Career
In 1823 he founded the New-York Mirror and Ladies' Literary Gazette, a periodical which he engaged Samuel Woodworth, then well known in literary circles, to edit.
A glance over its pages reveals such contributors as William Cullen Bryant, James K. Paulding, Nathaniel P. Willis, and Fitz-Greene Halleck--the leading literary lights of the early New York school.
In the same year Morris again associated himself with Willis in the editing of a daily paper called the Evening Mirror, which continued for several years.
In the meantime (1845) he had started a weekly entitled the National Press.
After about a year, Willis also became an associate in this enterprise, and the title of the periodical was changed to the Home Journal.
In describing his qualifications as a journalist, Evert A. Duyckinck mentions "his editorial tact and judgment; his shrewd sense of the public requirements; and his provision for the more refined and permanently acceptable departments of literature" (CyclopÏdia of American Literature, 1855, II, 348).
Morris occupies but a minor place in the early Knickerbocker school.
His drama, Brier Cliff, founded upon incidents of the American Revolution, was produced in 1826 at the Chatham Theatre.
This opera, for which Charles E. Horn produced the music, had in 1842 a run of about two weeks.
Edgar Allan Poe considered "Woodman, Spare that Tree" and "Near the Lake" "compositions of which any poet, living or dead, might justly be proud" (Southern Literary Messenger, April 1849, p. 219), and it was said in Morris' day that he could "at any time obtain fifty dollars for a song unread. "
To a later audience his lyrics are uniformly insipid and sentimental.
In 1839 he published The Little Frenchman and his Water Lots, a volume of prose sketches mostly in a humorous vein.
Of a generous and hearty, though practical, nature, Morris represented well that spirit of bonhomie which distinguished New York life of the early nineteenth century.
He has been described as "about five feet two or three inches high.
.
Short, crisp, dark curly hair, thinly streaked with silver threads, encircled a high, well-formed forehead, beneath which was a pair of bright, twinkling black eyes.
[His] complexion was fresh and florid" (G. W. Bungay, Off-Hand Takings, 1854, pp. 44-45).
A son, William Hopkins Morris [q. v. ], was a West-Point graduate who served in the Civil War.
[Sources include: "Am.
Poetry, " People's and Howitt's Jour. , vol.
X (1850), p. 101; U. S. Rev. , June 1855; North Am.
Rev. , July 1858; Southern Lit.
Messenger, Oct. 1838; H. B. Wallace, Lit.
Criticisms and Other Papers (1856); F. L. Mott, A Hist.
of Am.
Magazines, 1741-1850 (1930); Timothy Hopkins, John Hopkins, of Cambridge, Massachussets, 1634, and Some of His Descendants (1932); J. G. Wilson, Bryant and His Friends (1886); N. Y. Times, July 8, 1864.
The best collection of Morris' poems is the fourth edition published by Scribner (New York, 1860).
The following institutions possess Morris papers and manuscripts: Lib.
of Cong. , Harvard Coll.
Lib. , Hist.
Soc.
of Pa. , N. Y. State Lib. , and the N. Y. Pub.
Lib. , which has several manuscript copies of Brier Cliff. ]