BARETTI, GIUSEPPE, an Italian lexicographer, born in Turin; taught Italian in London, patronised by Johnson, became secretary of the Royal Academy (1719-1789).

BARFLEUR, a seaport 15 m.  E. of Cherbourg, where William the Conqueror set out with his fleet to invade England.

BARFRUeSH (603), a town S. of the Caspian, famous for its bazaar.

BAR`GUEST, a goblin long an object of terror in the N. of England.

BARI, THE, a small negro nation on the banks of the White Nile.

BARING, SIR FRANCIS, founder of the great banking firm of Baring Brothers & Co.; amassed property, value of it said to have been nearly seven millions (1740-1810).

BARING-GOULD, SABINE, rector of Lew-Trenchard, Devonshire, celebrated in various departments of literature, history, theology, and romance, especially the latter; a voluminous writer on all manner of subjects, and a man of wide reading; b. 1834.

BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS, his literary name Thomas Ingoldsby, born at Canterbury, minor canon of St. Paul’s; friend of Sidney Smith; author of “Ingoldsby Legends,” published originally as a series of papers in Bentley’s Miscellany (1788-1879).

BARKIS, a carrier-lad in “David Copperfield,” in love with Peggotty.  “Barkis is willin’.”

BARKER, E. HENRY, a classical scholar, born in Yorkshire; edited Stephens’ “Thesaurus Linguae Graecae,” an arduous work; died in poverty (1788-1839).

BARKING, a market-town in Essex, 7 m.  NE. of London, with the remains of an ancient Benedictine convent.

BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT, a mediaeval legend, being a Christianised version of an earlier legend relating to Buddha, in which Josaphat, a prince like Buddha, is converted by Barlaam to a like ascetic life.

BARLEYCORN, JOHN, the exhilarating spirit distilled from barley personified.

BARLOW, JOEL, an American poet and diplomatist; for his Republican zeal, was in 1792 accorded the rights of citizenship in France; wrote a poem “The Vision of Columbus” (1755-1812).

BARLOWE, a French watchmaker, inventor of the repeating watch; d. 1690.

BARMACIDE FEAST, an imaginary feast, so called from a story in the “Arabian Nights” of a hungry beggar invited by a Barmacide prince to a banquet, which proved a long succession of merely empty dishes, and which he enjoyed with such seeming gusto and such good-humour as to earn for himself a sumptuous real one.

BAR`MACIDES, a Persian family celebrated for their magnificence, and that in the end met with the cruellest fate.  Yahya, one of them, eminent for ability and virtue, was chosen by the world-famous Haroun-Al-Raschid on his accession to the caliphate to be his vizier; and his four sons rose along with him to such influence in the government, as to excite the jealousy of the caliph so much, that he had the whole family invited to a banquet, and every man, woman, and child of them massacred at midnight in cold blood.  The caliph, it is gratifying to learn, never forgave himself for this cruelty, and was visited with a gnawing remorse to the end of his days; and it had fatal issues to his kingdom as well as himself.