Born, near Pentridge, Dorsetshire [22 Feb. ?] 1801; baptized 20 March. At school at Sturminster; entered Solicitor’s office there, 1814 or 1815; to another at Dorchester, 1818. Contrib., verses to “Weekly Entertainer,” 1820. Took Mastership of School, at Mere, Wiltshire, 1823; settled at Chantry House, Mere, 1827; Married Julia Miles [summer of 1827?]. Contrib. to “Dorset County Chronicle,” 1827–35; to “Gentleman’s Mag.,” 1831–41. Two farces by him performed by travelling dramatic company, 1832; contrib. to “Hone’s Year Book,” 1832. Wrote first poems in Dorsetshire dialect, 1833. Gave up school at Mere and opened one in Dorchester, 1835. Entered name on books of St. John’s Coll., Cambridge, 1837. Intimacy with Sheridan begun, 1844. Visit to London, June, 1844. Sec. of Dorset County Museum at its foundation, 1845. Ordained Deacon, 28 Feb. 1847; Priest, 14 March 1848; Pastor of Whitcombe, near Dorchester, Feb. 1847 to Jan. 1852. Resided three terms at St. John’s College, Cambridge, 1847, 1848, 1850; B.D. degree, Oct. 1850. Visit to London, 1851. Wife died, 21 June, 1852. Contrib. to “Retrospective Review,” 1853–54. Civil List Pension, April 1861; contrib., to “Macmillan’s Magazine,” 1861–67. Presented with Rectorship of Came, Jan. 1862. Gave up school and removed to Came, July 1862. Friendship with Tennyson and Coventry Patmore begun, 1862. Contrib. to “Fraser’s Magazine,” 1863; to “Ladies’ Treasury,” 1863–67. Gave reading of his poems, 1863–65. Active literary life. Severe illness, 1884. Died, at Came, 11 Oct. 1886; buried there. Works: “Orra,” 1822; “The Etymological Glossary,” 1829; “A Catechism of Government in General,” 1833; “The Mnemonic Manual,” 1833; “A Few Words on the Advantages of a more common adoption of Mathematics as a branch of Education,” 1834; “A Mathematical Investigation of the principle of Hanging Doors,” 1835; “An Investigation of the Laws of Case,” 1840; “An Arithmetical and Commercial Dictionary,” 1841; “A Pronouncing Dictionary of Geographical Names,” 1841; “The Elements of Grammar,” 1842; “The Elements of Linear Perspective,” 1842; “Exercises in Practical Science,” 1844; “Sabbath Days,” 1844; “Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect,” 1844; “Poems, partly of Rural Life, in national English,” 1846; “Outlines of Geography,” 1847; “Se Gefylsta,” 1849; “Humilis Domus,” 1849; “A Philological Grammar,” 1854; “Notes on Ancient Britain and the Britons,” 1858; “Hwomely Rhymes: a second collection of poems in the Dorset dialect,” 1859; “Views of Labour and Gold,” 1859; “The Song of Solomon, in the Dorset Dialect” (privately printed), 1859; “Tiw,” 1862; “A Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect,” 1864; “Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect: third collection,” 1862; “A Guide to Dorchester,” 1864; “Poems of Rural Life in Common English,” 1868; “Early England and the Saxon English,” 1869; “A Paper on Somerset,” 1869; “An Outline of English Speechcraft,” 1878; “Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect” (collections i.–iii. together), 1879; “An Outline of Redecraft,” 1880; “A Glossary of the Dorset Dialect,” 1886. He edited: J. Poole’s “Glossary and Some Pieces of Verse of the Old Dialect, etc.,” 1867. Life: by his daughter, Lucy Baxter, 1887.

Personal

  Mr. Barnes has a face of the finest Saxon type, its natural strength filtered, so to say, and refined through generations of pure and thoughtful life. His features are regular, his forehead high, broad, and serene, his mouth wears a kindly smile, and his snow-white hair and beard—the latter falling almost to his breast—form a fit frame for a countenance at once venerable and vivacious. He wears an antique Dorset gentleman’s dress, with black silk stockings fastened at the knee with buckles, a costume decidedly quaint, and at first seeming to be the Episcopal costume. What most struck me about him was the look of spiritual and intellectual health, and the expression of these in his soft blue eyes, and in his clear flexible voice. I could not help feeling some surprise that he should be a clergyman, as the traits and tone of the literary man seemed to be so preponderant in him.

