Crichton and Little Mary. The year 1904 produced Peter Pan, a kind of poetical pantomime, in which the author found scope for some of his most characteristic and permanently delightful gifts. In 1905 Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire and in 1908 What Every Woman Knows were added to the list. As dramatist Mr Barrie brought, to a sphere rather ridden by convention, a method wholly unconventional and a singularly fresh fancy, seasoned by a shrewd touch of satirical humour; and in Peter Pan he proved himself a Hans Andersen of the stage. In literature, the success of “Thrums” produced a crop of imitations, christened in derision by W. E. Henley the “Kailyard School,” though the imitations were by no means confined to Scotland. In this school the Auld Licht Idylls and A Window in Thrums remained unsurpassed and unapproached. The Scots village tale was no novelty in literature—witness John Gait, the Chronicles of Carlingford and George MacDonald. Yet Mr Barrie, in spite of a dialect not easy to the Southron, contrived to touch a more intimate and more responsive chord. With the simplest materials he achieved an almost unendurable pathos, which yet is never forced; and the pathos is salted with humour, while about the moving homeliness of his humanity play the gleams of a whimsical wit. Stevenson, in a letter to Mr Henry James, in December 1892, said justly of Barrie that “there was genius in him, but there was a journalist on his elbow.” This genius found its most perfect and characteristic expression in the humanity of “Thrums” and the bizarre and tender fantasy of Peter Pan.
See also J. M. Barrie and His Books, by J. A. Hamerton (Horace Marshall, 1902); and for bibliography up to May 1903, English Illustrated Magazine, vol. xxix. (N.S.), p. 208. (W. P. J.)
BARRIE, the capital of Simcoe county, Ontario, Canada, 56 m. N. of Toronto, on Lake Simcoe, an important centre on the Grand Trunk railway. It contains several breweries, carriage factories, boat-building and railway shops, and manufactories of woollens, stoves and leather. It is also a summer resort and the starting-point for the numerous Lake Simcoe steamers. Pop. (1901) 5949.
BARRIÈRE, THÉODORE (1823–1877), French dramatist, was born in Paris in 1823. He belonged to a family of map engravers which had long been connected with the war department, and spent nine years in that service himself. The success of a vaudeville he had performed at the Beaumarchais and which was immediately snapped up for the repertory of the Palais Royal, showed him his real vocation. During the next thirty years he signed, alone or in collaboration, over a hundred plays; among the most successful were: La Vie de bohème (1849), adapted from Henri Murger’s book with the novelist’s help; Manon Lescaut (1851); Les Filles de marbre (1853); L’Héritage de Monsieur Plumet (1858); Les Faux Bonshommes (1856) with Ernest Capendu; Malheureux vaincus (1865), which was forbidden by the censor; Le Gascon (1878). Barrière died in Paris on the 16th of October 1877.
See also Revue des deux mondes (March 1859).
BARRIER TREATY, the name given first to the treaty signed on 29th of October 1709 between Great Britain and the states-general of the United Netherlands, by which the latter engaged to guarantee the Protestant succession in England in favour of the house of Hanover; while Great Britain undertook to procure for the Dutch an adequate barrier on the side of the Netherlands, consisting of the towns of Furnes, Nieuport, Ypres, Menin, Lille, Tournai, Condé, Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Charleroi, Namur, Halle, Damme, Dendermond and the citadel of Ghent. The treaty was based on the same principle of securing Holland against French aggression that had inspired that of Ryswick in 1698, by the terms of which the chief frontier fortresses of the Netherlands were to be garrisoned by Dutch troops. A second Barrier Treaty was signed between Great Britain and Holland on 29th of January 1713, by which the strong places designed for the barrier were reduced to Furnes, the fort of Knocke, Ypres, Menin, Tournai, Mons, Charleroi and the citadel of Ghent, and certain fortresses in the neighbourhood of that city and of Bruges; Great Britain undertaking to obtain the right for the Dutch to garrison them from the future sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands. Its terms were included in the treaty of Rastatt, between the emperor and France, signed on the 7th of March 1714. A third Barrier Treaty was signed in November 1715.
See Jean Dumont, Corps universel diplomatique, &c. (1726–1731), vol. viii.
BARRILI, ANTONIO GIULIO (1836–), Italian novelist, was born at Savona, and was educated for the legal profession, which he abandoned for journalism in Genoa. He was a volunteer in the campaign of 1859 and served with Garibaldi in 1866 and 1867. From 1865 (Capitan Dodero) onwards he published a large number of books of fiction, which had wide popularity, his work being commonly compared with that of Victor Cherbuliez. Some of the best of the later ones are Santa Cecilia (1866), Come un Sogno (1875), and L’Olmo e l’ Edera (1877). His Raggio di Dio appeared in 1899. Barrili also wrote two plays and various volumes of criticism, including Il rinnovamento letterario italiano (1890). He was elected to the Italian chamber of deputies in 1876; and in 1889 became professor of Italian literature at Genoa.
BARRING-OUT, a custom, formerly common in English schools, of barring the master out of the school premises. A typical example of this practice was at Bromfield school, Cumberland, where William Hutchinson says “it was the custom, time out of mind, for the scholars, at Fasting’s Even (the beginning of Lent) to depose and exclude the master from the school for three days.” During this period the school doors were barricaded and the boys armed with mock weapons. If the master’s attempts to re-enter were successful, extra tasks were inflicted as a penalty, and willingly performed by the boys. On the third day terms of capitulation, usually in Latin verse, were signed, and these always conceded the immediate right to indulge in football and a cockfight. The custom was long retained at Eton and figures in many school stories.
BARRINGTON, DAINES (1727–1800), English lawyer, antiquary and naturalist, was born in 1727, fourth son of the first Viscount Barrington. He was educated for the profession of the law, and after filling various posts, was appointed a Welsh judge in 1757 and afterwards second justice of Chester. Though an indifferent judge, his Observations on the Statutes, chiefly the more ancient, from Magna Charta to 21st James I., cap. 27, with an appendix, being a proposal for new-modelling the Statutes (1766), had a high reputation among historians and constitutional antiquaries. In 1773 he published an edition of Orosius, with Alfred’s Saxon version, and an English translation with original notes. His Tracts on the Probability of reaching the North Pole (1775) were written in consequence of the northern voyage of discovery undertaken by Captain C. J. Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave (1744–1792). Barrington’s other writings are chiefly to be found in the publications of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, of both of which he was long a member, and of the latter vice-president. Many of these were collected by him in a quarto volume entitled Miscellanies on various Subjects (1781). He contributed to the Philosophical Transactions for 1780 an account of Mozart’s visit at eight years of age to London. In his Miscellanies on varied subjects he included this with accounts of four other prodigies, namely, Crotch, Charles and Samuel Wesley, and Garrett Wellesley, Lord Mornington. Among the most curious and ingenious of his papers are his Experiments and Observations on the Singing of Birds, and his Essay on the Language of Birds. He died on the 14th of March 1800 and was buried in the Temple church.
BARRINGTON, GEORGE (b. 1755), an Irishman with a curious history, was born at Maynooth on the 14th of May 1755, the son of a working silversmith named Waldron. In 1771 he robbed his schoolmaster at Dublin and ran away from school, becoming a member of a touring theatrical company under the assumed name of Barrington. At Limerick races he joined the manager of the company in pocket-picking. The manager was detected and sentenced to transportation, and Barrington fled to London, where he assumed clerical dress and continued his pocket-picking. At Covent Garden theatre he robbed the Russian prince Orlov of a snuff-box, said to be worth £30,000. He was
