IN MEMORIAM. XXI. 



his poems with " a purpose." With such a purpose (everywhere 

 evident in his poems) as that with which the bird sings, that 

 is from the love that was in his heart and the instinct within his 

 soul he, certainly, always wrote. I leave criticism, therefore, if 

 such be possible, to others. Another thing I think is notable 

 in respect to the Dorset poems ; there is, if I do not mistake, 

 not even the smallest reference there to any of the social sins 

 or vices of peasant life. In one only such a reference may 

 perhaps be found (Complete collection of the poems, p. 382), but 

 only there as the product of evil in a higher rank of life, 

 where the selfishness of idle vice has prevailed over the 

 peasant child's ignorant innocence. Each poem is a picture 

 true to life, without a touch too much or too little, and never 

 a touch put in for mere effect. Those who have lived amongst, 

 and loved, rural life, will, I think, see and feel this. Each 

 poem, as it is read thus, satisfies the reader just as the picture 

 itself, if viewed in Nature, would satisfy. If this is, as I 

 think, the perfection of poetry, then certainly Mr. BARNES 

 approached perfection as a poet. I have remarked that he seldom 

 or never wrote his poems " with a purpose," nor ever scarcely 

 brought forward the frail or bad side of his country folk, but it 

 was not that he was ignorant of the latter, or did not desire to 

 have it as he wished to see it and sung of it No ! it would 

 simply have been, in his view and intention, a distortion and 

 blurring of what he saw and felt to have used his powers of song 

 to denounce, or even to correct. Much rather would he look upon 

 country life, wherever possible, from its humorous side, and this 

 he did in his poems, as many of them so abundantly testify. He 

 was indeed possessed with a very keen sense of humour, his laugh, 

 at any sally of genuine wit or humour, was the most infectious 

 that I ever met with ; it must have been a dull-witted one indeed 

 who could fail to be caught by and to join in it. It has been 

 remarked, and with truth, that throughout a volume of nearly 

 500 pages of poems there is no allusion to the sea, the 

 seaside and its concomitants, or to mountains ; but this, if it 



