The life of which I am about to give some account to this Society cannot be called a literary one; of literary lives only it is perhaps the proper business of the Royal Society to record the particulars; but it has been in the practice of allowing a wider range to this customary notice of its deceased Members. Of the lives of such as were eminent in station or in usefulness, in abilities or in virtue, it has been accustomed to hear a narrative, which, though not important to learning, is interesting to humanity. Under this title, it will indulge me with a short account of the life of Lord Abercromby.

The custom which this Society has established, of giving some account of the lives of its deceased members, is in every case gratifying to friendship, in many interesting to curiosity, but in those which serve to record the pursuits and occupations of men of letters, it is more strictly and properly an object coming within the views of a literary institution. The history of the authors is always in a great degree the history of the literature of a country; and even exclusive of an immediate relation to their works, the narrative of their private and domestic habits is often, in a moral point of view, useful and interesting to the scholar and the author. In both these respects, I may claim the attention of the Society to the following short account of the life and writings of our late worthy colleague, Mr William Tytler.

In writing the life of a person who himself published nothing, it is extremely difficult to satisfy the expectation of his particular friends, without incurring the charge of adulation from the rest of the public. How far I have succeeded in doing justice to Mr Hamilton's merit, without insensibility or exaggeration, must be determined by those who knew him, and by those who can appreciate the worth of such professional remarks as I shall lay before them in the sequel. Mr William Hamilton was born in Glasgow July 31. 1758. Having finished the usual course at the Grammar School, he went to Glasgow College in 1770, and continued there studying with great diligence till 1775, when he became Master of Arts at the age of seventeen.

Doctor John Roebuck was born at Sheffield in Yorkshire, in the year 1718. His father was a considerable manufacturer and exporter of Sheffield goods, who, by his abilities and industry, had acquired a competent fortune. John, his eldest son, the subject of this memoir, was intended, by his father, for carrying on his own lucrative business at Sheffield; but was, from his early youth, irresistably attached to other pursuits, more calculated to gratify his ambition, and give fuller play to his powers. Notwithstanding this disappointment in his favourite object, his father had liberality enough to encourage his rising genius, and to give him all the advantages of a regular education.