ere stationed in three bases or plots, contiguous to
each other. The couple occupying the middle base, called _hell_ or
_prison_, endeavoured to catch the other two, who, when chased, might
_break_ to avoid being caught. If one was overtaken, he and his companion
were condemned to _hell_. From this game was taken the expression "the last
couple in hell," often used in old plays.

BARLEY-CORN, a grain of barley, and thus a measure taken from the length of
a grain of barley, three of which (sometimes four) were considered to make
up an inch. The barley-corn has been personified as representing the malt
liquor made from barley, as in Burns's song "John Barleycorn."

BARLOW, SIR GEORGE HILARO (1762-1847), Anglo-Indian statesman, was
appointed to the Bengal Civil Service in 1778, and in 1788 carried into
execution the permanent settlement of Bengal. When the marquess of
Cornwallis died in 1805, Sir George Barlow was nominated provisional
governor-general, and his passion for economy and retrenchment in that
capacity has caused him to be known as the only governor-general who
diminished the area of British territory; but his nomination was rejected
by the home government, and Lord Minto was appointed. Subsequently Barlow
was created governor of Madras, where his want of tact caused a mutiny of
officers in 1809, similar to that which had previously occurred under
Clive. In 1812 he was recalled, and lived in retirement until his death in
February 1847. He was created a baronet in 1803.

BARLOW, JOEL (1754-1812), American poet and politician, born in Redding,
Fairfield county, Connecticut, on the 24th of March 1754. He graduated at
Yale in 1778, was a post-graduate student there for two years, and from
September 1780 until the close of the revolutionary war was chaplain in a
Massachusetts brigade. He then, in 1783, removed to Hartford, Connecticut,
established there in July 1784 a weekly paper, the _American Mercury_, with
which he was connected for a year, and in 1786 was admitted to the bar. At
Hartford he was a member of a group of young writers including Lemuel
Hopkins, David Humphreys, and John Trumbull, known in American literary
history as the "Hartford Wits." He contributed to the _Anarchiad_, a series
of satirico-political papers, and in 1787 published a long and ambitious
poem, _The Vision of Columbus_, which gave him a considerable literary
reputation and was once much read. In 1788 he went to France as the agent
of