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: