BOOKS.

THE LIFE OF WILLIAM BARNES.*

THE verses of William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, present so many strange and interesting problems in connection with the explanation of their origin, that the opportunity for solving them which is presented by the Life of the poet just published by his daughter will be eagerly welcomed by all lovers of English verse. Those who read William Barnes's poems without knowing anything of his life, ask in astonishment,—How is it possible that such art and such learning are to be found side by side with such perfect spontaneity of feeling? Perfect art may and does produce sim- plicity. It cannot produce that passion and directness which have been given to few poets in any age,—hardly to any, except to William Barnes, in our own. In other words, how could a man feel for the world around him like a peasant, and yet express his • The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist. By his Daughter, Lacy Baxter ("Leader Scott "). London Macmillan and Os. 1887.

thoughts in away which has made one of the most accomplished critics of the age declare that there has been no such art since Horace P Another problem as perplexing arises with the question, —Does the idyllic world he paints exist now, or did it exist within his memory P Is it possible that Dorset villagers ever feel as the narrator felt in " The Love-Child," "The Child an' the Mowers," " The Stwonen Bwoy," or " The Wold Wall" P These questions are to a great extent answered in the record of William Barnes's life. Yet when we have discovered how great and bow varied was the scope of the poet's studies, we are still at a loss to know bow it was that the weight of his learning did not crush to death the life and vigour of his verse. Fancy the daring pedantry of such an act as adopting some of the most compli- cated artifices of Persian prosody into a Dorsetshire ballad ! Yet this was done, and done successfully, by Barnes in " Woak Hill,"—a poem the measure of which will perhaps not be accept- able to all, but which, at any rate, has none of the formality or frigidity usually to be found in metrical experiments.

William Barnes was sprung from a family which for many generations held lands in the county of Dorset. By the beginning of the century, however, the Barnes family had sunk into the position of tenant-farmers. William Barnes's father was 'a farmer in the vale of Blackmore. His mother—Grace Scott— seems from her love of art and literature to have been a woman above the ordinary level of farmers' wives in culture and refine- ment. Barnes's education was apparently somewhat higher than that of an ordinary village lad, for he attended an old endowed school for boys and girls at Stourmineter. From this school he passed straight into the office of a local solicitor,—a piece of promotion owed by the boy to his good penmanship. The opportunity thus offered him was fortunate, for it enabled him to earn his livelihood by work other than that of the fields. His delicately formed hands were meant to hold the pen rather than the plough, and a farmer's life would never have suited him. With his introduction to the solicitor's office began William Barnes's real education. His passionate love of learning induced him, even while a clerk, to attempt a number of studies of a very abstruse kind. By the time he was twenty- two, he writes in his diary, "I took up, in turn, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German. I began Persian with Lee's grammar, and, for a little time, Russian." In all these studies, except Russian, Barnes persevered, often assisting himself in the task by keeping his diary in the language he wanted to learn. At Dorchester, to which town he removed to take a place in the office of another solicitor, he fell in love with the girl whom he soon after made his wife. To enable him to earn a sufficient income to marry, William Barnes gave up his clerkship and became a schoolmaster at Mere, in Wiltshire. Here Barnes and his young wife spent the happiest years of their lives. Though poor, the school brought them enough to live on, and Barnes found in his studies and the delights of a country life, the opportunity of culti- vating that sweetness and serenity of temperament which always distinguished him in his trials and successes. The extraordinary mental activity which characterised him in later life seems to have shown itself during his stay at Mere. Not content with his school labours and his own studies, he found time to practise wood-engraving, to learn the flute, the violin, and the piano. The picture which his biographer gives us of the life led by Barnes and his friends during this time is a very pleasant one. It is interesting to think what a life of real culture and refine- ment was being led in an obscure Wiltshire village sixty years ago. Into all the details of the Dorsetshire poet's life during the sixty years which elapsed between the publication of his first and last works, it would not be possible to enter. After remaining at Mere some years, he returned to Dorchester, and there set up a school of a more ambitious kind. Pupils soon sought so good a master, and for a considerable time the school grew large and flourished. It was during this period that Barnes entered his name at Cambridge, and qualified himself for the Orders which he took when in middle life. In the years 1833 and 1834 the first poems in the Dorset dialect appeared in the columns of the Dorset County Chronicle. Among these were "The Common a-took in," "The Lotments," "The House Ridding," "A Bit of Sly Coorten,"—poems which every lover of Barnes will recognise as some of his very best work. How Barnes gradually published his poems and collected them, how he made acquaintance through these poems with many of the moat distinguished men of the day, and how he became the special pride of Dorsetshire men, can only be mentioned here. It is enough to notice how, after many struggles, he obtained the longed-for rest and quiet among the country people whom he loved so well, by being appointed Rector of the parish of Came, where during the last twenty years of his life he was enabled to lead an existence well fitted for a poet and a scholar. His one great sorrow was the loss of his wife, —a loss which, if it did not actually leave a shadow on his sub- sequent life, at least broke down that extraordinary joyousness of temperament which was so conspicuous in his earlier days.

