Finding how little Isaac profited at that school, he removed him to Felstead, in Essex, where his disposition took a more happy turn, and he made so quick a progress in learning, that his master appointed him a kind of tutor to Lord Viscount Fairfax, of Emely, in Ireland.

At the age of fourteen he became a pensioner of Peter House, in Cambridge, under his uncle, Isaac Barrow, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and then a fellow of that college. In 1645, he was admitted a pensioner of Trinity College, and two years afterwards, was chosen a scholar of that house, where he continued a staunch royalist, for which he narrowly escaped being expelled. Dr. Hill, the master of the college, was a rigid presbyterian and Calvinist, but such was the goodness of Barrow's disposition and character, that he became his friend, and one day, putting his hand upon his head, he said, "thou art a good lad, 'tis a pity thou art a cavalier," and when, in an oration on the gunpowder treason, Mr. Barrow had so celebrated the former times, as to reflect much on the present, some of the fellows were provoked to move for his expulsion, the master silenced them with saying, "Barrow is a better man than any of us."

He never would take the Covenant,* and

* An abominable oath, by which those who took it bound themselves to extirpate prelacy, and to promote the Presbyterian form of church government.

when

when the Engagement* was imposed he subscribed it, but upon second thoughts, repenting of what he had done, he went to the commissioners and had his name erazed, a noble instance of his integrity, at a time when he was very low in circumstances, and when such an act might have driven him from his college, and from the university. So highly, however, was he esteemed for his virtues and talents, that in the very year when the king was murdered, he was elected Fellow of his College without a single friend to recommend him, he being of the opposite party. He studied natural philosophy, mathematics, and medicine, intending to make the last his profession, but was dissuaded from it by his uncle.

Being disappointed of the Greek Professorship, which he only lost on account of his being an Arminian, Mr. Barrow determined to go abroad. Accordingly he went to France, and from thence to Italy, where the straitness of his circumstances would have put an end to his travels, had he not been generously assisted by Mr. James Stock, an English merchant at Leghorn. There he embarked on board a ship for Smyrna,

An oath imposed by the rebels after the murder of Charles the first, by which all persons in office, ministers, and members of the Universities, were to bind themselves "to be true and faithful to the government established without King or House of Peers."

but in the voyage they were attacked by an Algerine Corsair. Mr. Barrow, during the engagement, kept upon deck, cheerfully and vigorously fighting, till the pirate perceiving the stout defence the ship made, sheered off and left her. When Dr. Pope asked him why he did not go down into the hold, and leave the defence of the ship to those to whom it did belong, he replied, "it concerned no man more than myself; I would rather have lost my life than have fallen into the hands of those merciless infidels." Of this engagement, and the voyage, he gave an account in a Latin Poem, entitled, Iter maritimum a porte Ligustico ad Constantinopolim.

At Constantinople he read over the works of Chrysostom, once bishop of that see, and whom he preferred to all the other fathers, as may be seen in the copious references to him in his sermons. He returned to England a little before the restoration, an event most anxiously desired by him, but it brought him no preferment, on which he wrote the following epigram:

Te magis optavit rediturum, Carole, nemo,

Et nemo sensit tu rediisse minus.

Thy restoration, Royal Charles, I see,

By none more wish'd, by none less felt than me.

The same year he was chosen Greek Professor of the University of Cambridge, without any opposition. In 1662, he was elected Professor of Geometry in Gresham College, in which station