Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/311

 of Louisa, countess of Craven [q. v.], was born in 1769, and in her sixteenth year, as Euphrasia, had carried Bath by storm. The manager Harris brought her to London, and she opened at Covent Garden in 1785 as Horatia, Murphy writing her a prologue. It was a success, but after the first season there was no question of her rivalling Mrs. Siddons, and the public enthusiasm waned. She kept her place, however, and during her short career in London had the chief tragic parts at Covent Garden (list in, vii. 75–6). She had a sweet voice, a refined and graceful manner, but wanted energy. After her marriage—during the winter of 1791–2—she continued to act under her new name; but the outcry of his family—his mother was still alive—forced Merry to withdraw her from the stage in the spring. The complete failure of his play, ‘The Magician no Conjuror,’ produced at Covent Garden in February 1792, may have made the decision easier. They went together to France, and Merry was in Paris on 10 Aug. and on 2 Sept., but refused an invitation to be present at the trial of the king. Walpole tells a pretty story of his being mistaken by the mob for Abbé Maury, and of his being pursued with the cry ‘A la lanterne.’ In 1793 he and his wife returned to London, and lived in an unsettled way for the next three years, Merry haunting the clubs, declaiming on freedom and the French revolution, writing epigrams—some of which are very neat—against Pitt and his supporters in the ‘Argus’ and ‘Telegraph,’ and, notwithstanding his friend Topham's good-nature, sinking daily deeper into debt. ‘Fénelon,’ an adaptation of Marie-Joseph Chenier's play, was published in 1795, and the ‘Pains of Memory,’ a versified reproduction of talks with Rogers, in the following year. He also wrote the epilogue spoken by Mrs. Jordan at the notable performance of the pseudo-Shakespearean ‘Vortigern’ on 2 April 1796 [see ]. Regard for his family still kept his wife reluctantly from the stage; but when Wignell, of the New Theatre, Philadelphia, offered her an engagement in 1796, Merry, to whom life in London was becoming embarrassing, gave his consent, and in October they landed at New York. On 5 Dec. Mrs. Merry appeared in Philadelphia as Juliet, ‘perhaps the best Juliet,’ Dunlap thinks, ‘that was ever seen or heard’ (American Stage, 1832, p. 158). She acted in New York next year, and afterwards in the chief cities of the union, everywhere leaving her American rivals behind. Merry himself, in 1797, brought out his drama, ‘The Abbey of St. Augustine,’ at Philadelphia, but for the most part contented himself with the unofficial laureateship which the younger writers—though not without dissentient voices—readily granted to his London reputation. In 1798 he was living in Baltimore, grown fat and very indolent, and still clinging to his faith in the French revolution, upon which he had some vague plans for an epic. The ‘Monthly Magazine’ for August of that year announces a work by him on American manners, but on 14 Dec., in the morning, while walking in his garden, he fell in an apoplectic fit, and three hours later was dead. His widow married a manager of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Theatres named Warren, and died at Alexandria, Virginia, in 1808 (Gent. Mag. 1808, pt. ii. p. 749). 

MERRYFELLOW, DICK (1723–1781), author. [See .]

MERTON, WALTER (d. 1277), bishop of Rochester and founder of Merton College, Oxford, was by family connected with Basingstoke. His mother was Christina Fitz-Oliver; of his father nothing is known save that his name was William. Foss is no doubt mistaken in identifying him with the William de Merton who was archdeacon of Berkshire, and died about 1239. Walter de Merton probably owed his surname either to Merton being his birthplace, or to having received his education at the priory there. He was afterwards at Oxford, where he is traditionally said to have studied at Mauger Hall, afterwards the Cross Inn, in the Corn-