1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barnes, Joshua

BARNES, JOSHUA (1654–1712), English scholar, was born in London on the 10th of January 1654. Educated at Christ’s Hospital and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he was in 1695 chosen regius professor of Greek, a language which he wrote and spoke with the utmost facility. One of his first publications was entitled Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies (1675), a whimsical sketch to which Swift’s Voyage to Lilliput possibly owes something. Among his other works are a History of that Most Victorious Monarch Edward III. (1688), in which he introduces long and elaborate speeches into the narrative; editions of Euripides (1694) and of Homer (1711), also one of Anacreon (1705) which contains titles of Greek verses of his own which he hoped to publish. He died on the 3rd of August 1712, at Hemingford, near St Ives, Hunts.