Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/152

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Barber
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Barber

Lessons.’ 5. ‘Poetical Epistle to William Wilberforce.’ 6. ‘An Edition, with Essay and Lives, of the British Novelists.’ 7. ‘The Female Speaker.’ 8. ‘Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.’

[Works of A. L. Barbauld, with a memoir by Lucy Aikin, 1825; Le Breton's Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, 1874; Ellis's Life and Letters of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1874.]

A. A. B.

BARBER, CHARLES (d. 1854), landscape painter, was a native of Birmingham, and moved to Liverpool in early life on being appointed teacher of drawing in the Royal Institution. He was intimately connected with the various associations established in Liverpool in his lifetime. He was among the earliest members and most frequent contributors of the Literary and Philosophical Society, and assisted to found the Architectural and Archæological Association. Thomas Rickman found much support and encouragement from him in his early studies of Gothic architecture, and for years his house was the centre of the intellectual society of Liverpool. Among his nearest friends he numbered Traill and Roscoe. As a landscape painter he was a close observer of nature, and endeavoured to reproduce effects of mist and sunshine with accuracy. He exhibited three times in the Royal Academy, and was a regular contributor to local exhibitions. In spite of a severe attack of paralysis, he continued to practise his art to the end, and his two best-known pictures, ‘Evening after Rain,’ and ‘The Dawn of Day,’ were exhibited in Trafalgar Square in 1849. He was elected president of the Liverpool Academy some years before his death, which occurred in 1854.

[Liverpool Courier, 1854; Redgrave's Dictionary of English Artists.]

C. E. D.

BARBER, CHARLES (d. 1882), barrister, was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated ninth wrangler in 1833. In the same year he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. He was a pupil of Mr. Duval, an eminent conveyancer. He acquired a high reputation as an equity draftsman and conveyancer, and, though he never took silk, had for nearly half a century an extensive practice at the junior bar. He was one of the commissioners appointed to reform the procedure of the Court of Chancery in 1853, his large experience of chancery business rendering his suggestions of the highest value in the work of framing the rules of practice issued under the Chancery Amendment Acts. In the chancery proceedings by which, in 1867, the celebrated Orton or Castro first sought to establish his claim to the Tichborne baronetcy and estates, Barber held a brief for the defendants, as he did again in the first of the two actions of ejectment which were subsequently brought in the court of common pleas for the same purpose, in the well-known case of Tichborne v. Lushington, decided in 1872 after a trial which lasted 103 days. He also acted as one of the counsel for the crown in the prosecution for perjury which followed, and which occupied in the hearing from first to last 188 days. In 1874 he was appointed judge of county courts for circuit No. 6 (Hull and the East Riding), but resigned the post almost immediately, and resumed practice at the bar. He died at his residence (71 Cornwall Gardens) on 5 Feb. 1882.

[Solicitor's Journal, xxvi. 233.]

J. M. R.

BARBER, CHRISTOPHER (1736–1810), miniature painter, was born in 1736, and exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1770. He worked in crayons as well as oil, and continued to be an occasional exhibitor, chiefly of portraits and half-lengths, in the Royal Academy until 1792. His portraits were celebrated for peculiar brilliancy, in consequence of the especial attention he devoted to the preparation of magilp. An enthusiastic lover of music, he was distinguished for a particular acquaintance with the works of Handel and Purcell, while his social gifts gathered a large and warm circle of acquaintance round him. He was for some time a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, but his exhibiting with the opposing society, which was incorporated as the Royal Academy in 1768, led to his forced withdrawal in 1765. He was long resident in St. Martin's Lane, but afterwards removed to Great Marylebone Street, where he died, in 1810.

[Gent. Mag. 1810; Royal Academy Catalogues 1770–1792; Redgrave's Dictionary of English Artists.]

C. E. D.

BARBER, EDWARD (d. 1674?), baptist minister, was originally a clergyman of the established church, but long before the beginning of the civil wars he adopted the principles of the baptists. He had numerous followers, who assembled for worship in the Spital in Bishopsgate Street, London, and appear to have been the first congregation among the baptists that practised the laying on of hands on baptised believers at their reception into the church. This custom was introduced among them about 1646 by Mr. Cornwell (D'Anvers, Treatise of Laying on of Hands, 58; T. Edwards, Gan-