Born at London, Jan. 10, 1654: died Aug. 3, 1712. An English classical scholar and antiquarian, appointed professor of Greek at Cambridge in 1695. He was a voluminous writer, but is not in high repute as a scholar. His “Gerania, or the Discovery of a Better Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies,” is his best-known work. He published an edition of Homer (1710).

Personal

  On the 3d of this month, being Sunday, between 6 and 7 o’clock in the evening, died the famous Mr. Joshua Barnes, S. T. B. and professor of the Greek tongue in the university of Cambridge, as I have been informed, by a letter, dated Aug. 9th, from his wife, Mrs. Mary Barnes. This great man died a very easy death, occasioned by a consumptive cough. He was my great friend and acquaintance, and I look upon him to have been the best Grecian (especially for poetical Greek) in the world. He was withall a man of singular good nature, and never spoke ill of any man, unless provoked to the highest degree.

  Let us exhibit one more picture of the calamities of a laborious author, in the character of Joshua Barnes, editor of Homer, Euripides, and Anacreon, and the writer of a vast number of miscellaneous compositions in history and poetry. Besides the works he published, he left behind him nearly fifty unfinished ones; many were epic poems, all intended to be in twelve books, and some had reached their eighth! His folio volume of “The History of Edward III.” is a labour of valuable research. He wrote with equal facility in Greek, Latin, and his own language, and he wrote all his days; and, in a word, having little or nothing but his Greek professorship, not exceeding forty pounds a year, Barnes, who had a great memory, a little imagination, and no judgment, saw the close of a life, devoted to the studies of humanity, settle around him in gloom and despair. The great idol of his mind was the edition of his Homer, which seems to have completed his ruin; he was haunted all his days with a notion that he was persecuted by envy, and much undervalued in the world; the sad consolation of the secondary and third-rate authors, who often die persuaded of the existence of ideal enemies. To be enabled to publish his Homer at an enormous charge, he wrote a poem, the design of which is to prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad; and it has been said that this was done to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work. This happy pun was applied for his epitaph:—

General

  Above all, Mr. Joshua Barnes has diligently collected whatever was to be had, far and near, upon the several passages of this great King’s [Edw. III.] reign. His quotations are many; and generally, his authors are as well chosen as such a multitude can be supposed to have been. His inferences are not always becoming a statesman; and sometimes his digressions are tedious. His deriving of the famous institution of the Garter from the Phœnicians, is extremely obliging to good Mr. Sammes; but came too late, it seems, to Mr. Ashmole’s knowledge, or otherwise would have bid fair for a choice post of honour in his elaborate book. In short, this industrious author seems to have driven his work too fast to the press, before he had provided an index, and some other accoutrements, which might have rendered it more serviceable to his readers.

  Joshua Barnes, from constantly perusing and talking Greek, had the name of Greek Barnes…. His memory and facility in writing have been greatly extolled. He would, and he always did, quote many Greek passages in conversation. He wrote incessantly, but seldom well…. Absorbed in his studies of Greek authors, he knew nothing of English manners; he would have been at “home” in Athens.

  His facility in writing and speaking Greek was remarkable. He tells us in the parody of Homer, prefixed to his poem on Esther, that he could compose sixty Greek verses in an hour. He also avows in the preface to Esther that he found it much easier to write his annotations in Greek than in Latin, or even in English, “since the ornaments of poetry are almost peculiar to the Greeks, and since he had for many years been extremely conversant in Homer, the great father and source of the Greek poetry.” He could off-hand turn a paragraph in a newspaper, or a hawker’s bill, into any kind of Greek metre, and has been often known to do so among his Cambridge friends. Dr. Bentley used to say of Barnes that he “understood as much Greek as a Greek cobbler:” meaning doubtless by this that he had rather the “colloquial readiness of a vulgar mechanic,” than the erudition, taste, and judgment of a scholar.

  Bentley, in the famous “Dissertation on Phalaris,” describes him as “one of a singular industry and a most diffuse reading.” His enthusiasm led him to undertake work for which he was in no degree qualified. Not content with writing a life of Edward III. and editing Homer, he had determined to write the life of Tamerlane, though he had no knowledge of oriental languages (Cole’s Athenæ). His “Gerania” shows that he had some fancy and could write with ease and fluency. He is said to have been possessed of no little vanity; but this fault can readily be forgiven to one whose charity was such that he gave his only coat to a poor fellow who begged at his door.