f May 1841.

BARNES, WILLIAM (1800-1886), the Dorsetshire poet, was born on the 22nd of
February 1800, at Rushay, near Pentridge in Dorset, the son of John Barnes
and Grace Scott, of the farmer class. He was a delicate child, in direct
contrast to a strong race of forebears, and inherited from his mother a
refined, retiring disposition and a love for books. He went to school at
Sturminster Newton, where he was considered the clever boy of the school;
and when a solicitor named Dashwood applied to the master for a
quick-witted boy to join him as pupil, Barnes was selected for the post. He
worked with the village parson in his spare hours at classics and studied
music under the organist. In 1818 he left Sturminster for the office of one
Coombs at Dorchester, where he continued his evening education with another
kindly clergyman. He also made great progress in the art of wood-engraving,
and with the money he received for a series of blocks for a work called
_Walks about Dorchester_, he printed and published his first book, _Orra, a
Lapland Tale_, in 1822. In the same year he became engaged to Julia Miles,
the daughter of an excise officer. In 1823 he took a school at Mere in
Wiltshire, and four years later married and settled in Chantry House, a
fine old Tudor mansion in that town. The school grew in numbers, and Barnes
occupied all his spare time in assiduous study, reading during these years
authors so diverse in character as Herodotus, Sallust, Ovid, Petrarch,
Buffon and Burns. He also began to write poetry, and printed many of his
verses in the _Dorset County Chronicle_. His chief studies, however, were
philological; and in 1829 he published _An Etymological Glossary of English
Words of Foreign Derivation_. In 1832 a strolling company of actors visited
Mere, and Barnes wrote a farce, _The Honest Thief_, which they produced,
and a comedy which was played at Wincanton. Barnes also wrote a number of
educational books, such as _Elements of Perspective, Outlines of
Geography_, and in 1833 first began his poems in the Dorsetshire dialect,
among them the two eclogues "The 'Lotments" and "A Bit o' Sly Coorten," in
the pages of the local paper. In 1835 he left Mere, and returned to
Dorchester, where he started another school, removing in 1837 into larger
quarters. In 1844 he published _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_.
Three years later Barnes took holy orders, and was appointed to the cure of
Whitcombe, 3 m. from Dorch