didacticism, genial optimism and evident sincerity have given his work a thoroughly wholesome moral influence. Among his other books were Gwen (1880), Songs Unsung (1883), Gycia (1886), A Vision of Saints (1890), Idylls and Lyrics (1896) and The New Rambler (1906). He died at Carmarthen on the 13th of November 1907.
MORRIS, RICHARD (1833–1894), English philologist, was
born in London on the 8th of September 1833. In 1871 he was
ordained in the Church of England, and from 1875–1888 was head
master of the Royal Masonic Institution for Boys, near London.
His first published work was The Etymology of Local Names
(1857). Between 1862 and 1880 he prepared twelve volumes for
the Early English Text Society, edited Chaucer (1866) and
Spenser (1869) from the original manuscripts, and published
Specimens of Early English (1867). His educational works,
Historical Outlines of English Accidence (1872), Elementary
Lessons in Historical English Grammar (1874) and English
Grammar (1874), had a large sale and exercised a real influence.
The rest of his life he devoted to the study of Pali, on which he
became a recognized authority. He died at Harold Wood,
Essex, on the 12th of May 1894.
MORRIS, ROBERT (1734–1806), American financier, a signer
of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Liverpool,
England, on the 31st of January 1734. He emigrated to America
in 1747, entered a mercantile house, and in 1754 became a
member of a prosperous firm, which was known successively as
Willing, Morris & Co., Willing, Morris & Inglis and Willing,
Morris & Swanwick. In the conflict with the mother country
Morris took the side of the colonists, but associated himself
with the conservative group of Pennsylvania Whigs who followed
the lead of John Dickinson and James Wilson, rather than
with the more radical faction represented by Thomas Paine.
He was vice-president of the Pennsylvania Committee of
Safety (1775–1776), and a member of the Continental Congress
(1775–1778). At first he disapproved of the Declaration of
Independence, but he joined the other members in signing it on the 2nd
of August. He retired from Congress in 1778, and was at once
sent to the legislature, serving in 1778–1779 and in 1780–1781.
His greatest public service was the financing of the War of
Independence. As chairman or member of various committees
he practically controlled the financial operations of Congress
from 1776 to 1778, and when the board system was superseded
in 1781 by single-headed executive departments he was chosen
superintendent of finance. With the able co-operation of his
assistant, Gouverneur Morris—who was in no way related to
him—he filled this position with great efficiency during the
trying years from 1781 to 1784. For the same period he was
also agent of marine, and hence head of the navy department.
Through requisitions on the states and loans from the French,
and in large measure through money advanced out of his own
pocket or borrowed on his private credit, he furnished the means
to transfer Washington’s army from Dobbs Ferry to Yorktown
(1781). In 1781 he established in Philadelphia the Bank of
North America, chartered first by Congress and later by Pennsylvania,
the oldest financial institution in the United States, and
the first which had even partially a national character. A
confusion of public and private accounts, due primarily to the
fact that his own credit was superior to that of the United States,
gave rise to charges of dishonesty, of which he was acquitted
by a vote of Congress. He was a member of the Federal
Convention of 1787, but took little part in its deliberations beyond
making the speech which placed Washington in nomination for
the presidency of the body. On the formation of the new
government he was offered, but declined, the secretaryship of the
treasury, and urged Hamilton’s appointment in his stead. As
United States senator, 1780–1795, he supported the Federalist
policies and gave Hamilton considerable assistance in carrying
out his financial plans, taking part, according to tradition, in
arranging a bargain by which certain Virginia representatives
were induced to vote for the funding of the state debts in return
for the location of the Federal capital on the Potomac. After
the war he gradually disposed of his mercantile and banking
interests and engaged extensively in western land speculation.
At one time or another he owned wholly or in major part nearly
the entire western half of New York state, two million acres
in Georgia and about one million each in Pennsylvania,
Virginia and South Carolina. The slow development of this
property, the failure of a London bank in which he had funds
invested, the erection of a palatial residence in Philadelphia,
and the dishonesty of one of his partners, finally drove him into
bankruptcy, and he was confined in a debtors’ prison for more
than three years (1798–1801). He died in Philadelphia on the
7th of May 1806.
The best biography is E. P. Oberholtzer’s Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier (New York, 1903), based upon the Robert Morris papers in the Library of Congress; see also W. G. Sumner’s The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution (New York. 1891).
MORRIS, WILLIAM (1834–1896), English poet and artist,
third child and eldest son of William Morris and Emma Shelton
was born at Elm House, Walthamstow, on the 24th of March
1834. His grandfather was a respected tradesman in Worcester,
and his father, who was born in that town in 1797, came up to
London in 1820, and entered the office of a firm of discount
brokers, in which he afterwards assumed a partnership. As a
child the poet was delicate but studious. He learnt to read very
early, and by the time he was four years old was familiar with
most of the Waverley novels. When he was six the family
moved to Woodford Hall, where new opportunities for an out-of-door
life brought the boy health and vigour. He rode about
Epping Forest, sometimes in a toy suit of armour, became a
close observer of animal nature, and was able to recognize any
bird upon the wing. At the same time he continued to read
whatever came in his way, and was particularly attracted by the
stories in the Arabian Nights and by the designs in Gerard's
Herbal. He studied with his sisters’ governess until he was
nine, when he was sent to a school at Walthamstow. In his
thirteenth year his father died, leaving the family well-to-do;
the home at Woodford was broken up, as being unnecessarily
large; and in 1848 William Morris went to Marlborough, where
his father had bought him a nomination. Morris was at the school
three years, but got very little good from it beyond a
taste for architecture, fostered by the school library, and an
attraction towards the Anglo-Catholic movement. He made
but slow progress in school work, and at Christmas 1851 was
removed and sent to a private tutor for a year. In June 1852
he matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, but, as the college
was full, he did not go into residence till January 1853. He
at once made friends, who stood him in good stead all his life,
foremost among whom were Edward Burne-Jones, who was a
freshman of his year, and a little Birmingham group at Pembroke.
They were known among themselves as the “Brotherhood”; they
read together theology, ecclesiastical history, medieval poetry,
and, among moderns, Tennyson and Ruskin. They studied art,
and fostered the study in the long vacations by tours among the
English churches and the Continental cathedrals. Moreover,
Morris began at this time to write poetry, and many of his first
pieces, afterwards destroyed, were held by sound judges to be
equal to anything he ever did. Both Morris and Burne-Jones
had come to Oxford with the intention of taking holy orders,
but as they felt their way they both came to the conclusion that
there was more to be done in the direction of social reform than
of ecclesiastical work, and that their energies would be best
employed outside the priesthood. So Morris decided to become
an architect, and for the better propagation of the views of the
new brotherhood a magazine was at the same time projected,
which was to make a speciality of social articles, besides poems
and short stories.
At the beginning of 1856 the two schemes came to a head together. Morris, having passed his finals in the preceding term, was entered as a pupil at the office of George Edmund Street, the well-known architect; and on New Year’s Day the first number of The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine appeared. The expenses of this very interesting venture were borne entirely
