of the City of
London_ (containing a complete table of christenings and burials 1601-
1750) (175l); _A Letter Balancing the Causes of the Present Scarcity
of Our Silver Coin_ (1757).

It would be a mistake, however, to consider Morris merely as a
statistical economist and Whig party hack. A gentleman of taste and
wit, the friend of Hume, Boswell, and other discerning men of the day,
he was elected F.R.S. in 1757, and appears to have been much
respected. In later life Morris had a country place at Chiltern Vale,
Herts., where he took an active delight in country sports. One
of his late pamphlets, not listed in the _D.N.B_. account of him,
entertainingly illustrates one of his hobbies. _The Bird-fancier's
Recreation and Delight, with the newest and very best instructions for
catching, taking, feeding, rearing, &c all the various sorts of SONG
BIRDS... containing curious remarks on the nature, sex, management,
and diseases of ENGLISH SONG BIRDS, with practical instructions for
distinguishing the cock and hen, for taking, choosing, breeding,
keeping, and teaching them to sing, for discovering and caring their
diseases, and of learning them to sing to the greatest perfection_.

Although there is little surviving evidence of Morris's purely
literary interests, a set of verses combining his economic and
artistic views appeared in a late edition of _The New Foundling
Hospital for Wit_ (new edition, 1784, VI, 95). Occasioned by seeing
Bowood in Wiltshire, the home of the Earl of Shelburne, the lines are
entitled: "On Reading Dr. Goldsmith's Poem, the Deserted Village."

This was the man who at the age of thirty-three brought out _An Essay
towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire,
and Ridicule_. That it was ever widely read we have no evidence, but
at least a number of men of wit and judgment found it interesting.
Horace Walpole included it in a packet of "the only new books at all
worth reading" sent to Horace Mann, but the fulsome dedication
to the elder Walpole undoubtedly had something to do with this
recommendation. More disinterested approval is shown in a letter
printed in the _Daily Advertiser_ for 31 May 1744. Better than any
modern critique the letter illustrates the contemporary reaction to
the _Essay_.

Christ Church College, Oxford,

SIR:

I have examin'd the _Essay_ you have sent me for _fixing the true
Standards of Wit, Humour, &c._ and cannot perceive upon what
pretenc