[3] In his twenty-third year he was enrolled as an attorney, and settled in London, but ill-health prevented him from pursuing the practice of the law, and he took to writing for literary periodicals.
During the fourteen years of his home in London, Barham's most extensive literary undertaking was the preparation of a new edition of Jeremy Collier's Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain.
[2] The study of oriental languages kindled in him a great love for philology, and his intense spiritual aspirations led him to attempt to found a new form of religion, which he called "Alism".
After very prolonged and arduous researches at last discovered this supreme central doctrine, and gave it the name of Alism, a name derived from A, Al, or Alah, the most ancient and universal title of Deity in the Hebrew scripture.
This volume, which is mostly in the phonetic character, contains reprints of the Memoir of James Greaves, Lokman's Fables, the Life of Reuchlin, and the Rhymed Harmony of the Gospels.