xix. 5). In his ‘List of Friends Grateful, Ungrateful, Indifferent, and Doubtful,’ he describes her with the best as ‘G,’ i.e. ‘grateful;’ and in his will, dated 1740, nine years after the ‘Letters,’ he makes a bequest to her of ‘the medal of Queen Anne and Prince George which she formerly gave me’ (Sheridan, Swift, p. 566). The false suspicion as to her authorship of the unfortunate ‘Letters’ did Mrs. Barber little injury with others of her friends. In 1734, her ‘Poems on Several Occasions’ (4to, Rivingtons) were at last published, and were prefaced by a letter from Swift to Lord Orrery. But many troubles now befell their authoress; a few severe critics said that the work was not poetic, and a few fine ladies complained that it was dull (ibid. xviii. 310). At the time Mrs. Barber was a victim to a three months' attack of gout; and she fell ‘under the hands of the law,’ in company with Motte, the printer, although she was discharged the same day with him (Hawkesworth, xiii. 105). Her condition excited pity in very many quarters, and the Duchess of Queensberry told Swift: ‘Mrs. Barber has met with a good deal of trouble … we shall leave our guineas for her with Mr. Pope’ (Scott's Swift, xviii. 198). In 1735 appeared a second edition of Mrs. Barber's ‘Poems’ (8vo), and in 1736 there followed a third. In November of the same year, at Bath, again laid up with gout, and having her husband and daughters to support, Mrs. Barber entertained a scheme for selling Irish linens. She could not let lodgings because of her ill-health (ibid. xix. 5); and, to support her meanwhile, she begged Swift to give her his ‘Polite Conversations,’ still in manuscript, though written thirty years before. Everybody, she said, would subscribe for a work of his, and the sale of it would put her in easy circumstances. In 1737 the manuscript was hers, conveyed to her by Lord Orrery (Scott's Swift, xix. 93); in 1738 it was published, and it met with so much favour that it was presented as a play at the theatre in Aungier Street, Dublin, with great applause (Hawkesworth, xiv. 692). It thus secured for Mrs. Barber all the benefits that Swift, in his continuous kindness to her, desired. In 1755 a selection from her ‘Poems’ was published in two volumes of ‘Poems by Eminent Ladies,’ including Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Carter, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and others, and Mrs. Barber's verse was given the first place. In 1757 she died. Of her two sons, Rupert was well known as a miniature painter and engraver, and Constantine became president of the College of Physicians at Dublin.
[Ballard's British Ladies, ed. 1752, 461 et seq.; Monthly Review, vol. viii., 1753.]
BARBER, SAMUEL (1738?–1811), Irish presbyterian minister, a native of county Antrim, was the younger son of John Barber, a farmer near Killead. He entered Glasgow College in 1757, was licensed 1761 (on second trials 28 Aug. at Larne) by Templepatrick presbytery, and ordained by Dromore presbytery, 3 May 1763, at Rathfriland, co. Down, where he ministered till his death. He was a good Latinist, Tacitus being his favourite author; his Greek was thin; he was somewhat given to rabbinical studies, having collected a small store of learned books on this subject. He is best known for the public spirit with which he threw himself into the political and ecclesiastical struggles of his time. Teeling considers him ‘one of the first and boldest advocates of the emancipation of his country and the union of all her sons.’ When Lord Glerawley disarmed the Rathfriland regiment of volunteers in 1782, the officers and men chose Barber as their colonel in his stead. In this double capacity he preached (in regimentals) a sermon to the volunteers, in the Third Presbyterian Congregation, Belfast. He sat in the three volunteer conventions of 1782, 1783, and 1793, as a strong advocate of parliamentary reform, catholic emancipation, and a revision of the tithe system, the revenue laws, and the Irish pension list. Lord Kilwarlin, being asked to contribute to the rebuilding of his meeting-house, said he would rather pay to pull it down (broadsheet of August 1783). In 1786 Richard Woodward, bishop of Cloyne, published his ‘Present State of the Church of Ireland,’ to prove that none but episcopalians could be loyal to the constitution. Barber's ‘Remarks’ in reply showed him a master of satire, and embodied the most trenchant pleas for disestablishment that any dissenter had yet put forth (‘Must seven-eighths of the nation for ever crouch to the eighth?’). Woodward made no response. In 1790 Barber was moderator of the general synod. He took a leading part in the Down election of that year, which returned the Hon. Robert Stewart (afterwards Lord Castlereagh) in the presbyterian interest, after a contest of thirteen weeks. In 1798 the authorities regarded him as a dangerous man. He was seized by a body of troops at his residence in the townland of Tullyquilly, and lodged in Downpatrick gaol on a charge of high treason. On 14 and 16 July he was tried by court-martial, but nothing was proved against him; he was never a United Irishman. However, he was detained in durance, and his third daughter, Margaret, a girl of sixteen, voluntarily shared
