Ebook The Life of William Barnes

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.

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.