  If a Dorset man, who loves his country, cannot write of William Barnes without affectionate bias, fellow-natives will easily forgive him; and the kind alien reader will add the needful grain of salt to this brief notice of the poet who has just closed a long and honoured life, spent wholly in the county of his birth, of his heart, and of his song. Among my earliest memories are his face and figure, when he was master of a school in Dorchester, which he left some twenty-four years since for the care of a neighbouring village. There, in quiet activity, he passed the rest of his days; a delightful neighbour and friend, a pious, wise, and kindly clergyman (not unlike him that Chaucer drew). None who knew him can forget the charm of his society and conversation. He was enthusiastic on matters philological and antiquarian, and brought to bear on them abundant originality and varied and curious learning. But no subject of human interest came amiss to him; only of his own poetry he did not care to talk. Talk of it or not, however, he could not talk it. His habitual cast of thought and sentiment seemed to be just what one sees, heightened and rhythmic, in his poems.

  Notwithstanding the wide appreciation of his verse both here and in America, so largely local were the poet’s interests that it may be questioned if the enthusiasm which accompanied his own readings of his works in the town-halls of the shire was not more grateful to him than the admiration of a public he had never seen. The effect, indeed, of his recitations upon an audience well acquainted with the nuances of the dialect—impossible to impart to outsiders by any kind of translation—can hardly be imagined by readers of his lines acquainted only with English in its customary form. The poet’s own mild smile at the boisterous merriment provoked by his droll delivery of such pieces as “The Shy Man,” “A Bit o’ Sly Coorten,” and “Dick and I” returns upon the memory as one of the most characteristic aspects of a man who was nothing if not genial; albeit that, while the tyranny of his audience demanded these broadly humorous productions, his own preferences were for the finer and more pathetic poems, such as “Wife a-lost,” “Woak Hill,” and “Jaäy a-past.”… Few young people who have seen him only in latter years, since the pallor and stoop of old age overcame him, can realize the robust, upright form of his middle life, the ruddy cheek, and the bright quick eye. The last, indeed, dimmed but slightly, and even on his death-bed his zest for the subject of speech-form was strong as ever. In one of his latest conversations he became quite indignant at the word “bicycle.” “Why didn’t they call it ‘wheel-saddle’?” he exclaimed. Though not averse to social intercourse, his friendships extended over but a small area of society.

  So uniformly mild were his manners and language that he was often suspected of being deficient in determination and spirit; a suspicion which in reality had no very solid justification; but Barnes was such a decided advocate of peace at any price that he would never, except when driven by sheer necessity, enter any arena as a probable disputant…. Barnes was of medium height, stoutly built, and his face, though instinct with profound and, as it were, quiet intelligence, was composed of somewhat heavy features. It is noticeable that in very early manhood his head was as bald as it was at the latest period of his life…. Not only whilst he was in the schoolroom, but throughout the day, Barnes usually—constantly, I was about to say—wore, in all seasons, clement or inclement, a long, light-blue, rough-faced, flannel-textured dressing gown. In fact, during the whole time—four or five years—that I was numbered among his pupils, I rarely saw him otherwise attired: and now, whenever he presents himself to my imagination, he invariably wears the well-remembered garment: to me that long-flowing gown is inseparably associated with the man.

General

  Mr. Barnes, with an accurate estimate, I think, not so much of his own powers, as of the powers and resources of his Dorsetshire Doric, has confined himself to the lyrical interpretation of such simple emotions as arise out of the simple drama of an average country life. I refer this absence of ambitious aim, in his little odes, to the nature of his dialect, rather than to any deficiency in himself; because I do not choose to believe, though some such assumption is constantly made, that the art of doing one thing very well implies that you are to do everything else particularly ill…. As a rule, his little pieces exhibit a delicate grace and a completeness not unworthy of Horace…. At the time, moreover, when I began to turn this lecture over in my mind several laudatory articles referring to him, which have recently appeared, were still unwritten. I do not, however, regret the labour which I have given to the subject; he deserves, unless I deceive myself, all and more than all, the notice which he has obtained; and I am happy to find the conclusions, at which I had arrived in this matter, fortified by the unanimous concurrence of so many able critics. It is surely no light praise for an author, by one and the same work, to render valuable services to philology, and to secure, without requiring a particle of indulgence on any ground of dialect, the renown of a distinguished poet.

  His poems seldom exhibit a very striking thought, or perhaps even a very original expression; but they all have a sort of atmosphere of homely romance which renders them genuinely poetical. Yet the reader cannot help regretting their faintness, while he acknowledges their delicacy.

