t of divinity. Upon quitting his
professorship 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 to the see of Chester, he was appointed to succeed him as master of
Trinity College by the king's patent, bearing the date of the 13th of
February 1672. In 1675 Dr Barrow was chosen vice-chancellor of the
university. He died on the 4th of May 1677, and was interred in Westminster
Abbey, where a monument, surmounted by his bust, was soon after erected by
the contributions of his friends.

By his English contemporaries Barrow was considered a mathematician second
only to Newton. Continental writers do not place him so high, and their
judgment is probably the more correct one. He was undoubtedly a
clear-sighted and able mathematician, who handled admirably the severe
geometrical method, and who in his _Method of Tangents_ approximated to the
course of reasoning by which Newton was afterwards led to the doctrine of
ultimate ratios; but his substantial contributions to the science are of no
great importance, and his lectures upon elementary principles do not throw
much light on the difficulties surrounding the border-land between
mathematics and philosophy. (See INFINITESIMAL CALCULUS.) His _Sermons_
have long enjoyed a high reputation; they are weighty pieces of reasoning,
elaborate in construction and ponderous in style.

His scientific works are very numerous. The most important are:--_Euclid's
Elements; Euclid's Data; Optical Lectures_, read in the public school of
Cambridge; _Thirteen Geometrical Lectures; The Works of Archimedes, the
Four Books of Apollonius's Conic Sections, and Theodosius's Spherics,
explained in a New Method_; A _Lecture_, in which Archimedes' Theorems of
the Sphere and Cylinder are investigated and briefly demonstrated;
_Mathematical Lectures_, read in the public schools of the university of
Cambridge. The above were all written in Latin. His English works have been
collected and published in four volumes folio.

See Ward, _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, and Whewell's biography
prefixed to the 9th volume of Napier's edition of Barrow's _Sermons_.

BARROW, SIR JOHN (1764-1848), English statesman, was born in the village of
Dragley Beck in the parish of Ulverston in Lancashi