# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Barnes, William

​BARNES, WILLIAM (1801–1886), the Dorsetshire poet, born at Rushay (in the parish of Bagber) and baptised at the parish church of Sturminster-Newton, Dorset, on 20 March 1801, was the grandson of John Barnes, yeoman farmer of Gillingham, and the son of John Barnes, tenant farmer in the Vale of Blackmore, in the northern corner of his native county. He came of an old Dorsetshire family. A direct ancestor, John Barnes, was head-borough of Gillingham in 1604, and the head-borough's great-grandfather, William Barnes, obtained a grant of land in the same parish from Henry VIII in 1540. The poet's mother, Grace Scott (d. 1806) of Fifehead Neville, was a woman of some culture, with an inherent love of art and poetry.
William went to Mullett's school at Sturminster, and in 1815 his proficiency in handwriting procured his admission to a solicitor's office in the small town, whence in 1818 he removed to Dorchester. The rector there, John Henry Richman, gave him some lessons and lent him books. In 1820 there began to appear in the local 'Weekly Entertainer' a number of rhymes by Barnes, among them some 'Verses to Julia' (daughter of an excise officer at Dorchester named Miles), to whom he became betrothed in 1822, the year in which his first volume, 'Orra, a Lapland Tale,' was published. His versatility and intellectual energy at this time were remarkable. He set himself to learn wood-engraving, and produced eight blocks for Criswick's 'A Walk round Dorchester.' Simultaneously he worked hard at etymology and language, mastering French and studying Italian literature, especially Petrarch and his school. In 1823 he obtained the mastership of a small school at Mere in Wiltshire, and four years later he took the Chantry House at Mere, married, and began to take boarders. In 1829 a number of his woodcuts were included in Rutter's 'Delineations of Somerset.' About the same time he made his first visit to Wales, and got a strong hold of the idea of purity of language, which became almost a passion with him. He became an enthusiastic angler, wrote for some itinerant players an amusing farce, 'The Honest Thief,' began Welsh, and added to his other linguistic studies Russian, Hebrew, and Hindustani.
In 1833 he wrote for the 'County Chronicle' his first poems in the Dorset dialect, among them the two unrivalled eclogues, 'The 'Lotments' and 'A Bit o' Sly Coorten.' ​In June 1835 he left Mere and settled in Durngate Street, Dorchester, with a promising school, transferred in 1837 to a larger house in South Street. On 2 March 1838 he put his name on the books of St. John's College, Cambridge, as a ten years' man. During the next six years he contributed some of his best archaeological and etymological work to the pages of the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' The variety of subjects indicates a great amount of reading, while his more sustained investigations at this period of the laws of harmonic proportion show his aptitude for abstract speculations. In 1844 the 'Poems in the Dorset Dialect' were issued in London by Russell Smith. A cordial admirer of the new poet was found in the Hon. Mrs. (Caroline) Norton [q. v.], who did much to give publicity to Barnes's genius.
Barnes was ordained by the Bishop of Salisbury on 28 Feb. 1847, and, while retaining his school, entered upon new duties as pastor of Whitcombe, three miles from the county town. He was concentrating a great deal of his time now upon Anglo-Saxon, of which his 'Delectus' appeared in 1849. In the following year he graduated B.D. at Cambridge. In 1852 he resigned his curacy, and soon afterwards became a trusted contributor to the newly started 'Retrospective Review.' In 1854 he began reading Persian (and henceforth, after Petrarch, he was perhaps most nearly influenced by Saadi), and published his 'Philological Grammar,' a truly remarkable book, for the copyright of which he received 5l. In 1858 appeared a second series of Dorset poems under the title 'Hwomely Rhymes,' several of the pieces in which—notably 'The Vaices that be Gane'—were effectively rendered into French for De Chatelain's 'Beautés de la Poésie Anglaise.' Barnes had already appeared as a lecturer upon archaeological subjects, and he was now encouraged to give readings from his dialect poems in the various small towns of Dorset. He received an invitation from Macready at Sherborne, and from the Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford House. In 1859 he had a visit from Lucien Buonaparte, who had been attracted by the poems, and at whose suggestion Barnes now translated 'The Song of Solomon' into the Dorset dialect. In 1860 he was enlisted as a writer for the newly founded 'Macmillan's Magazine.' In April 1861 he was granted, at the instance of Palmerston, an unsolicited pension of 70l. from the civil list. The year was fully occupied in the preparation of his most considerable philological work, devoted to the theory of the fundamental roots of the Teutonic speech, and entitled 'Tiw,' after the god from whom the race derived their name. In 1862 he received from Captain Seymour Dawson Damer an offer of the rectory of Came, which he gladly accepted.
