Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Barnes, William
BARNES, The Rev. William, B.D., was born at Rushhay, Bagber, a hamlet of Sturminster Newton, in the vale of Blackmore, Dorset. He is descended from a family who, in the time of Philip and Mary, held Mageston, in the parish of Gillingham, and to one of whom (William Barnes) land in Gillingham was granted in the 31st of Henry VIII., though later generations (from 1732) had lost their lands and were farmers at East Stower and Manston. Most of his higher scholarship, with his university degree, has been won by a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. Mr. Barnes kept, for some years, a school at Dorchester, and he had some pupils who studied for service in India, and whom he forwarded in the elements of Hindoostanée and Persian. He was appointed to the curacy of Whitcombe, Dorset, in 1847; and was instituted to the rectory of Winterbourne Came, Dorchester, in 1862. He is the author of three volumes of "Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect," "A Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect," "A Philological Grammar, grounded upon English, and formed from a comparison of more than sixty Languages: being an Introduction to the Science of Grammars of all Languages, especially English, Latin, and Greek;" "Tiw; or, a View of the Roots and Stems of the English as a Teutonic Tongue;" "An Anglo-Saxon Delectus, including Extracts from Anglo-Saxon History and the Saxon Chronicle;" "Notes on Ancient Britain and the Britons," being the result of his collections for a course of Lectures on this subject; "Views of Labour and Gold;" "Early England and the Saxon English;" "Rural Poems in common English," of which a handsome illustrated edition has been printed in America; "An Outline of English Speechcraft," and "An Outline of Redecraft." In early life he contributed about twenty-five letters on topographical and other subjects to the Gentleman's Magazine, with some wood-cuts by his own hand. He has other works ready for the press, viz.:—another volume of Poems; an enlarged "Glossary of the Dorset Dialect;" "Studies in Early British History, with Notes on the Cause and Laws of the Changes of Initial Consonants in Welsh;" and "Ruth," a short drama from the Bible.