or Barri, Girald de, commonly called Geraldus Cambrensis, an historian and ecclesiastic of the twelfth and thirteenth century, was born at the castle of Mainarpur, near Pembroke, in 1146. By his mother he was descended from the princes of South Wales; and his father, William de Barri, was one of the chief men of that principality. Being a younger brother, and intended for the church, he was sent to St David's, and educated in the family of his uncle, the bishop of that see. When about twenty years of age he was sent to the university of Paris, where he continued for three years, and, according to his own account, became an excellent rhetorician. On his return he entered into holy orders, and obtained several benefices both in England and Wales. But observing with much concern that his countrymen the Welsh were very backward in paying tithes of wool and cheese, he applied to Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, and was appointed his legate in Wales for rectifying this and other disorders. Barri excommunicated all, without distinction, who refused to compound matters with the church, and, in particular, delivered over body to the Evil One those who withheld the tithes. Not satisfied with enriching, he also attempted to reform the clergy. He delated the archdeacon of Brecon to the archbishop, for the unpardonable crime of matrimony; and on his refusing to put away his wife, he was deprived of his archdeaconry, which was bestowed upon the zealous legate. On the death of his uncle, the bishop of St David's, in 1176, he was elected his successor by the chapter; but this choice having been made without the permission of Henry II., Girald prudently declined to insist upon it, and went again to Paris to prosecute his studies. He speaks with exultation of the prodigious fame which he acquired by his eloquent declamations in the schools, and of the crowded audiences who attended them. Having spent about four years at Paris, he returned to St David's, where he found everything in confusion; and on the expulsion of the bishop by the people, which took place soon after, he was appointed administrator by the archbishop of Canterbury, and governed the diocese in that capacity till 1184, when the bishop was restored. About the same time he was called to court by Henry II., appointed one of his chaplains, and sent into Ireland with Prince John, by whom he was offered the united bishoprics of Ferns and Leighlin, but declined them, and employed his time in collecting materials for his Topography of Ireland, and his history of the conquest of that island, which was completed in three books in 1187. In 1188 he attended Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, in his progress through Wales, preaching a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land; an employment in which he tells us, with his usual modesty, that he was far more successful than the primate,—adding significantly, that the people were most affected with the Latin sermons (which they did not understand), melting into tears, and coming in crowds to take the cross. On the accession of Richard I. in 1189, he was sent by that prince into Wales to preserve the peace of the country, and was even joined in commission with William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, as one of the regents of the kingdom. He failed, however, to improve this favourable opportunity; and having fixed his heart on the see of St David's, the bishop of which was very old and infirm, he refused the bishopric of Bangor in 1190, and that of Landaff the year following. But in 1192 the state of public affairs became so unfavourable to Barri's interest at court that he determined to retire. He proceeded to Lincoln, where William de Monte read lectures in theology with great applause; and here he spent about six years in the study of divinity, and in composing several works. At last the see of St David's, which had long been the object of his ambition, became vacant, and he was unanimously elected by the chapter, but met with so powerful an adversary in Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, that it involved him in a litigation which lasted five years, cost him three journeys to Rome, and ended in his defeat in the year 1203. Retiring from the world, he spent the last seventeen years of his life in a studious privacy, composing many books, of which a catalogue is given in the Biographia Britannica. His MSS. are preserved in the British Museum, the library at Lambeth, and the Bodleian Library. Of his published works, the best known is his Itinerarium Cambriae, of which a translation, illustrated with annotations, and accompanied with a life of the author, was published by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in two splendid quarto volumes, in 1806.

