Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tytler/Tytler, Patrick Fraser

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.