When one is at the same time a linguist, a musician, an antiquary, a profound student of philology, and skilled withal in the graphic arts, it would seem inevitable that he should have more than a local reputation; but when, in 1844, a thin volume entitled ’Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect’ appeared in London, few bookshop frequenters had ever heard of the author.  But he was already well known throughout Dorset, and there he was content to be known; a welcome guest in castle and hall, but never happier than when, gathering about him the Jobs and Lettys with whom Thomas Hardy has made us familiar, he delighted their ears by reciting his verses.  The dialect of Dorset, he boasted, was the least corrupted form of English; therefore to commend it as a vehicle of expression and to help preserve his mother tongue from corruption, and to purge it of words not of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic origin,—­this was one of the dreams of his life,—­he put his impressions of rural scenery and his knowledge of human character into metrical form.  He is remembered by scholars here and there for a number of works on philology, and one (’Outline of English Speech-Craft’) in which, with zeal, but with the battle against him, he aimed to teach the English language by using words of Teutonic derivation only; but it is through his four volumes of poems that he is better remembered.  These include ‘Hwomely Rhymes’ (1859), ‘Poems of Rural Life’ (1862), and ’Poems of Rural Life in Common English’ (1863).  The three collections of dialect poems were brought out in one volume, with a glossary, in 1879.

“A poet fresh as the dew,” “The first of English purely pastoral poets,” “The best writer of eclogues since Theocritus,”—­these are some of the tardy tributes paid him.  With a sympathy for his fellow-man and a humor akin to that of Burns, with a feeling for nature as keen as Wordsworth’s, though less subjective, and with a power of depicting a scene with a few well-chosen epithets which recalls Tennyson, Barnes has fairly earned his title to remembrance.

‘The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist,’ written by his daughter, Mrs. Baxter, was published in 1887.  There are numerous articles relating to him in periodical literature, one of which, a sketch by Thomas Hardy, in Vol. 86 of the ‘Athenaeum,’ is of peculiar interest.

     BLACKMWORE MAIDENS

     The primrwose in the sheaede do blow,
        The cowslip in the zun,
     The thyme upon the down do grow,
        The clote where streams do run;
     An’ where do pretty maidens grow
        An’ blow, but where the tow’r
     Do rise among the bricken tuns,
        In Blackmwore by the Stour?

     If you could zee their comely gait,
        An’ pretty feaeces’ smiles,
     A-trippen on so light o’ waight,
        An’ steppen off the stiles;
     A-gwain to church, as bells do swing
        An’ ring ’ithin the tow’r,
     You’d own the pretty maidens’ pleaece
        Is Blackmwore by the Stour?