Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/207

 professor of medicine at Owens College, Manchester (d. 4 Sept. 1892), and his youngest brother, the Rev. Henry Arthur Morgan, D.D., is master of Jesus College, Cambridge.

George Osborne Morgan, who derived his name of Osborne from the marriage in 1764 of Egbert Nonnen, his great-grandfather, with Anne Osborne of Burnage, Cheshire, was born at Gothenburg in Sweden on 8 May 1826, during the temporary occupancy by his father of the post of chaplain there. At the age of fifteen, after spending some time at the Friars' school, Bangor, he entered Shrewsbury School under Dr. Kennedy [see ], who said of him that he had never known a boy 'with such a vast amount of undigested information.' His father had intended him for Cambridge and the church, but he preferred Oxford and matriculated from Balliol on 30 Nov. 1843. He then returned to Shrewsbury, and while still a schoolboy performed the extraordinary feat of obtaining the Craven scholarship at Oxford (16 March 1844), afterwards going back again to school. In the following autumn he stood for a scholarship at Balliol. He was awarded an exhibition, the two scholarships being won by Henry John Stephen Smith [q. v.] and Sir Alexander Grant (1826–1884) [q. v.], and he then went into residence. In 1846 he was proxime accessit for the Ireland scholarship, and in the same year he won the Newdigate prize for English verse, the subject being 'Settlers in Australia.' When he became under-secretary for the colonies in 1886, this poem was republished by the 'Melbourne Argus,' and enjoyed considerable popularity in Australia. In 1847 he migrated as a scholar to Worcester, and from that college obtained a first class in the school of literæ humaniores in the Michaelmas term of the same year, graduating B.A. in 1848. He obtained the chancellor's English essay prize in 1850 upon the theme 'The Ancients and Moderns compared in regard to the Administration of Justice,' and was elected Stowell civil law fellow of University College. He obtained the Eldon law scholarship in 1851. He had now determined upon the bar as a profession, having been admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 6 June 1850. While at Balliol his principal friend was (Sir) Alexander Grant. At the dinner at Balliol on the occasion of the opening of the new hall (16 Jan. 1877) Osborne Morgan, in responding for the bar, acknowledged the debt he owed to Jowett's influence [see, Suppl.] During his short residence as civil law fellow at University he took private pupils, among them Viscount Peel, Sir M. E. Grant Duff, and Lord-justice Chitty. His most intimate friends at this period, which was marked by vehement religious controversies, were the opponents of tractarianism, such as Arthur Penrhyn Stanley [q. v.], William Young Sellar [q. v.], and Arthur Hugh Clough [q. v.] He figures in Clough's poem 'The Bothie' as Lindsay.

In 1851 Morgan left Oxford. The present archbishop of Canterbury had offered him the vice-presidency of Kneller Hall, a training college for teachers then recently established at Twickenham, but he was resolutely bent upon the bar, and entered as a pupil in the chambers of equity counsel in Lincoln's Inn. Meanwhile he contributed political leading articles to the 'Morning Chronicle,' and after the staff of that newspaper founded the 'Saturday Review' he wrote very occasionally for the new periodical. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 6 June 1853, and practised as an equity draughtsman and conveyancer. He rapidly acquired a practice, and received a number of pupils to read in his chambers, among them Mr. Justice Byrne, Sir C. P. Ilbert, and Sir Robert Herbert. In 1858 he published 'Chancery Acts and Orders, being a Collection of Statutes and General Orders recently passed.' This, with slight variations in the title, ran through six editions, the second being published in 1860, and the last in 1885. He also became one of the four joint editors of 'the New Reports,' which contained cases decided in the courts of equity and common law between November 1862 and August 1865, the first of the six volumes appearing in March 1863. Among the reporters associated with him in this series were Lord-chancellor Herschell, the speaker of the House of Commons (the Right Hon. W. C. Gully), Lord Davey, Lord-justice Bowen, Lord-justice Rigby, and others.

In 1861 Morgan published a sympathetic lecture on the Italian revolution of 1860. He had already begun his political career by holding meetings in his chambers at Lincoln's Inn for the promotion of church dis-establishment and the abolition of university tests. Although a clergyman's son, he had been led to form opinions unfavourable to the establishment in consequence of abuses witnessed by him in the Welsh church. He became intimate with Edward Miall [q. v.], the leader of the militant nonconformists. His opinions on these subjects and his nationality designated him for a Welsh seat in parliament, and in 1859 he accepted an invitation to stand for Carnarvon