Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tytler

TYTLER. The surname of three Scottish writers, principally on historical subjects.

1. Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), Lord Woodhouselee, Scottish judge, was the eldest son of William Tytler (see below), and was born at Edinburgh on 15th October 1747. After passing through the High School, he was sent in 1763 to a school at Kensington taught by Dr Elphinston, the translator of Martial's Epigrams. He returned to Edinburgh in 1765, skilled in Latin versification, and with a competent knowledge of Italian, and a taste for drawing and natural history. He was called to the bar in 1770. His first work, a supplement to the Dictionary of Decisions, undertaken on the suggestion of Lord Kames, was published in 1778, and a continuation appeared in 1796. In 1780 Tytler was appointed conjoint professor of universal history in the university of Edinburgh, becoming sole professor in 1786. In 1782 he published Outlines of his course of lectures, afterwards extended and republished under the title of Elements of General History. The Elements has passed through many editions, and has been translated into several European languages as well as into Hindustani. The lectures themselves were published in 1834 in Murray's Family Library. In 1790 Tytler was appointed judge-advocate of Scotland, and while holding this office he wrote a Treatise on the Law of Courts-Martial. In 1801 he was raised to the bench, taking his seat (1802) in the court of session as Lord Woodhouselee. He died at Edinburgh on 5th January 1813.

Besides the works already mentioned, he was the author of several papers in the Mirror, the Lounger, and the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; he also wrote Life and Writings of Dr John Gregory; Essay on the Principles of Translation, 1790; a dissertation on Final Causes, prefixed to his edition of Derham's Physico-Theology, 1799; a political pamphlet entitled Ireland profiting by Example, 1799; an Essay on Laura and Petrarch; and The Life and Writings of Henry Home, Lord Kames, 1807.

2. Patrick Fraser Tytler (1791-1849), as the son of Lord Woodhouselee and grandson of William Tytler, may be said to have inherited a taste for literary and historical pursuits. He was born at Edinburgh on 30th August 1791, and was educated chiefly at the High School and university, being called to the bar in 1813. His earliest literary effort appears to have been a chapter or two contributed to Alison's Travels in France (1815); and his first independent essays were papers in Blackwood's Magazine. Inheriting the family talent for music, and with a facility in throwing off humorous little poems and songs, he made several contributions to Thomson's Select Melodies of Scotland, 1824. In 1819 he published the Life of James Crichton of Cluny, commonly called the Admirable Crichton, a second edition appearing in 1823. This was followed by a Memoir of Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton, 1823; an Essay on the Revival of Greek Literature in Italy, and a Life of John Wickliff, published anonymously, in 1826. The History of Scotland was undertaken at the suggestion of Sir Walter Scott, and occupied Tytler for nearly twenty years, in the course of which he removed to London for convenience of research. The first volume appeared in 1828, and the ninth and last in 1843. The original investigations on which the work was founded gave it an authority which no previous history of Scotland possessed, and the clear and graphic style made it interesting and popular. The last few years of his life were spent in physical prostration and mental depression, and he died at Great Malvern on 24th December 1849.

During the progress of his History a large amount of other work came from his pen, as the following list shows:—Lives of Scottish Worthies, for Murray's Family Library, 3 vols., 1831-33; Historical View of the Progress of Discovery in America, 1832, and Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, 1833, for the Edinburgh Cabinet Library; Life of Henry VIII., 1837; England under the Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, from original letters, 2 vols., 1839; article "Scotland" in the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (afterwards published separately as a school history); Notes on The Darnley Jewel, 1843; on the Portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, 1845 (privately printed); and Memoirs of the War carried on in Scotland and Ireland, 1689-91, by General Mackay, edited in conjunction with Hog and Urquhart, and presented to the Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs in 1833.

3. William Tytler (1711-1792), of Woodhouselee, writer on historical and antiquarian subjects, was the son of Alexander Tytler, writer in Edinburgh, and was born in that city on 12th October 1711. He was educated at the High School and the university, and, having adopted his father's profession, was in 1744 admitted into the society of Writers to the Signet. While successfully practising as a lawyer, he found time to devote attention to historical investigation. In 1759 he published an Inquiry, Historical and Critical, into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots, and an Examination of the Histories of Dr Robertson and Mr Hume with respect to that Evidence. This work, which warmly defended the character of the queen, met with great success. Four editions, the later ones considerably enlarged, were published in the author's lifetime; and it was translated into French. In 1783 he published the Poetical Remains of James the First, King of Scotland, to which he added a dissertation on the life and writings of the royal author. He wrote an essay on "Scottish Music," which was appended to Arnot's History of Edinburgh. His "Dissertation on the Marriage of Queen Mary to the Earl of Bothwell" and "Observations on the Vision, a Poem," appeared in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1791-92). A paper in the Lounger, on "Defects of Modern Female Education," and an Account of Fashionable Amusements in Edinburgh in the Seventeenth Century complete the list of his works. He died at Edinburgh on 12th September 1792.