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 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.

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