Joshua Barnes was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 scholar.

He was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, the son of Edward Barnes, a merchant taylor.

Educated at Christ's Hospital

Christ's Hospital

Christ's Hospital is an English coeducational independent day and boarding school with Royal Charter located in the Sussex countryside just south of Horsham in Horsham District, West Sussex, England...

 and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...

, he was in 1695 chosen Regius Professor

Regius Professor of Greek (Cambridge)

The Regius Professorship of Greek is one of the oldest professorships at the University of Cambridge. The chair was founded by Henry VIII in 1540 with a stipend of £40 per year, subsequently increased in 1848 by a canonry of Ely Cathedral....

 of Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, a language which he wrote and spoke with the utmost facility.

One of his first publications was entitled Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies (1675), a whimsical sketch to which Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

's Voyage to Lilliput possibly owes something. Among his other works are a History of that Most Victorious Monarch Edward III (1688), an epic work numbering 900+ pages, in which he introduces long and elaborate speeches into the narrative; editions of Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

 (1694) and of Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 (1711), also one of Anacreon (1705) which contains titles of Greek verses of his own which he hoped to publish. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in November, 1710.

He died on 3 August 1712, at Hemingford

Hemingford Grey

- Location:It is situated on the southern bank of the River Great Ouse in the county of Cambridgeshire, with the northern bank occupied by the flood meadow. Until 1965 it was in Huntingdonshire and between 1965 and 1974 it was in the short-lived county of Huntingdon and Peterborough...

, near St Ives, Huntingdonshire. He had married Mrs Mason, a widow, of Hemingford

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