In June 1835 he left Mere and settled in Durngate Street, Dorchester, with a promising school, transferred in 1837 to a larger house in South Street. On 2 March 1838 he put his name on the books of St. John's College, Cambridge, as a ten years' man. During the next six years he contributed some of his best archaeological and etymological work to the pages of the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' The variety of subjects indicates a great amount of reading, while his more sustained investigations at this period of the laws of harmonic proportion show his aptitude for abstract speculations. In 1844 the 'Poems in the Dorset Dialect' were issued in London by Russell Smith. A cordial admirer of the new poet was found in the Hon. Mrs. (Caroline) Norton [q. v.], who did much to give publicity to Barnes's genius.
Barnes was ordained by the Bishop of Salisbury on 28 Feb. 1847, and, while retaining his school, entered upon new duties as pastor of Whitcombe, three miles from the county town. He was concentrating a great deal of his time now upon Anglo-Saxon, of which his 'Delectus' appeared in 1849. In the following year he graduated B.D. at Cambridge. In 1852 he resigned his curacy, and soon afterwards became a trusted contributor to the newly started 'Retrospective Review.' In 1854 he began reading Persian (and henceforth, after Petrarch, he was perhaps most nearly influenced by Saadi), and published his 'Philological Grammar,' a truly remarkable book, for the copyright of which he received 5l. In 1858 appeared a second series of Dorset poems under the title 'Hwomely Rhymes,' several of the pieces in which—notably 'The Vaices that be Gane'—were effectively rendered into French for De Chatelain's 'Beautés de la Poésie Anglaise.' Barnes had already appeared as a lecturer upon archaeological subjects, and he was now encouraged to give readings from his dialect poems in the various small towns of Dorset. He received an invitation from Macready at Sherborne, and from the Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford House. In 1859 he had a visit from Lucien Buonaparte, who had been attracted by the poems, and at whose suggestion Barnes now translated 'The Song of Solomon' into the Dorset dialect. In 1860 he was enlisted as a writer for the newly founded 'Macmillan's Magazine.' In April 1861 he was granted, at the instance of Palmerston, an unsolicited pension of 70l. from the civil list. The year was fully occupied in the preparation of his most considerable philological work, devoted to the theory of the fundamental roots of the Teutonic speech, and entitled 'Tiw,' after the god from whom the race derived their name. In 1862 he received from Captain Seymour Dawson Damer an offer of the rectory of Came, which he gladly accepted.
Barnes was inducted into Came church on 1 Dec. 1862. He made an admirable country parson, homely and unconventional as his rhymes, a scholar with the widest interests, whose active horizon was yet strictly bounded by the Dorsetshire fields and uplands. His work upon the 'Dorsetshire Glossary' increased his admiration for the vernacular and his dislike of latinised forms. He was indignant at the introduction of such words as photograph and bicycle, for which he would have substituted sunprint and wheelsaddle. A collective edition of the dialect poems appeared in 1879, and of the poet at this late period of his career Mr. Hardy contributed to the 'Athenæum' (16 Oct. 1886) an interesting vignette. Until about 1882 there were 'few figures more familiar to the eye in the county town of Dorset on a market day than an aged clergyman, quaintly attired in caped cloak, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes, with a leather satchel slung over his shoulders and a stout staff in his hand. He seemed usually to prefer the middle of the street to the pavement, and to be thinking of matters which had nothing to do with the scene before him. He plodded along with a broad, firm tread, notwithstanding the slight stoop occasioned by his years. Every Saturday morning he might have been seen thus trudging up the narrow South Street, his shoes coated with mud or dust, according to the state of the roads between his rural home and Dorchester, and a little grey dog at his heels, till he reached the four cross-ways in the centre of the town. Halting there opposite the public clock, he would pull his old-fashioned watch from its deep fob and set it with great precision to London time.'
Until he was well over eighty he went on working with the same remarkable grasp of power and variety of interests. He died at Came rectory on 7 Oct. 1886, and was buried four days later in the village churchyard. By his wife, who died on 21 June 1852, he left issue two sons and three daughters. At a meeting convened by the Bishop of Salisbury, shortly after Barnes's death, it was decided to commemorate the 'Dorsetshire Burns' by establishing a 'Barnes exhibition' at the Dorchester grammar school. A bronze statue of the poet by Roscoe Mullins has been erected in the churchyard of St. Peter's, Dorchester.
