John Barrow, born in a lowly cottage at Dragley Beck, in Lancashire, rose, by his own earnest industry, to the responsible post of a Secretary to the Admiralty, for forty years, under thirteen administrations. When sixteen years old, he made a voyage in a whaler to Greenland; he next taught mathematics in a school at Greenwich. He attended Lord Macartney in his celebrated embassy to China, and took charge of the philosophical instruments carried out as presents to the Emperor of China; of this journey Barrow subsequently published an account in a quarto volume. He was next appointed Secretary to Lord Macartney, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope; and during his leisure Mr. Barrow, in various journeys, collected materials for a volume of Travels in South Africa, which he published on his return to England. Throughout his Admiralty secretaryship he was indefatigable in promoting the progress of geographical or scientific knowledge, especially in recommending to the governments under which he served various voyages to the Arctic Regions. He was a man of untiring industry, and devoted his leisure to literature and scientific pursuits: he published various works; contributed 195 articles to the Quarterly Review; and at the age of eighty-three (one year before his death) wrote his Autobiography. His public services had been rewarded by a baronetcy in 1835; and shortly after his death, in 1848, upon the lofty Hill of Hoad, near to the humble cottage in which Sir John Barrow was born, there was erected, by public subscription, to his memory, a sea-mark tower, as a record of what noble distinction may be earned in this happy country by well-directed energy and strictly moral worth.
[93]. Sir E. L. Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni.
[94]. Family reputation is generally considered but an insecure stock to begin the world with: nevertheless there is much truth in the experience of Lord Mahon (now Earl Stanhope), who says: “In public life I have seen full as many men promoted for their father’s talents as for their own.”
[95]. This letter is quoted in Mr. Smiles’s Self-Help.
[96]. Notes and Queries.
OFFICIAL QUALIFICATIONS.
Swift’s happy illustration of a frequent cause of failure, drawn in the reign of Queen Anne,—whose administrators were principally eminent scholars,—is scarcely so applicable in our time. Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This Swift once said to Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe that the clerk in his office used a sort of ivory knife with a blunt edge to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only requiring a steady hand; whereas, if they should make use of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it go often out of the crease, and disfigure the paper.
A model Court-letter has been preserved by singular accident. When Swift was looking out for the prebend and sinecure of Dr. South, who was then very infirm, he received the following letter from Lord Halifax, to whom Addison had communicated Swift’s expectations: