ROBERT

See also:

• MORRISON, ARTHUR (1863– )
• MORRISON, RICHARD JAMES (1795-1874)
• ROBERT MORRISON (1782-1834)

MORRISON (1782-1834)  , the first Protestant missionary to China, was born of Scottish parents at Buller's Green, near Morpeth, on the•5th of January 1782 . After receiving an elementary education in Newcastle, he was apprenticed to a lastmaker, but his spare hours were given to theology, and in 1803 he was received into the Independent Academy at Hoxton . In the following year he offered his services to the London Missionary Society, and after he had attended David Bogue's college at Gosport and studied Chinese under a native teacher, he was appointed to Canton in 1807 . After a year of much hardship he became translator to the East India Company's factory there in 1809, and worked at a Chinese Gram-mar and a translation of the New Testament, both published in 1814 . In 1817 he published A View of China for Philological Purposes, and his translation of the Old Testament (in which William Milne collaborated) was completed in the following year . His next enterprise was the establishment (182o) of an Anglo-Chinese college at Malacca for " the reciprocal cultivation of Chinese and European literature." Here too were trained native Chinese evangelists who could proceed to the mainland and carry on Christian work with comparative immunity . In 1821 Morrisons's Chinese Dictionary, in six 4to volumes, a monumental work, was published by the East India Company, at a cost of £12,000 . Leaving China at the close of 1823, Morrison spent two years in England, where he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society . Returning to China in 1826, he set himself to promote education and to prepare a Chinese commentary on the Bible and other Christian literature . He died at Canton on the 1st of August 1834 . Morrison was admirably fitted for the pioneering work accomplished by his grammar and dictionary; and his establishment of a dispensary, manned by a native who had learned the main principles of European treatment, marks him out as the forerunner of modern medical missions . His Memoirs, compiled by his widow, were published in 1839 .

See also R . Lovett,

History of the London Missionary Society, vol. ii. ch. xix . ; C . S . Horne, The Story of the L . M . S. ch. v.; Townsend, Robert Morrison (,888) .