BARROW, Isaac, an eminent mathematician and divine, was the son of Mr Thomas Barrow, a linen-draper in London, where he was born in 1630. He was at first placed for two or three years at the Charter-house School. There, however, his conduct gave but little hopes of success in the profession of scholar; for he was extremely fond of fighting, and of promoting pugnacity among his school-fellows. But being removed from this establishment, his disposition took a happier turn; and having soon made considerable progress in learning, he was admitted a pensioner of Peter-house, in Cambridge, where he applied himself with great diligence to the study of literature and science, especially of natural philosophy. He afterwards turned his thoughts to the profession of physic, and made some progress in anatomy, botany, and chemistry; after which he studied chronology, geometry, and astronomy. He then travelled into France and Italy, and in a voyage from Leghorn to Smyrna gave proofs of great personal bravery; for the ship having been attacked by an Algerine pirate, Mr Barrow remained upon deck, and fought with the utmost intrepidity, until the pirate, unprepared for the stout resistance made by the ship, sheered off and left her to pursue her voyage unmolested.

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 this place he proceeded to Constantinople, where he received similar civilities from Sir Thomas Bendish, the English ambassador, and Sir Jonathan Dawes, with whom he afterwards contracted an intimate friendship. While at Constantinople he read and studied the works of Chrysostom, once bishop of that see, whom he preferred to all the other fathers. He resided· in Turkey somewhat more than a year, after which he proceeded to Venice, and thence returned home through Germany and Holland in 1659. Immediately on his return he received episcopal ordination from Bishop Brownrig? and in 1660 he was appointed to the Greek professorship at Cambridge. When he entered upon this office, he intended to have prelected upon the tragedies of Sophocles; but he altered his intention, and made choice of Aristotle s rhetoric. His lectures on this subject, however, having been lent to a friend who never returned them, are irrecoverably lost. In July 1662 he was elected professor of geometry in Gresham College, on the recommendation of [7:4:409] J)r Wilkins, master of Trinity College, and afterwards bishop of Chester; and in May 1663 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society, at the first election made by the council after obtaining their charter. The same year the executors of Mr Lucas, who, according to the will of that individual, had founded a mathematical chair at Cambridge, fixed upon Mr Barrow as the first professor; and although his two professorships were not inconsistent with each other, he chose to resign that of Gresham College, which he did on the 20th May 1664. In 1669 he resigned his mathematical chair to his illustrious friend Mr Isaac Newton, having now determined to renounce the study of mathematics for that of divinity. Upon quitting his professorship, Mr Barrow was only a fellow of Trinity College; but his uncle gave him a small sinecure in Wales, and Dr Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, conferred upon him a prebend in that 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 February 1672. When the king advanced Barrow 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; for the doctor being then his chaplain, his majesty frequently conversed with him, and in his humorous way used to call him an “unfair preacher,” as he exhausted every subject he discussed, and left no room for others to comeafter him. In 1675 Dr Barrow was chosen vice-chancellor of the university. His works are very numerous, and such as do honour to the science and literature of the English nation. They are, 1. Euclid’s Elements; 2. Euclid’s Data; 3. Optical Lectures, read in the public school of Cambridge; 4. Thirteen Geometrical Lectures; 5. The Works of Archimedes, the four Books of Apollonius’s Conic Sections, and Theodosius’s Spherics 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 written in Latin; and as to his English works, they have been collected, and printed together in four volumes folio. “The name of Dr Barrow,” says 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 m 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 a 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 forty-seventh year 0 his age; and was interred in Westminster Abbey, where a rn ° n ument, surmounted with his bust, was soon after erected, by the contributions of his friends.

>arrow, a river of Ireland, which rises in Queen’s County, and being joined by the Nore and the Suìr, falls into the sea at Waterford Bay.