MORRISON, ROBERT (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to China, was born of Scottish parents at Buller's Green, near Morpeth, on Jan. 5, 1782. After receiving an elemen tary 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. The London Missionary Society sent him out to Canton in 1807. He became translator to the East India Company's factory there in 1809, and worked at a Chinese Grammar 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. He established (1820) an Anglo Chinese college at Malacca for "the reciprocal cultivation of Chi nese and European literature," and for the training of native Chinese evangelists who could proceed to the mainland and carry on Christian work with comparative immunity. In 1821 Morri
son's Chinese Dictionary (6 vols.), was published by the East India Company. 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 began to prepare a Chinese commentary on the Bible and other Christian literature. He died at Canton on Aug. 1, 1834. Morrison's establishment of a dispensary, manned by a native who had learned the main principles of European treatment, marks him out as the fore runner 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 (1888).