Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/308

Barrow mark upon Trinity by commencing the magnificent library. The story runs thus. He proposed to the heads of the university to build a theatre, that the university church might be no longer profaned by the speeches &c. which were held there. He failed to move his brother heads, and went back piqued to his college, declaring that he would get handsomer buildings than any he had proposed to them; and so he gave the impetus to the building of the library, which was not completed at his death. He was vice-chancellor of Cambridge in 1675. In the spring of 1677 he went to London to assist, as master of Trinity, in the election of the Westminster scholars to Christ Church, Oxford, and Trinity, Cambridge; and on 13 April, ‘being invited to preach the Passion sermon at Guildhall chapel, he never preached but once more.’ He died on 4 May 1677, during the visit ‘in mean lodgings,’ Dr. Pope tells us, ‘over a saddler's shop near Charing Cross;’ but the master of Trinity of course had the means to lodge where he liked. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument surmounted by his bust was erected by his friends. His epitaph was written by his friend Dr. Mapletoft, who, like himself, had been a Gresham professor.

When it is remembered that Barrow was only forty-seven years of age when he died, it seems almost incredible that in so short a life he could have gained so vast and multifarious a store of knowledge. Scholar, mathematician, man of science, preacher, controversialist, he gained enough credit in every one of these departments to make the reputation of an ordinary man; while his blameless, unselfish, christian life would be worth studying if he had gained no intellectual reputation at all.

As a scholar, his many compositions in Latin prose and verse (he had almost a mania for turning everything into Latin verse), as well as in Greek verse, fully justify the confidence which Dr. Dupont showed in him.

As a mathematician he was considered by his contemporaries as second only to Newton, whose towering genius a little overshadowed that of his master; but on the other hand, his credit as a mathematician is enhanced by the fact that he was the first to recognise and develop the extraordinary talents of Newton, one of whose most famous discoveries he was on the verge of making. Dr. Whewell has well summed up his merits without exaggeration or detraction (to both of which Barrow's mathematical fame has been subject). ‘The principal part which Barrow plays in mathematical history is as one of the immediate precursors of Newton and Leibnitz in the invention of the differential calculus. … He was a very considerable mathematician, and was well acquainted with mathematical literature.’ Barrow himself was exceedingly modest in his estimate of his own mathematical powers, as indeed he was of all his powers. It was only in compliance with the judgment of his intimate friend, Mr. John Collins, that he was prevailed upon to publish most of his mathematical works. And when he did suffer them to be published it was with a stipulation that they should not be ‘puffed.’ ‘I pray,’ he wrote to Mr. Collins, ‘let there be nothing said of them in the Philosophical Reports beyond a short and simple account of them; let them take their fortune or fate pro captu lectoris; anything more will cause me displeasure, and will not do them any good.’ It was on his mathematics that his contemporary repute chiefly rested.

As to science and philosophy, he fully shared, in his early years, the newly awakened interest in these subjects, studying them, not at second hand, but in the works of such masters as Bacon, Des Cartes, and Galileo.

As a controversialist, his great ‘Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy’ (1680) would be enough to immortalise any man. He did not live to publish it, but on his deathbed gave Tillotson permission to do so, regretting with characteristic modesty that he had not had time to make it less imperfect. As a matter of fact, it is about as perfect a piece of controversial writing as is extant. He was the very man for the task; for ‘he understood popery both at home and abroad. He had narrowly observed it militant in England, triumphant in Italy, disguised in France, and had earlier apprehension than most others of the approaching danger.’ Besides this perfect knowledge of the subject, he had other qualifications no less essential for the work: his calm temperament and large-hearted christian charity prevented him from indulging in those anti-papal ravings which were only too common at the time. His logical mind at once detected the weak points in the papal arguments, while his nervous, lucid style set off his knowledge and his reasoning to the best advantage. His ‘Exposition of the Creed,’ though not directly controversial, will prove a most valuable weapon in the hands of a controversialist. The subject is treated from a different point of view from that taken by his predecessor at Trinity, Dr. Pearson; but though less known and read at the present time, his work does not suffer in the least by a comparison with that masterpiece.

But, after all, it is as a preacher that