Barton became the friend of Southey, Lamb, and other men and women of letters, including the local children's writer Anne Knight, with whom he lodged, and to whom he provided poems for some of her books. His chief works are "The Convict's Appeal" published in 1818, a protest against the death penalty and general severity of the criminal code, and "Household Verses" published 1845, which came to the notice of Sir R. Peel, through whom he obtained a pension of £100 a year. Other volumes of his were entitled "Napoleon and Other Poems" (1822), "Poetic Vigils" (1824) and "A New Year's Eve and Other Poems".