Barnes was inducted into Came church on 1 Dec. 1862. He made an admirable country parson, homely and unconventional as his rhymes, a scholar with the widest interests, whose active horizon was yet strictly bounded by the Dorsetshire fields and uplands. His work upon the 'Dorsetshire Glossary' increased his admiration for the vernacular and his dislike of latinised forms. He was indignant at the introduction of such words as photograph and bicycle, for which he would have substituted sunprint and wheelsaddle. A collective edition of the dialect poems appeared in 1879, and of the poet at this late period of his career Mr. Hardy contributed to the 'Athenæum' (16 Oct. 1886) an interesting vignette. Until about 1882 there were 'few figures more familiar to the eye in the county town of Dorset on a market day than an aged clergyman, quaintly attired in caped cloak, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes, with a leather satchel slung over his shoulders and a stout staff in his hand. He seemed usually to prefer the middle of the street to the pavement, and to be thinking of matters which had nothing to do with the scene before him. He plodded along with a broad, firm tread, notwithstanding the slight stoop occasioned by his years. Every Saturday morning he might have been seen thus trudging up the narrow South Street, his shoes coated with mud or dust, according to the state of the roads between his rural home and Dorchester, and a little grey dog at his heels, till he reached the four cross-ways in the centre of the town. Halting there opposite the public clock, he would pull his old-fashioned watch from its deep fob and set it with great precision to London time.'
Until he was well over eighty he went on working with the same remarkable grasp of power and variety of interests. He died at Came rectory on 7 Oct. 1886, and was buried four days later in the village churchyard. By his wife, who died on 21 June 1852, he left issue two sons and three daughters. At a meeting convened by the Bishop of Salisbury, shortly after Barnes's death, it was decided to commemorate the 'Dorsetshire Burns' by establishing a 'Barnes exhibition' at the Dorchester grammar school. A bronze statue of the poet by Roscoe Mullins has been erected in the churchyard of St. Peter's, Dorchester.
​A 'lyric writer of a high order of genius,' Barnes was also a most interesting link between present and past forms of rural life—a repertory of forgotten manners, words, and sentiments. Unlike Burns, Béranger, and other poets of the people, he never assumes the high conventional style, and he entirely leaves alone ambition, pride, despair, defiance, and the grand passions, 'His rustics are, as a rule, happy people, and seldom feel the sting of the rest of modern mankind—the disproportion between the desire for serenity and the power of obtaining it.' Like Chaucer, Barnes is filled with the joy of life. Less sombre and more rustic than those of Crabbe, his eclogues, unrivalled in English, are not wholly undeserving of comparison with the prototypes of Theocritus and of Virgil.
Barnes's works comprise: 1. 'A. few Words on the Advantages of a more Common Adoption of the Mathematics as a Branch of Education,' London, 1834. 2. 'Mathematical Investigation of the Principle of Hanging Doors, Gates, Swing Bridges, and other Heavy Bodies,' Dorchester, 1835. 3. 'An Investigation of the Laws of Case in Language,' 1840. 4. 'Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect, with a Dissertation and Glossary,' London, 1844, 12mo; 1848, 1852; 4th edit. 1850. 5. 'Se Gefylsta: an Anglo-Saxon Delectus,' London, 1849 and 1866. 6. 'Humilis Domus : some Thoughts on the Abodes, Life, and Social Condition of the Poor, especially in Dorsetshire,' 1849. 7. 'A Philological Grammar grounded upon English and formed from a Comparison of more than Sixty Languages. Being an Introduction to the Science of Grammar in all Languages, especially English, Latin, and Greek,' London, 1854, 8vo. 8. 'Hwomely Rhymes: a second Collection of Poems in the Dorset Dialect,' London, 1859 [1858], 8vo; 2nd edit. 1863. 9. 'Notes on Ancient Britain and the Britons,' London, 1858, 8vo. 10. 'Views of Labour and Gold,' London, 1859. 11. 'Tiw; or, a View of the Roots and Stems of the English as a Teutonic Tongue,' London, 1862, 8vo. 12. 'A Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, with the History, Outspreading, and Bearings of South-Western English,' Berlin, 1863, 8vo (for the Philological Society). 13. 'Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect: third Collection,' London, 1863, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1870. 14. 'Poems of Rural Life in common English,' London, 1868. As with the dialect poems, these are remarkable by the absence of words of Latin origin. Several are in dialogue form, and one or two (such as 'Home's a Nest') unsurpassed for homely pathos. 15. 'Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect: the three Collections combined, with a Glossary,' London, 1879, 8vo. 16. 'Early England and the Saxon English,' London, 1869, 8vo. 17. 'An Outline of English Speechcraft,' London, 1878, 8vo. 18. 'An Outline of Redecraft or Logic,' London, 1879, 8vo. He contributed largely to the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' the 'Retrospective Review,' also to 'Fraser's' and 'Macmillan's,' in addition to occasional papers in the 'Transactions' of the British Archæological and the Somerset Archæological societies. Several of his letters and extracts from his diary, written in many different languages, but mainly in Italian and Welsh, are given in the 'Life' by Barnes's daughter, Mrs. Lucy Baxter ('Leader Scott'), published with a portrait of the poet in 1887.
[Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist, 1887; Times, 9 Oct. 1886; Athenæum, 1886, ii, 501 (by Mr. Thomas Hardy); Academy, 23 Oct. 1886, Doyle's Lectures on Poetry, 1869, pp. 55–75; Miles's Poets and Poetry of the Century, iii. 397; The Eagle Mag. xiv. 231; Fortnightly Review, November 1886; Macmillan's Mag. vi. 154; North British Review, xxxi. 339; Mayo's Bibliotheca Dorsetiensis, 1885, pp. 18, 19, 64–5; Spectator, 16 Oct., 23 Oct., and 20 Nov. 1886; World, 13 Oct. 1886; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
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