A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Barton, Bernard
Barton, Bernard (1784-1849).—Poet, b. of Quaker parentage, passed nearly all his life at Woodbridge, for the most part as a clerk in a bank. He became the friend of Southey, Lamb, and other men of letters. His chief works are The Convict's Appeal (1818), a protest against the severity of the criminal code of the time, and Household Verses (1845), which came under the notice of Sir R. Peel, through whom he obtained a pension of £100. With the exception of some hymns his works are now nearly forgotten, but he was a most amiable and estimable man—simple and sympathetic. His dau. Lucy, who married Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, pub. a selection of his poems and letters, to which her husband prefixed a biographical introduction.