Those who look upon Barnes merely as a poet, will perhaps be disappointed to find so much of his biography given up to accounts of his philological studies. Though we confess to some such feeling ourselves, we can hardly complain that a daughter should have held that she was not fulfilling her trust had she done otherwise. Since Barnes valued his philological studies quite as highly as his poetry, it would have been impossible for his daughter to have passed them over. Without wishing to pronounce on the value of his philological work, we cannot help feeling that the chief interest attaching to him as a man of learning, is in his mental resemblance to some of the great English scholars of the seventeenth century. Like them, he had read not a little, but a great deal, of everything. Like them, he had no notion of splitting learning into isolated frag- ments, and studying one portion to the exclusion of the others. Because he loved philology, he did not think it necessary to be ignorant of natural science. Because he studied the Roman roads of Britain and the barrows of the Stone Age, his mind was not incapable of paying attention to the questions of Currency and Free-trade. Perhaps the specialist may push furthest in discovery ; but for all that, the man who is not afraid of studying and expressing his opinion on more subjects than his one hobby, is a type not to be despised.

The present work is well illustrated with quotations from the poems. One poem, however, is, if we remember rightly, not to be found in any of the recent reprints. A few lines may be quoted, since they are, perhaps, Barnes's most successful attempt to write in ordinary English. The poet is describing his own country nurture :-

" I spent in woodland shades my day In cheerful work or happy play,

And slept at night where rustling leaves Threw moonlight shadows o'er my eaves.

I knew you young, and love you now, O shining grass and shady bough !

Or in the grassy drove by ranks Of white-stemmed ashes, or by banks Of narrow lanes, in winding round The hedgy sides of shelving ground ; Where low-shot light struck in to end Again at some cool-shaded bend, Where we might see through dark-leaved boughs The evening light on green hill brows.

I knew you young, and love you now,

O shining grass and shady bough!"

No one can deny not only the exquisite landscape-painting of these lines, but the magic ring of the verse ; yet can it be said that they can compare for a moment with Barnes at his beet in the dialect poems P Take the following lines from "The Child an' the Mowers," a poem :which describes a little boy killed by sun-stroke in the hay-field

"He went out to the mowers in mad,

When the sun wer a-rose to his height, An' the men wer a-swingen the snead,

Wi their earns in white sleeves, left an' right ; An' out there, as they rested at noon,

0 ! they drench'd eu vrom etile.horns too deer, Till his thoughts wer a-drown'd in a swoon ; Aye ! his life wer a-smotherd in sleep.

Then they laid en there-right on the ground, On a grass-heap, a- zweltrea wi' bet, Wi' his heiiir all a-wetted around His young fetes, wi' the big drops o' sweat ; In his little left palm he'd a-set, Wi' his right hand, his vore-vingees tip, As for zome'hat he woulden vorget,— Aye ! some thought that he woollen let slip.

Then they took en in hwome to his bed, An' he rose vrom his pillow non m wore, Vor the curls on his sleek little head To be blown by the wind out o' door.

Vor he died while the hay russled grey On the etaddle so lately begun :

Lik' the mown-grass a-dried by the day,—

Aye ! the swath-flow'r's a-killed by the sun."

It is impossible to say anything adequate of these verses, which touch the heart with a charm something akin to that which breathes from Bellini's child-pictures. How exquisite, too, is the feeling for Nature in the last line ! Whoever has walked across a hayfield has noticed that in a swath of newly

cut hay, the flowers have been withered by the sun, though the grass on which they lie looks fresh and green. To liken the dead child to one of the sun-killed flowers in the swath, was a touch worthy of the greatest of idyllic poets. This, however, is not the occasion to criticise Barnes's poetry in detail. We must conclude our notice of the poet's life by expressing our satisfaction at the way in which his daughter has discharged her duty.