Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838/Dr. Morrison and his Chinese Attendants
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LI SHIGONG AND CHEN LAOYI TRANSLATING THE BIBLE
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DR. MORRISON AND HIS CHINESE ATTENDANTS.
They bend above the page with anxious eyes,
Devoutly listening to the sacred words
Which have awakened all the spirit-chords
Whose music dwells in the eternal skies.
And still their teacher hope and aid supplies.
For those dark priests are God’s own messengers,
To bring their land glad tidings from above,
And to the creed that in its darkness errs,
To teach the words of truth and Christian love.
Blessings be on their pathway, and increase!
These are the moral conquerors, and belong
To them the palm-branch and triumphal song—
Conquerors, and yet the harbingers of peace.
Robert Morrison was born at Morpeth, in January 1782. He received ordination in London, according to the usages of the Presbyterian church, in which he had been educated; embarked for China on the 31st of January, 1807; proceeded, by way of America, to Macao, and soon afterwards reached Canton. In the history of the acquisition of difficult languages, few facts can be found more memorable than that of his having been considered, in less than a year and a half from his arrival at Canton, the most correct Chinese scholar in the Factories, although destitute, in a very great degree, of the ordinary facilities of obtaining a language. After four years' residence, he completed his Chinese grammar: in his seventh year he commenced the printing of his great work, the Anglo-Chinese dictionary, which consists of six quarto volumes, and occupied him eight years.
He had been in a declining state of health previously to Lord Napier's arrival at Macao, but his illness was so much increased by the fatigue he encountered in accompanying his lordship to Canton, that he expired on the 1st of August, 1834, only the eighth day after his arrival in that city.