BARNES, Rev. WILLIAM, poet and philologist, is author of three collections of poems written in the dialect of Dorsetshire, the first entitled Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, with a Dissertation and Glossary (Loud. 1844); the second, ilitonaly Rhymes, etc. (Loud. 1859); and the third, Poems of Rural Life, etc. (Loud. 1862). The first of these collections reached a second edition in 1847, showing that at least some interest was taken even at that early period in Mr. B.'s " hwuniely rhymes." They were not critically uotieed, however, so far as has been ascertained, until Nov. 1859, when a highly eulo gistic review of them appeared in the North British Review, pronouncing 31r. B. to be " the best writer of rustic eclogues since Theocritus." The reviewer also says, speaking of Mr. B,'s poetry, "that it combines in a high degree the special merits of Wordsworth and Burns, but in a way which is so perfectly original, as to bear no trace of even a perusal of those poets by the author." Such praise, although exaggerated, is not alto gether without foundation. Mr. B. is a true poet, combining with a genuine love of nature, as seen in the rich grazing-lands of Dorsetshire, a keen sympathy with the rustic population, their hopes and fears, loves, joys, sorrows, and superstitious. It is for this audience that Mr. B. professed to write, and it is only such that can thoroughly appre ciate his verse. He has, however, also written a collection of poems. called Poems of Rural Life in. Common English (1868). Attention was again called to Mr. B.'s poems by a writer in Macmillan's Magazine for June, 1862, in an articleevidently front the same pen as that in the North British, and claiming for Mr. B. a at the very head of the
properly idyllic poetry of England." In that article, we are informed that in the previous year (1861), the pension-list, which announced a yearly grant of £50 to Mr. Close, in con sideration of his deserts us a poet, mentioned one scarcely larger in amount conferred on Mr. B. in consideration of his acquirements as a philologist. B. was born of humble parentage at Rush-hay, Bagber, Dorsetshire, in 1810, and was for many years master of the grammar-school at Dorchester. He is B.D. of St. John's college, Cambridge, was ordained in 1817, and was promoted from the curacy of Whiteombe to the rectory of Winterbourn-Came, in Dorset, in 1862. Besides the collections of poems mentioned, Mr. B. is author of An Investigation of the Laws of Case in Language (Lond. 1840); An Arithmetical and Commercial Dictionary (Load. 1840); The Element's of English Grammar (Lund. 1842); The Elements of Linear Perspective (Loud. 1842); S. Geffysta (the Helper): an .Angfo-Sadton Deleetus (Lend. 1819); NOW on Ancient Britain and the Britons (Loud. 1858); Views of Lahor and Gold (Land. 1850); The Song of Solomon in the Dorset Dialect, from the authorized English Version (Lond. 1859)—printed at the expense of prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte; Time, or a View of the Roots and Stems Of the English as a Teutonic Tingue (Load. 1862); Thirty England awl Saxon English (1869). The philological works of Mr. B. show considerable learning and ability.