wilkins, master of Trinity college, and afterwards bishop of Chester. Upon the 20th of May, 1663, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, in the first choice made by the council after their charter. The same year the executors of Mr Lucas having, according to his appointment, founded a mathematical lecture at Cambridge, they fixed upon Mr Barrow for the first professor; and tho' his two professorships were not inconsistent with each other, he chose to resign that of Gresham college, which he did May the 20th, 1664. In 1669, he resigned his mathematical chair to his learned friend Mr Isaac Newton, being now determined to give up the study of mathematics for that of divinity. Upon quitting his professorship, he was only a fellow of Trinity college, till his uncle gave him a small sinecure in Wales, and Dr Seth Ward bishop of Salisbury conferred upon him a prebend in his church.

In the year 1670, he was created doctor in divinity by mandate; and, upon the promotion of Dr Pearson master of Trinity college to the see of Chester, he was appointed to succeed him by the king's patent bearing date the 13th of February 1672. When the king advanced him to this dignity, he was pleased to say, "he had given it to the best scholar in England." His majesty did not speak from report, but from his own knowledge; the doctor being then his chaplain, he used often to converse with him, and in his humourous way, to call him an "unfair preacher," because he exhausted every subject, and left no room for others to come after him. In 1675, he was chosen vice-chancellor of the university.—The doctor's works are very numerous, and such as do honour to the English nation. They are, 1. Euclid's Elements. 2. Euclid's Data. 3. Optical Letters, read in the public school of Cambridge. 4. Thirteen Geometrical Letters. 5. The Works of Archimedes, the four Books of Appolonius's Conic Sections, and Theodorus's Spheres explained in a new Method. 6. A Lecture, in which Archimedes's Theorems of the Sphere and Cylinder are investigated and briefly demonstrated. 7. Mathematical Lectures, read in the public schools of the university of Cambridge: the above were all printed in Latin; and as to his English works, they are printed together in four volumes folio.—"The name of Dr Barrow (says the reverend and learned Mr Granger) will ever be illustrious for a strength of mind, and a compass of knowledge that did honour to his country. He was unrivalled in mathematical learning, and especially in the sublime geometry; in which he has been excelled only by one man, and that man was his pupil, the great Sir Isaac Newton. The same genius that seemed to be born only to bring hidden truths to light, to rise to the heights or descend to the depths of science, would sometimes amuse itself in the flowery paths of poetry, and he composed verses both in Greek and Latin. He at length gave himself up entirely to divinity; and particularly to the most useful part of it, that which has a tendency to make men wiser and better. He has, in his excellent sermons on the Creed, solved every difficulty and removed every obstacle that opposed itself to our faith, and made divine revelation as clear as the demonstrations in his own Euclid. In his sermons he knew not how to leave off writing till he had exhausted his subject; and his admirable Discourse on the Duty and Reward of Bounty to the Poor, took him up three hours and an half in preaching. This excellent person, who was a bright example of Christian virtue, as well as a prodigy of learning, died on the 4th of May 1677, in the 47th year of his age;" and was interred in Westminster abbey, where a monument, adorned with his bust, was soon after erected, by the contribution of his friends.

BARROWS, in British topography, artificial hillocks or mounts, met with in many parts of Britain, and supposed to have been Roman tumuli, or sepulchral monuments of the ancient Britons. They are either of stones heaped up, or of earth. For the former, more generally known by the name of cairns, see CAIRNS.—Of the latter Dr Plott takes notice of two forts in Oxfordshire: one placed on the military ways; the other in the fields, meadows, or woods; the first fort doubtless of Roman erection, the other more probably erected by the Britons or Danes. We have an

(n) There is another anecdote told of him, which not only shewed his intrepidity, but an uncommon goodness of disposition, in circumstances where an ordinary share of it would have been probably extinguished. He was once in a gentleman's house in the country, where the necessary was at the end of a long garden, and consequently at a great distance from the room where he lodged: as he was going to it before day, for he was a very early riser, a fierce mastiff, who used to be chained up all day, and let loose at night for the security of the house, perceiving a strange person in the garden at that unseasonable time, set upon him with great fury. The doctor caught him by the throat, threw him, and lay upon him; and whilst he kept him down, considered what he should do in that exigence: once he had a mind to kill him; but he altered this resolution, upon recollecting that this would be unjust, since the dog did only his duty, and he himself was in fault for rambling out of his room before it was light. At length he called out so loud, that he was heard by some of the house, who came presently out, and freed the doctor and the dog from the danger they were both in. examination of the barrows in Cornwall by Dr Williams, in the Phil. Trans. No. 458., from whose observations we find that they are composed of foreign or adventitious earth; that is, such as does not rise on the place, but is fetched from some distance. Monuments of this kind are also very frequent in Scotland. On digging into the barrows, urns have been found in some of them, made of calcined earth, and containing burnt bones and ashes; in others, stone chests containing bones entire; in others, bones neither lodged in chests nor deposited in urns. These tumuli are round, not greatly elevated, and generally at their bases surrounded with a fosse. They are of different sizes; in proportion, it is supposed, to the greatness, rank, and power, of the deceased person.

Ancient Greece and Latium concurred in the same practice with the natives of this island. Patroclus among the Greeks, and Hector among the Trojans, received but the same funeral honours with our Caledonian heroes; and the ashes of Dercennus the Laurentine monarch had the same simple protection. The urn and pall of the Trojan warrior might perhaps be more superb than those of a British leader: the rising monument of each had the common materials from our mother earth.

The snowy bones his friends and brothers place, With tears collected, in a golden vase. The golden vase in purple walls they roll'd Of softest texture and inwrought with gold. Last o'er the urn the sacred earth they spread, And rais'd a tomb, memorial of the dead.

Pope's Homer's Iliad, xxiv. 1063.

Or, as it is more strongly expressed by the same elegant translator, in the account of the funeral of Patroclus:

High in the midst they heap the swelling bed Of rising earth, memorial of the dead. P. xxiii. 319.