John Barrow

An Auto-Biographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow, Bart, Late of the Admiralty

It may naturally be supposed that he who can sit down, in his eighty-third year, to write a volume of 500 pages, must have been urged on by some powerful motive to undertake such a task at so advanced a period of life; when the faculties of mind and body may be expected, in a certain degree, to have become impaired. I had a double motive for setting about the task: -the first was to gratify what I knew to be the wish of my family; the second, to gratify myself, by taking a wide range in recalling the remembrances of long by-gone years; quite certain that by so doing I should be able to realize the motto of my book, and say "haec olim meminisse juvabit" But I may also allege a third motive of gratification: that of expressing publicly the many acts of kindness and consideration I have experienced from numerous friends, especially from those to whose patronage I am indebted for the good fortune that has attended me through life