The Life of William Barnes - Poet and Philologist #224919

Some men live before their age, others behind it. My father did both. In action he was behind the world, or rather apart from it; in thought he was far before his time - a thinker who may probably lead the next generations even more than his own. A great and deep student of the past, he drew from it inferences and teaching for the future.<br><br>The reading world know him chiefly for his poems- but the making of poems was but a small part of his intellectual life. His most earnest studies and greatest aims were in philology; but he was also a keen thinker in social science and political economy. For one hand to do justice to all the phases of a many-sided mind is not an easy task, and no one can feel more than I do my own inadequacy to it. Although perfectly aware that there are many others who would have made a worthier book in its literary aspect, yet when the work of biographer was given to me I gladly undertook it, knowing my father's wishes as to the spirit in which it should be done.