Joshua Barnes

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Joshua Barnes (January 10, 1654 - August 3, 1712), English scholar, was born in London.

Educated at Christ's Hospital and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he was in 1695 chosen Regius Professor of Greek, 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'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 (1694) and of Homer (1711), also one of Anacreon (1705) which contains titles of Greek verses of his own which he hoped to publish. He died on 3 August 1712, at Hemingford, near St Ives, Huntingdonshire.