The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-30 00:00:00

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110

aft( awards a boot...maker. lle was a pious man, and an
eld, 3r of the Sets Church. Robert, the subject of t
thais
not ice, and the eminent Chinese scholar, was born
Me rpeth, January 5, 1782. He was taught reading and
wri sing at Newcastle by a respectable schoolmaster, and
aft Twards became apprentice to his father. Under the
tr yt ion of the Rev. W. Lawler, minister of a Presbyterian
in e eting-house, he afterwards acquired an elementary
%. juairitance with the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, some
ss r ttematic theology, and the art of writing short-hand.
( in the death of his mother he was received as a student
if ito the dissenting academy at Hoxton, near London, and
o ath e 28th of May, 1805, placed himself under the pa-
ti Oi (age of the London Missionary Society, who senthim to
tl to it seminary at Gosport, to be educated for that ser-
if ci He returned to Londoa in the summer of 1806,
an d having chosen China as the field of his missionary
labo urs, he, the better to qualify himself for them, ob-
tain, the assistance, as a preceptor, of a young Chinese,
mum ed Yong-Sam-Tae, by whose assistance, and with
the I 'make he acquired in forming the Chinese charac-
ter It ,y transcribing a Chinese M.S. of the four Gospels
.e British Museum, and by copying part of an old
Chu tese and Latin dictionary, the property of the Royal
Sot ety, he made considerable progress in qualifying
hin is ?If for his undertaking, and in addition to his know-
ledge of the Chinese language, he gained some acquaint,
ane e w ith surgery and medicine.
thus qualified, on the Bth of January, 1807, he was
for naliy set apart, or ordained according to Scottish
prr to the work of a Christian missionary among
the ,Chines.-?, and on the 31st he embarked for China,
via America, and landed at Canton in September 1807.
On : Mr. Ilorrison's Lvrival at that place, he was (mom-
mud ate Mess
lodging, in the factory of the American
ages ts, Messrs. Milner and Bull, where he assumed the
Chit .ese habiliments, bu:, relinquished them on finding
then not liked. The first sixteen months of
difficu his reses:
i-
de= a were attended by many privations and lti
he si 'ent the day. with his Chinese teacher, studying,
atjs( g, and sleeping in a room under ground. At the
do! a of 1808, he informed the Secretary of the Mis-
sit), ry Society that he had completed his grammar of
the Chinese language, and daily was filling up his M.S.
of i ;he .New Testament.
.1 )n 20th of February, 1809, lie married Mrs.
ME ry Morton, a young lady of 18, the daughter of Mr.
Jol in Morton, of Dublin, surgeon in chief to the Irish
Ar tillery. On the day
.after Mr. Morrison's marriage
wit h this lady, he received information that the East
lad is Company's supercargoes, to whom he had ren-
j'aet ed some assistance in translating their Chinese cor-
, rest oondence, had resolved to give him an appointment
I heir secretary and interpreter. He appears to have
as
beef, a considered, at that early period, as the most expert
chia iese scholar in the factories. The correspondence of
the supercargoes with the Chinese had been previously
cod acted in a very circuitous mannet, and often with
„ins), difficulty, by the intervention of Portuguese padres,
groat college of St. Joseph, who first rendered the seve-
rs of which Chinese versions wore required into
ral pal% d then, with the aid of their native assistants,
Lafiu2aa.,e.
i into Chine,
e
Ulan, Printed in Canton, the Chinese manner,