William Barnes (22 February 1801 – 7 October 1886) was an English polymath,[1] writer, poet, philologist,[2] priest, mathematician,[3] engraving artist[4] and inventor.

[4] While he was there he began writing poetry in the Dorset dialect, as well as studying several languages—Italian, Persian, German and French, in addition to Greek and Latin—playing musical instruments (violin, piano, and flute) and practicing wood-engraving.

The architect John Hicks was interested in literature and the classics, and when disputes about grammar occurred in the practice, Hardy visited Barnes for authoritative opinions.

Shortly before his death, he was visited at Old Came Rectory by Thomas Hardy and Edmund Gosse; in a letter, Gosse wrote that Barnes was "dying as picturesquely as he lived":We found him in bed in his study, his face turned to the window, where the light came streaming in through flowering plants, his brown books on all sides of him save one, the wall behind him being hung with old green tapestry.

He had a scarlet bedgown on, a kind of soft biretta of dark red wool on his head, from which his long white hair escaped on to the pillow; his grey beard, grown very long, upon his breast; his complexion, which you recollect as richly bronzed, has become blanched by keeping indoors, and is now waxily white where it is not waxily pink; the blue eyes, half shut, restless under languid lids.

"[11] On 4 February 1889 a bronze statue of William Barnes by Edwin Roscoe Mullins (1848–1907) was unveiled outside St Peter's Church in High West Street, Dorchester.

Barnes had a strong interest in linguistics; he was fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Russian, Welsh, Cornish and Old English.

Additionally, as well as avoiding the use of foreign words in his poetry, Barnes frequently employed alliterative verse, the repetition of consonantal sounds.