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XXX
INTRODUCTORY
ESSAS.
of youth
gave place
to
the
more
serious
encounters
of
mind with
mind; the
vivaciousness of
the lad
became courage
in the man;
and
early
combativeness found
a higher
sphere in
the
field
of religious
controversy. Two
instances of his personal
courage
are generally
recorded of him.
The
first occurred
during
his travels, when
the
ship
in
which he sailed for Constantinople
was
attacked by pirates;
and
Barrow, disdaining
the
shelter
of the
hold,
manfully fought
at
the
guns
on deck.
The other
was
an encounter with
a
furious
mastiff, which, having
rushed upon him in
the
dark, he
seized
by
the
throat,
and,
rather than
kill
the
animal,
held
it
fast to
the
ground
till
he
was
released.
True to
the paternal
creed, Barrow, on
entering the
university,
refused
to take the
covenant;
but this
refusal,
though
at that
time
regarded
as
the mark
of
a
" Malignant,"
or one who
had
espoused
the
principles of
Laudean
prelacy in
the
church
and arbitrary
power
in
the
state,
was
kindly
connived
at
by
the
heads
of
the
university. One
day,
Dr
Hill, Master
of
Trinity
College,
laying his
hand
on his
head,
said, " Thou
art
a
good
lad; 'tis pity
thou
art
a
Cavalier." On an-
other
occasion,
when Barrow
had
displeased
the
rest by giving too
free
scope
to
his predilections,
their
objections were overruled by
the
same good man, who observed,
"Barrow
is
a better
man
than
any
of
us."
The
occasion
of
this
offence,
it
is said, was
his
Latin
Oration
on
the
Gunpowder Plot,
which
is
now
inserted in his
works.
There
is
nothing in this
performance
(which
is
written in
a youthful,
decla-
matory
style)
that
could
justly
have
given umbrage, unless
we
sup-
pose
that
his description of
the
state
of
the
church
during the reign
of
James VI.
was too
highly
coloured
for
the taste
of
the
Presby-
terians, and
that,
in adverting to
the
design of
the
conspirators
to cut
off
the
royal family,
he
expressed
himself in terms
too
applicable to
Cromwell to
be
relished
by
the
Independents. Speaking
of
the
episcopal
church
in
those
times,
he
says,
"There
was
hardly
any
thing in her
that
pride
could
despise,
that
calumny
could accuse, or
that
well-regulated minds
could find wanting.
She admitted neither
old
corruptions
nor
new
-
fangled
fancies.
Simple
she was
indeed,
and yet
not
destitute
of those
ornaments with
which
ancient piety
and
well
-
consulted prudence
had
furnished her."
If
we
may
judge
from
another
oration, pronounced
in April
1651,
in
which
he
severely
inveighs
against
the
immoderate
love
of fun, wit,
and ribaldry,
which
then
prevailed among his
fellow
-
collegians (giving
us,
by
the
way,
a
very different
idea
of
the Puritans
of
that
period from
that
con-
veyed by
the
morose
pictures drawn
of
them
by
their
opponents),
it
would
appear
that
our author,
even
at
the
early
age
of twenty
-one,