Barry, James, an eminent painter, was born at Cork, on the 11th October 1741. His father had been a builder, and at one time of his life a coasting trader between the two countries of England and Ireland. To this business of trader was James destined, and he actually made, when a boy, several voyages; but these voyages being forced upon him, he on one occasion ran away from the ship, and on others discovered such an aversion to the life and habits of a sailor, as to induce his father to relinquish all hopes of him in this line, and to suffer him to pursue his inclinations, which led him to drawing and study. When on board his father's vessel, instead of handling sails and ropes, and climbing the mast, he was generally occupied with a piece of black chalk, sketching the coast or drawing figures, as his fancy directed him. When his father found that the idea of making a sailor of him must be given up, he permitted him to acquire as much instruction as the schools of Cork afforded, but long retained his aversion to the chalk drawings with which the floors and walls of the house were covered; the boy being always engaged in some attempt at large figures, and early catching at the means of representing action, attitude, and passion. It was at a very early period of his life that young Barry offered to furnish the drawings, and, as it is believed, helped to etch the engravings, such as they were, for a set of fables or emblems which a bookseller in Ireland had undertaken to reprint. At the schools in Cork to which he was sent, he was distinguished by his parts and industry above his school-fellows; his habits differed from those of ordinary boys, as he seldom mixed in their games or amusements, but at those times stole off to his own room, where he worked at his pencil, or was studying some book that he had borrowed or bought. He would spend whole nights in this manner at his studies, to the alarm of his mother, who dreaded his injuring his health or setting fire to the house, and who often kept up his sister or the servant to watch him. His allowance of money he spent in buying books or candles to read by; he sometimes locked himself up in his room for days, and seldom slept upon his bed, or else made it so hard as to take away the temptation or luxury of lying long in it. It is not to be understood that at this period he used to lead the life of an absolute recluse, for he could and did occasionally join in any feats going on in the neighbourhood, and was not behind other boys in such pastimes and mischief as boys are usually fond of. An adventure which happened to him about this time, and which left a strong impression on his mind, is worth mentioning here. In one of his rambles in the neighbourhood, he entered, one winter's evening, an old, and, as he thought, an uninhabited house, situate in a narrow by-lane in the city of Cork. The house was without doors or windows; but curiosity impelled him to enter, and, after mounting a rotten staircase which conducted to empty rooms on different floors, he arrived at the garret, where he could just discern, by the glimmering light of a few embers, two old and emaciated figures, broken by age, disease, and want, sitting opposite each other, in the act, as far as their palsied efforts would permit, of tearing each other's faces; not a word being uttered by either, but with the most horrible grimaces that malice could invent. They took no notice of his entrance, but went on with their deeds of mutual hate; which made such an impression on the boy that he ran down stairs, making his own reflections, which he afterwards found verified through life, that man and all animals are malicious and cruel in proportion as they are impotent; and that age and poverty, two of the worst evils in human life, almost always add to the calamities inherent in them by arts of their own creating. As his industry was excessive, his advances in the acquisition of knowledge were rapid, and he was regarded as a prodigy by his school-fellows. His mother being a zealous Catholic, the son could not avoid mixing at times in the company of priests resident at Cork, who pointed out to him books of polemical divinity, of which he became a great reader, and for which he retained a strong bias during his lifetime. He was said at one time to have been destined for the priesthood, but for this report there is no authority. He, however, always continued a Catholic, and in the decline of life manifested rather a bigoted attachment to the religion of his youth.

About the age of seventeen he first attempted oil painting, and between that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he produced several large pictures, which decorated his father's house, and represented subjects not often handled by young men, such as Æneas escaping with his family from the flames of Troy, Susanna and the Elders, Daniel in the Lion's Den, &c. At this period he also produced the picture which first drew him into public notice, and gained him the acquaintance and patronage of the celebrated Edmund Burke. This picture was founded on an old tradition of the landing of St Patrick on the sea-coast of Cashel, and of the conversion and baptism of the king of that district by the patron saint of Ireland. Barry's manner of treating it was such as to insure him the applause and admiration of the connoisseurs of the metropolis of the sister kingdom, where it was exhibited in 1762 or 1763. He took this picture with him to Dublin; and when he went to the exhibition room, being delighted with the encomiums it received from the spectators, he could not refrain from making himself known as the painter. His pretensions were treated with incredulous contempt by the company, and Barry burst into tears of anger and vexation. During his early acquaintance with Burke, having fallen into a dispute on the subject of taste, he quoted a passage in support of his opinion from the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, which had been just then published anonymously, and which Barry, in his youthful admiration of it, had, it seems, transcribed entire. Burke affected to treat this work as a theoretical romance of no authority whatever; which threw Barry into such a rage in its defence, that Mr Burke thought it necessary to appease him by owning himself to be the author. The scene ended in Barry's running to embrace him, and showing him the copy of the work which he had been at the pains to transcribe. After a residence of seven or eight months in Dublin, an opportunity offered of accompanying some part of Mr Burke's family to London, which he eagerly embraced. This took place some time in the year 1764, when he was twenty-three years of age, and with one of those advantages which but rarely fall to the lot of young artists on their arrival in the British capital, that of being recommended to the acquaintance of the most eminent men in the profession by the persuasive eloquence of a man who, to genius in himself, added the rare and noble quality of encouraging it in others.

By the liberality of Mr Burke and his other friends, Mr Barry, in the latter part of 1765, was enabled to proceed to the Continent, where he remained till the beginning of 1771, studying his art with an enthusiasm which seemed to augur the highest success, and making observations on the different chefs d'œuvre of Italy with equal independence of judgement and nicety of discrimination. He proceeded first to Paris, then to Rome, where he remained upwards of three years, from thence to Florence and Bologna, and home through Venice. His letters to the Burkes, giving an account of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci, show a complete insight into the characteristic merits of their works, and would make us wonder (if the case were at all singular) how he could enter with such force, delicacy, and feeling, into excellencies of which he never transplanted an atom into his own works. He saw, felt, and wrote; his impressions were profound and refined; but the expression of them must be instantaneous, such as gave the results of them with a stroke of the pen, as they were received by a glance of the eye, and he could not wait for the slow process of the pencil for embodying his conceptions in the necessary details of his own art.

We suspect Mr Barry did not succeed very well in copying the pictures he so well describes; because he appears to have copied but few—one only of Raphael, as far as we can find, and three from Titian, whom he justly considered as the model of colouring, and as more perfect in that department of the art than either Raphael or Michael Angelo were in theirs, expression and form, the highest excellence in which he conceives to have been possessed only by the ancients. In copying from the antique, however, he manifested the same aversion to labour, or to that kind of labour which, by showing us our defects, compels us to make exertions to remedy them. He made all his drawings from the antique by means of a delineator, that is, a mechanical instrument, to save the trouble of acquiring a knowledge both of form and proportion.

The consequences are before us in his pictures; namely, that all those of his figures which he took from these memorandums are deficient in everything but form, and that all the others are equally deficient in form and everything else. Mr Barry painted two pictures while abroad, his Adam and Eve, and his Philoctetes. The first of these he sent home as a specimen of his progress in the art. It does not appear to have given much satisfaction. His Philoctetes he brought home with him. It is a most wretched, coarse, un-classical performance, the direct opposite of all that he thought it to be. During his stay at Rome, he made an excursion to Naples, and was highly delighted with the collections of art there. All the time he was abroad, Mr Burke and his brothers not only were punctual in their remittances to him, but kept up a most friendly and cordial correspondence. For some time previous to his return to England, Mr Hamilton (afterwards Sir William) appears to have been almost the only person with whom he kept up any intimacy. It was on his return home through Milan that he witnessed, and has recorded with due reprobation, the destruction of Leonardo's Last Supper, which two flinging artists were employed to paint over by order of one Count de Firmian, the secretary of state.

