Kendal, a post which he held from 1840 to 1865. In 1858 he was made an honorary canon of Carlisle Cathedral. He died, unmarried, at Gloucester, where he had been living in retirement, on 19 Nov. 1878. Latrobe was the author of 'The Music of the Church considered in its various branches, Congregational and Choral,' London, 1831, a book which was much valued in its day, but which, owing to its obsolete views, is now seldom quoted. His other publications include: 'Instructions of Chenaniah: Plain Directions for accompanying the Chant or Psalm Tune,' London, 1832; 'Scripture Illustrations,' London, 1838; and two volumes of original poetry, 'The Solace of Song,' 1837, and 'Sacred Lays and Lyrics,' 1850. He compiled the Hymn Book used in his church at Kendal, and several of his own hymns were included in it.
His brother, Peter Latrobe (1795–1863), took orders in the Moravian church, and succeeded his father as secretary of the Moravian mission. He too had musical talent, both as an organist and composer; he wrote for an edition of the 'Moravian Hymn Tunes' an 'Introduction on the Progress of the Church Psalmody,' which shows a wide knowledge of the subject.
[Brief Notices of the Latrobe Family, as cited under Christian Ignatius Latrobe; private information which shows that the statement in Grove's Dict. of Music (ii. 102) that J. A. Latrobe was an organist in Liverpool is incorrect.]
LATTER, MARY (1725–1777), authoress, daughter of a country attorney, was born at Henley-upon-Thames in 1725. She settled at Reading, where her mother died in 1748. Her income was small, and she indulged a propensity for versification. Among her early attempts were some verses 'descriptive of the persons and characters of several ladies in Reading,' which she thought proper to disown in a rhymed advertisement inserted in the 'Reading Mercury,' 17 Nov. 1740. In 1759 appeared at Reading 'The Miscellaneous Works, in Prose and Verse, of Mrs. Mary Latter,' in three parts, consisting respectively of epistolary correspondence, poems, and soliloquies, and (part iii.) a sort of prose poem, prompted by a perusal of Young's 'Night Thoughts,' and entitled 'A Retrospective View of Indigence, or the Danger of Spiritual Poverty.' A short appendix treats of temporal poverty, and describes the writer as resident 'not very far from the market-place, immersed in business and in debt; sometimes madly hoping to gain a competency; sometimes justly fearing dungeons and distress.' The work is inscribed to Mrs. Loveday, wife of John Loveday [q. v.] of Caversham. In 1763 she published a tragedy entitled 'The Siege of Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian,' to which was prefixed 'An Essay on the Mystery and Mischiefs of Stagecraft.' The play had previously been accepted by Rich, the patentee of Covent Garden, who took the authoress under his protection, desiring her 'to remain in his house in order, as he kindly said, that by frequenting the theatre she might improve in the knowledge of it.' Rich died before the play could be produced, but it was subsequently performed at Reading (1768) and proved a failure. In addition to the above, Mrs. Latter wrote:
- 'A Miscellaneous Poetical Essay in three parts,' 1761, 8vo.
- 'A Lyric Ode on the Birth of the Prince of Wales' (George IV), 1763, 8vo.
- 'Liberty and Interest: a Burlesque Poem on the Present Times,' London, 1764, 4to (see Gent. Mag. 1764, p. 91).
- 'Pro and Con, or the Opinionists, an ancient fragment,' 1771, 8vo.
She died at Reading on 28 March 1777, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Lawrence in that town.
[Baker's Biog. Dram. i. 439, iii. 272; Coates's Hist. of Reading, p. 447; Doran's Hist. of Reading, p. 273; Watt's Bibl. Brit. ii. 589; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
LATTER, THOMAS (1816–1853), soldier and Burmese scholar, son of Major Barré Latter, an officer who distinguished himself in the Gorkha war of 1814 (see Mill, British India, ed. Wilson, viii. 22, 52), was born in India in 1816. He obtained a commission in 1836 from the East India Company in the 67th Bengal infantry, then stationed in Arracan. There he devoted his leisure to the study of the Burmese language, and in 1845 published a Burmese grammar, which although subsequent to the primers of Adoniram Judson, the American missionary, was the first scholarly treatise on the subject. At the commencement of the negotiations respecting breaches of the treaty of Yandaboo (1826), Latter left his regiment to serve as chief interpreter to Commodore Lambert's expedition, and on the outbreak of the second Burmese war he served Sir Henry Thomas Godwin [q. v.] in the same capacity. On 14 April 1852 he led the storming party despatched by Godwin against the eastern entrance of the Shwé Dagon pagoda, and acted so gallantly that Laurie, the historian of the war, called him the 'Chevalier Bayard of the expedition.' He took part in the capture of Pegu in June 1852, and when shortly afterwards the town of Prome, which was one of the chief rallying-places of the enemy, was occupied, Latter was on 30 Dec. 1852 appointed resident deputy commissioner. The
