smaller treatise on obligations. Among his own produc tions are a treatise, De la Morale des Peres, and a history of ancient treaties, contained in the Supplement au grand
corps diplomatique.BARBIERI, Giovanni Francesco (otherwise called Guercino, from his squinting), an eminent historical painter, was born at Cento, a village not far from Bologna, in 1590. His artistic powers were developed very rapidly, and at the age of seventeen he was associated with Benedetto Gennari, a well-known painter of the Bolognese school. The fame of the young painter spread beyond his native village, and in 1615 he removed to Bologna, where his paintings were much admired. His first style was formed after that of the Carracci ; but the strong colouring and shadows employed by Caravaggio made a deep impression on his mind, and for a considerable period his productions showed evident traces of that painter s influence. Some of his latest pieces approach rather to the manner of his great contemporary Guido, and are painted with more lightness and clearnesa Guercino was esteemed very highly in his lifetime, not only by the nobles and princes of Italy, but by his brother artists, who placed him in the first rank of painters. He was remarkable for the extreme rapidity of his execution; he completed no fewer than 106 large altar pieces for churches, and his other paintings amount to about 144. His most famous piece is thought to be the Sta Petronilla, which was painted at Rome for Gregory XV. and is now in the Capitol. Guercino continued to paint and teach up to the time of his death in 16G6. He had amassed a handsome fortune by his labours.
BARBIERI, Paolo Antonio, a celebrated painter of still life and animals, the brother of Guercino, was born at Cento in 1596. He chose for his subjects fruits, flowers, insects, and animals, which he painted after nature with a lively tint of colour, great tenderness of pencil, and a strong character of truth and life. He died in 1640.
BARBOUR, John, the author of the great Scottish national poem The Bruce, was born, probably in Aberdeen- shire, about the beginning of the 1 4th century. He was a contemporary of Chaucer and Gower ; but so little is known of his life, that the very date of his birth can be only approximately given as about 1316. In 1357, as we learn from a safe-conduct permitting him to visit Oxford for the purpose of study,[1] he held the position of arch deacon of Aberdeen. In 1364 he was again permitted to enter England for a similar purpose,[2] and in 1368 he received letters of safe-conduct authorizing him to pass through England on his way to France,[3] whither, it may be conjectured, he was proceeding in order to visit the famous university of Paris. From this date to his death, which took place probably in March 1395, notices of him are slightly more numerous. In 1373 he is described as hold ing the office of clerk of audit of the king s household.[4] About the same time he must have been busily engaged in the composition of his great work, for, as he himself tells us, his poem was more than half finished in 1375.
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" In the tyme of the compiling Off this buk this Kobert wes King ; And off his kynrik passit was Fyve yer ; and wes the yer off grace A thousand, thre hundyr, sevynty And fyve, and off his eld sixty."[5]
A sum of ten pounds, which was paid to the poet by the king s orders in 1377,[6] was in all probability a royal gift on the completion of the work. Barbour seems indeed to have been well treated by his sovereign ; he received a perpetual annuity of twenty shillings,[7] which he bequeathed to the dean and chapter of Aberdeen as payment of a yearly mass to be said for his soul), tithes of the parish of Rayne in the Garioch, and a crown wardship, always a lucrative office in these times. A further bounty of ten pounds a year during life, granted in 1388, was probably a reward on the completion of the poet s second large work, The Brute. The cessation of payment of this annuity enables us to fix with some accuracy the date of Barbour s death.
The Bruce, which is Barbour s principal poem, although it is almost the sole authority for the events of the period, is not to be considered as merely a rhyming chronicle.[8] His theme was freedom and the liberation of his country from the dominion of a foreign people. The age of Bruce was the age of Scottish chivalry, and the king himself presented the most perfect model of a valiant knight. With such a crisis and such a hero, therefore, it is not surprising that Barbour should have achieved a work of lasting fame.
The poem begins with an account of the succession to the Scottish crown after the death of Alexander III. In this part of his poem Barbour has made a slight anachron ism. He makes his hero compete with John Baliol for the crown of Scotland, while it was his grandfather, the Lord of Annandale, who unsuccessfully contested the right. Then follows a lamentable account of the desolation of the country and the oppression of the people by the English. Bruce s energetic actions to free his country, and his romantic adventures, which form so interesting an episode in Scottish history, are narrated with great minuteness, down to the battle of Bannockburn, which is described with all its interesting details. At this point the national epic properly ends ; but Barbour further relates the ex pedition of Bruce to Ireland, and the exploits of Douglas and Randolph on the borders, and concludes with an account of the deaths of King Robert and his gallant knights.
The next in order of his writings was that before referred to, called The Brute, of which it is believed no MS. exists, unless the supposition of Mr Henry Bradshaw, librarian of the university of Cambridge, be correct, that about 2000 lines of two MS. Troy-books, by Lydgate, preserved in the Cambridge and Bodleian Libraries, form part of this poem. It appears to have comprised a genealogical history of the kings of Scotland, deducing their origin from the great mediaeval hero, Brutus, son of Ascanius, and grandson of ^Eneas, supposed to have been the first king of Britain. The existence of such a work is fully established by various passages in Wyntown s Cronykil.
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"This Nynus had a sone alsua, Sere Dardane lord of Frygia. Fra quham Barbere sutely Has made a propyr Genealogy, Tyl Robert oure secownd kyng, That Scotland had in governyng. " Of Bruttus lyneage quha vyll her. He luk the tretis of liarbere, Mad in-tyl a Genealogy Kycht wele, and mare perfytly Than I can on ony wys "Wytht all my wyt to yowe dewys." " The Stewards oryginale The Archedekyne has tretyt hal In metyre fayre."[9]
It is also referred to by Barbour himself in the following passage:—
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" Als Arthur, that throw chevalry Maid Bretane maistres and lady
- ↑ Kotuli Scotios, i. p. 808.
- ↑ Ibid., i. p. 886.
- ↑ Ibid., i. p. 926.
- ↑ Accounts of the Great Chamberlains of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 19.
- ↑ Harbour s Bruce, p. 274, Jamieson s ed.
- ↑ Exchequer Rolls, No. 82.
- ↑ Exchequer Rolls, Nos. 177, 178.
- ↑ It contains the earliest notice of the ancient Celtic poetry of Scotland. See Barbour s Bruce, p. 43, Jamieson s ed.
- ↑ Cronykil of Scotland, is. 1, III. iii. 139, VIII. vii. 143.