In the spring of 1771 Mr Barry arrived in England, after an absence of five years. He soon after produced his picture of Venus, which, absurdly enough, has been compared to the Galatea of Raphael, the Venus of Titian, and the Venus de' Medici. Mr Barry flattered himself that he had surpassed the famous statue of that name, by avoiding the appearance of maternity in it. There is an engraving of it by Mr Valentine Green. In 1773 he exhibited his Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida, which was much praised by some critics of that day. His Death of General Wolfe was considered as a falling off from his great style of art, which consisted in painting Greek subjects, and accordingly it is said to "have obtained no praise." His fondness for Greek costume was assigned by his admirers as the cause of his reluctance to paint portraits; as if the coat were of more importance than the face. His fastidiousness in this respect, and his frequent excuses or blunt refusals to go on with a portrait of Mr Burke which he had begun, caused a misunderstanding with that gentleman, which does not appear to have been ever entirely made up. The difference between them is said to have been widened by Burke's growing intimacy with Sir Joshua, and by Barry's feeling some little jealousy of the fame and fortune of his rival in an humbler walk of the art. About the same time he painted a pair of classical subjects, Mercury inventing the Lyre, and Narcissus looking at himself in the water, the last suggested to him by Mr Burke. He also painted an historical picture of Chiron and Achilles, and another of the story of Stratone, for which last the Duke of Richmond gave him a hundred guineas. In 1773 there was a plan in contemplation for our artists to decorate the inside of St Paul's with historical and sacred subjects; but this plan fell to the ground, from its not meeting with the concurrence of the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury, to the no small mortification of Barry, who had fixed upon the subject he was to paint,—the rejection of Christ by the Jews when Pilate proposes his release. In 1773 he published An Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England, vindicating the capacity of the English for the fine arts, and tracing their slow progress hitherto to the Reformation, to political and civil dissensions, and, lastly, to the general turn of the public mind to mechanics, manufactures, and commerce. In the year 1774, shortly after the failure of the scheme of decorating St Paul's, a proposal was made, through Mr Valentine Green, to the same artists, Reynolds, West, Cipriani, Barry, &c., for ornamenting the great room of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, in the Adelphi, with historical and allegorical paintings. This proposal was at the time rejected by the artists themselves; but, in 1777, Mr Barry made an offer to paint the whole himself, on condition of being allowed the choice of his subjects, and being paid by the society the expense of canvass, paints, and models. This offer was accepted, and he finished the series of pictures at the end of seven years, instead of two, which he had proposed to himself, but with entire satisfaction to the members of the society for whom it was intended, and who conducted themselves to him with liberality throughout. They granted him two exhibitions, and at different periods voted him 50 guineas, their gold medal, and again 200 guineas, and a seat among them. Dr Johnson remarked, when he saw the pictures, that, "whatever the hand had done, the head had done its part." There was published an excellent anonymous criticism on them, supposed to be by Burke, in answer to some remarks put forth by Barry in his descriptive catalogue on the ideal style of art, and the necessity of size to grandeur. His notions on both these subjects are very ably controverted, and, indeed, they are the rock on which Barry's genius split. It would be curious if Burke were the author of these strictures; for it is not improbable that Barry was led into the last error, here deprecated, by that author's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. The series consists of six pictures, showing the progress of human culture. The first represents Orpheus taming the savages by his lyre. The figure of Orpheus himself is more like that of a drunken buccinator than an inspired poet or lawgiver. The only part of this picture which is valuable is the background, in one part of which a lion is seen ready to dart upon a family group milking near a cave, and, in another, a tiger is pursuing a horse. There is certainly a scope of thought and picturesque invention in thus showing indirectly the protection which civilization extends, as it were, over both man and animals. The second picture is a Grecian harvest, which has nothing Grecian in it. But we cannot apply this censure to the third picture of the Olympic Games, some of the figures in which, and the principal group, are exceedingly graceful, classical, and finely conceived. This picture is the only proof Barry has left upon canvas that he was not utterly insensible to the beauties of the art. The figure of the young man on horseback really reminds the spectator of some of the Elgin marbles; and the outlines of the two youthful victors at the games, supporting their father on their shoulders, are excellent. The colouring is, however, as bald and wretched in this picture as in the rest, and there is a great want of expression. The fourth picture is the Triumph of Commerce, with Dr Burney swimming in the Thames, with his hair powdered, among naked sea-nymphs; the fifth, the Society of Arts distributing their annual prizes; and the sixth represents Elysium. This last picture is a collection of caricatured portraits of celebrated individuals of all ages and nations, strangely jumbled together, with a huge allegorical figure of Retribution driving Heresy, Vice, and Atheism into the infernal regions. The moral design of all these pictures is much better explained in the catalogue than on the canvass; and the artist has added none of the graces of the pencil to it in any of them, with the exception above made. Barry appears, however, to have rested his pretensions to fame as an artist on this work, for he did little afterwards but paltry engravings from his own paintings, and the enormous and totally worthless picture of Pandora in the assembly of the gods. His self-denial, frugality, and fortitude, in the prosecution of his work at the Adelphi, cannot be too much applauded. He has been heard to say, that at the time of his undertaking it, he had only 16s. in his pocket; and that he had often been obliged, after painting all day, to sit up at night to sketch or engrave some design for the print-sellers, which was to supply him with his next day's subsistence. In this manner he did his prints of Job, dedicated to Mr Burke, of the Birth of Venus, Polemon, Head of Chatham, King Lear from the picture painted for the Shakspeare gallery, &c. His prints are caricatures even of his pictures; they seem engraved on rotten wood.

