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

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.