Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BAI-BAR |
|
|
BARNES, WILLIAM (1800-1886) , the Dorsetshire poet, was born on the 22nd of February 'Soo, 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
village
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
Cambridge , and took the degree of B.D. in 185o. He resigned Whitcombe in 1852, finding the work too hard in connexion with his mastership; and in June of that year he sustained a severe bereavement by the death of his wife. Continuing his studies in the science of language, he published his Philological Grammar in 1854, drawing examples. from more than sixty languages. For the copyright of this erudite work he received 5. The second series of dialect poems, Hwomely Rhymes, appeared in 1859 (2nd ed. 1863). Hwomely Rhymes contained some of his best-known pieces, and in the year of its publication he first began to give readings from his works. As their reputation grew he travelled all over the country, delighting large audiences with his quaint humour and natural pathos. In 1861 he was awarded a civil list
removed to the rectory of Winterborne Came, to which he was presented by his old friend, Captain Seymour Dawson Darner. Here he worked continuously at verse and prose, contributing largely to the magazines. A new series of Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect appeared in 1862, and he was persuaded in 1868 to publish a series of Poems of Rural Life in Common English, which was less successful than his dialect poems. These latter were collected into a single volume in 1879, and on the 7th of October 1886 Barnes died at Winterborne Came. His poetry is essentially English in character; no other writer has given quite so simple and sincere a picture of the homely life and labour of rural England. His work is full of humour and the clean, manly joy of life; and its rusticity is singularly allied to a literary sense and to high technical finish. He is indeed the Victorian Theocritus; and, as English country life is slowly swept away before the advance of the railway and the telegraph, he will be more and more read for his warm-hearted and fragrant record of rustic love and piety. His original
See The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist (1887), by his daughter, Lucy E. Baxter, who is known as a writer on art by the pseudonym of Leader Scott; and a notice by Thomas Hardy
Athenaeum
End of Article: BARNES, WILLIAM (1800-1886) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/BAI_BAR/BARNES_WILLIAM_1800_1886_.html"> BARNES, WILLIAM (1800-1886) </a> |
|
|
(Previous) BARNES, W |
(Next) BARNET |
|
Sponsored Advertisements