xv j. IN MEMOBIAM. 



list of his works is also appended. Some of these are now not 

 known to many, even by name ; and probably few have been read 

 or studied. On two of them I shall offer a few more detailed 

 observations, viz., his poems in the Dorset dialect, and one 

 entitled " Views on Labour and Gold," on which last I have not 

 seen or heard any remark made amidst the much that has been 

 said and written on the former. I have not attempted to give 

 any classification of Mr. BARNES' works, but have drawn out the 

 list in chronological order, as, in fact, he himself drew it up in his 

 later years, and, as by the kindness of his son (the Rev. W. M. 

 Barnes, Rector of Winterborne Monkton), I am enabled to give it. 

 Mr. BARNES' birthplace was Rushhay, Bagber (or Bagberry), a 

 hamlet of Sturminster Newton, in the Vale of Blackmoor, Dorset. 

 It seems that his family had been anciently landowners in or near 

 the Vale, but had subsequently become tenant-farmers there ; and 

 it was in the place above mentioned that his parents, John and 

 Grace Barnes, were living at the time of Mr. W. BARNES' birth in 

 1801. From his mother (Grace Scott) he appears to have 

 inherited strong intellectual and poetical tastes, which, becoming 

 marked as he grew up, it was decided to place him in some line 

 of life above that of the toilsome work of the farm. He 

 accordingly, at a very early age, entered the office of a solicitor 

 Mr. Dashwood at Sturminster Newton as an engrossing clerk, 

 and from thence afterwards (in 1818) he removed to occupy a 

 similar post in the office of Mr. Coombs, Solicitor, Dorchester. 

 During the time of these clerkships (about seven or eight years) 

 Mr. BARNES never lost a chance of acquiring knowledge on every 

 possible subject, laying the foundation of his future great 

 knowledge of languages, and qualifying himself for the Mastership 

 of the Boarding School at Mere, Wiltshire ; to this post he was 

 appointed in 1823, and we find him described in 1829 as 

 " Teacher of Perspective and Drawing, and of the Latin, French, 

 Italian, and German languages." With Italian he seems to have 

 become conversant some time before this date, as in 1827 he 

 published translations in verse from the Italian of Metastasio. It was 