Soon after his return from the Continent, Barry was chosen a member of the Royal Academy; and in 1782 he was appointed professor of painting, in the room of Mr Penny, with a salary of L30 a-year. The lectures which he delivered from the chair were full of strong sense and wholesome advice, both to the students and academicians. Among other things, he insisted much on the necessity of purchasing a collection of pictures by the best masters as models for the students, and proposed several of those in the Orleans collection. This recommendation was not relished by the academicians, who perhaps thought their own pictures the best models for their several pupils. Bickerings, jealousies, and quarrels arose, and at length reached such a height, that, in 1790, Barry was expelled from the Academy, soon after the appearance of his Letter to the Dillettanti Society; a very amusing but eccentric publication, full of the highest enthusiasm for his art, and the lowest contempt for the living professors of it. In 1800 he undertook a design or drawing to celebrate the union of the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The profits of the two exhibitions of the Adelphi pictures are said to have amounted to above L500. Lord Romney presented him with 100 guineas for his portrait, which had been copied into one of the pictures, and he had 20 guineas for a head of Mr Hooper. He probably received other sums for portraits introduced into the work. By extreme frugality, he contrived not only to live, but to save money. His house was twice robbed of sums which he kept by him; one of the times (in 1794) of upwards of L100, a loss which was made up by the munificence of Lord Radnor, and by that of his friends the Holleses. After the loss of his salary, a subscription was set on foot by the Earl of Buchan to relieve him from his difficulties, and to settle him in a larger house to finish his picture of Pandora. The subscription amounted to L1000, with which an annuity was bought, but of this he was prevented from enjoying the benefit, for on the 6th of February 1806 Barry was seized with a pleuritic fever, and died on the 22d of the same month. On the 14th of March the body was attended by a numerous and respectable train of his friends to the cathedral of St Paul's, where it was deposited.

Mr Barry, as an artist, a writer, and a man, was distinguished by great inequality of powers and extreme contradictions in character. He was gross and refined at the same time; violent and urbane; sociable and sullen; inflammable and inert; ardent and phlegmatic; relapsing from enthusiasm into indolence; irritable, headstrong, impatient of restraint; captious in his intercourse with his friends; wavering and desultory in his profession. In his personal habits he was careless of appearances or decency; penurious, slovenly, and squallid. He regarded nothing but his immediate impulses, confirmed into incorrigible habits. His pencil was under no control. His eye and his hand seemed to receive a first rude impulse, to which it gave itself up, and paid no regard to anything else. The strength of the original impetus only drove him farther from his object. His genius constantly flew off in tangents, and came in contact with nature only at salient points. His writings are a greater acquisition to the art than his paintings. The powers of conversation were what he most excelled in; and the influence which he exercised in this way over all companies where he came, in spite of the coarseness of his dress, and the frequent rudeness of his manner, was great. Take him for all in all, he was a man of whose memory it is impossible to think without admiration as well as regret. (w.n.z.r.)

Heraldry, is when an escutcheon is divided bar-ways, that is, across from side to side, into an even number of partitions, consisting of two or more tinctures, interchangeably disposed. In the blazon the word barry must be expressed, and the number of pieces specified; but if the division be odd, the field must be first named, and the number of bars expressed.

Barry-Beady is when an escutcheon is divided evenly, bar and bend-ways, by transverse and diagonal lines, interchangeably varying the tinctures of which it consists.

BÁRS, a county of Hungary, in the circle of the Hither Danube, with a population of 138,000, and an area computed at 1044 square miles. See Hungary.