BARRINGTON, DAINES (1729-1300). An English lawyer and antiquary. It is said that he was educated at Oxford, but he took no degree. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple. from 1751 to 1753 was marshal of the High Court of Admiralty, and in 1704 became recorder of Bristol. From 1778 to 1785 he was second jus tice of Chester. Ile also held appointment as Ring's counsel and as commissary-general of the stores at Gibraltar. He was at one time deeply interested in Arctic exploration, and through the Royal Society prevailed upon the Government to dispatch an unsuccessful expedition of two ships. His antiquarian papers, read before the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society, deal with a multitude of varied subjects, from the anti quity of playing cards to Julius Ca'sar's landing in Britain. His learning was more extensive than accurate, and his curious blunders, due often to his gullibility, exposed him to no little ridicule. His edition (1773) of Alfred the
(heat's Anglo-Saxon version of ()rosins. with a translation, has been discredited. The best known and most valuable of his writings is the Observations on the Statutes (1766), a diseur sive work, with ito evidence of arrangement, but still valuable for its ingenious and learned notes. He corresponded with Gilbert White, of Sel bourne, whose Natural History. it has been as serted, was prepared at his suggestion. After lie had become a benches of the Inner Temple, he was much in the Temple Gardens, where he was familiar with Charles Lamb, who calls him "an other oddity," and says that " he walked burly and square." Consult Nichols, Literary A nec dotes of the Eighteenth Century (9 vols., London, 1812-15).