BARNES, JOSHUA, professor of the Greek language at Cambridge, in the beginning of the 18th century. He was chosen queen's professor of Greek in 1695, a language he wrote and spoke with the utmost facility. His first publication was a whimsical tract, entitled Gerania, or a New Discovery of the little sort of people called Pygmies. After that appeared his Life of Edward III. in which he introduces his hero making long and elaborate speeches. In the year 1700, when he published many of his works, Mrs Mason, of Hemmingford, in Huntingdonshire, a widow lady of between 40 and 50, with a jointure of 200l. per annum, who had been for some time a great admirer of him, came to Cambridge, and desired leave to settle 100l. a-year upon him after her death; which he politely refused, unless she would likewise condescend to make him happy with her person, which was not very engaging. The lady was too obliging to refuse any thing to Joshua, for whom she said, "the sun stood still;" and they were accordingly married. Mr Barnes wrote several other books besides those above mentioned, particularly, Sacred Poems; The Life of Oliver Cromwell, the Tyrant; several dramatic pieces; a poetical Paraphrase on the History of Esther, in Greek verse, with a Latin translation, &c. &c. and he published editions of Euripides, Anacreon, and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, with notes and a Latin translation. He wrote with greater ease in Greek than even in English, and yet is generally allowed not to have understood the delicacies of that language. He was of such a humane disposition, and so unacquainted with the world, that he gave his only coat to a vagrant begging at his door. This excellent man died on the 3d of August 1712, in the 58th year of his age.