1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Morris, Richard

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.