  To this primary claim to an abiding place among such minor classics as Herbert, Suckling, Herrick, Burns, and Blake, William Barnes adds that of a sustained perfection of art with which none of them can compare. His language has the continual slight novelty which Aristotle inculcates as proper to true poetic expression, and something much higher than the curiosa felicitas, which has been absurdly rendered “curious felicity,” but which means the “careful luck” of him who tries many words, and has the wit to know when memory, or the necessity of metre or rhyme, has supplied him unexpectedly with those which are perhaps even better than he knew how to desire. The words of Barnes are not the carefully made clothes, but the body of his thoughts and feelings. Another still rarer praise of his work is that he never stops in it till he has said all that should be said, and never exceeds that measure by a syllable; and about this art there is not the slightest apparent consciousness either of its abundant fulness or its delicate reticence. He seems, in fact, never to have written except under the sense of a subject that makes its own form, and of feelings which form their own words—that is to say, he is always classic both in form and substance.

  With the exception of a few pieces by Tennyson, and the more disputable exception of one or two songs in the Lancashire dialect, Mr. Barnes’s “Poems of Rural Life” are the only compositions in any English “folk-speech” that have won an acknowledged place in the national literature. There is little danger in predicting that these charming idylls will continue to be read with admiration and delight when many a more conspicuous poetic reputation of the present day has long been forgotten.

  Unlike Burns, Bélanger, and other poets of the people, Mr. Barnes never assumed the high conventional style; and he entirely leaves alone ambition, pride, despair, defiance, and other of the grander passions which move mankind great and small. His rustics are, as a rule, happy people, and very seldom feel the sting of the rest of modern mankind—the disproportion between the desire for serenity and the power of obtaining it. One naturally thinks of Crabbe in this connection; but though they touch at points, Crabbe goes much further than Barnes in questioning the justice of circumstance. Their pathos, after all, is the attribute upon which the poems must depend for their endurance; and the incidents which embody it are those of every-day cottage life, tinged throughout with that “light that never was,” which the emotional art of the lyrist can project upon the commonest things. It is impossible to prophesy, but surely much English literature will be forgotten when “Woak Hill” is still read for its intense pathos, “Blackmore Maidens,” for its blitheness, and “In the Spring” for its Arcadian ecstasy.

  By far the best rural poet South Britain ever had, followed no model but nature.

  We have in English nothing equal to them. Mr. Barnes’s Lancaster Ballads are admirable, but they have not the easy truth to nature of these sonnets of Belli.

  The verses of Barnes, like his studies, bear all the marks of the English character. No English poet, of first rank, has ever been so free from foreign influence in any age. “I do not want,” he said, “to be trammelled with the thoughts and style of other poets, and I take none as my model, except the Persian and Italian, on which I have framed some, as regards only metre and rhyme.” This is notable. Barnes never gets beyond his Dorsetshire fields. Many, since another English poet as he, Nicholas of Guilford, six hundred years before, wrote, also in Dorsetshire, his “Owl and the Nightingale,” have written out of the pure love of their native country, but none have written so singly. Barnes is like one of our forest oaks, so typical of English landscape. His verse, like Langland’s, is full of righteousness; like Chaucer’s, it is filled with the joy of life.—More rustic than Crabbe, more literary than Clare, there are no eclogues in the English language which can compare, in perfection of touch, with the prototypes of Theocritus and Virgil, save only those which are to be found in the poetry of William Barnes.

  The landscape of this admirable poet in all its details is presented to us simply as it presented itself to his eye and heart—simply as a pleasure to the mind; perfectly truthful, yet not itself dwelt on or moralised. It is with him the fit, the ever-present background to human life in the country, for Dorset to Barnes forms his England. Wholly modern, almost wholly devoted to his simple neighbours; purely Christian as was his work in song—yet its truest parallels may be found in many lyrics of Horace and the Greek “Anthology.” They are alike in admirably accurate and appropriate glimpses of Nature, in the variety of characters exhibited, in tenderness of feeling, in exquisite simplicity, in perfect poetical unity…. We have no one, Crabbe excepted, who has approached him in the multitude of his scenes and characters, taken almost wholly from the village life of his birth-county—pictures which, though not excluding its darker aspects, yet often display healthy labour and healthy happiness; whilst, turning to their qualities as art, these endless lyrics never fail in sweet simple words, set to sweet simple music, in metres most skilfully handled or invented; never fail, lastly, in a unity and felicity of treatment which has been justly compared to the exquisite skill of Horace. Various tests have been proposed of genuine feeling for poetry. As one, I would venture to add—a true appreciation of William Barnes.

  The great charm of his poetry is its perfect freshness. The Dorset poems are eclogues, wholly free from the artificiality which commonly mars compositions of that class; they are clear, simple, rapid and natural. There is no affectation of profound thought, and no straining after passion, but a wholly unaffected love for the country and all that lives and grows there. The vital importance of language to poetry is nowhere more clearly seen than in Barnes, for all the spirit of the Dorset poems evaporates, and all the colour fades from the specimens the poet was induced to publish in literary English.