Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/255

Rh TYTLER,, a laborious miscellaneous writer, was the son of the minister of Fern, in the county of Forfar, where he was born about the middle of the last century. After receiving a good education, he was apprenticed to a Mr Ogilvie, a surgeon in Forfar, for whom he probably prepared the drugs which almost invariably form a part of the business of such provincial practitioners. He afterwards commenced a regular medical education at the university of Edinburgh, for which the necessary finances were partly supplied by two voyages which he made in the capacity of surgeon on board a Greenland whaler. From his earliest years, and during the whole course of his professional studies, he read with avidity every book that fell in his way; and, having a retentive memory, he thus acquired an immense fund of knowledge, more particularly, it is said, in the department of history. If reared in easy circumstances, and with a proper supervision over his moral nature, it is probable that Tytler would have turned his singular aptitude for learning, and his prompt and lively turn of mind, to some account, either in the higher walks of literature, or in some professional pursuit. He appears, however, to have never known anything but the most abject poverty, and to have never been inspired with a taste for anything superior: talent and information were in him unaccompanied by any development of the higher sentiments: and he contentedly settled at an early period of life into an humble matrimonial alliance, which obliged him to dissipate, upon paltry objects, the abilities that ought to have been concentrated upon come considerable effort. Whether from the pressing nature of the responsibilities thus entailed upon him, or from a natural want of the power of application, Tytler was never able to fix himself steadily in any kind of employment He first attempted to obtain practice as a surgeon in Edinburgh; but finding the profits of that business inadequate to the support of his family, and being destitute of that capital which might have enabled him to overcome the first difficulties, he was soon induced to remove to Leith, in order to open a shop for the sale of chemical preparations. For this department he was certainly qualified, so far as a skill in chemistry, extraordinary in that age, could be supposed to qualify him. But either from the want of a proper market for his commodities, or because, as formerly, he could not afford to wait till time should establish one, he failed in this line also. In the mean time, some literary efforts of Tytler had introduced him to the notice of the booksellers of Edinburgh, and he was employed by Messrs Bell and Macfarquhar, as a contributor to the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which began to be published in 1776. As noticed in the life of Mr William Smellie, the first edition of the Encyclopaedia was chiefly compiled by that gentleman, and was comprised in three volumes quarto. Mr Smellie having declined both a commercial and literary share in the second impression, on account of its including a biographical department, the proprietors appear to have engaged the pen of Mr Tytler as the next most eligible person that was at their command as a compiler; and accordingly, a large proportion of that additional matter, by which the work was expanded from three to ten volumes, was the production of the subject of this memoir. The payment for this labour is said to have been very small, insomuch that the poor author could not support his family in a style superior to that of a common labourer. At one time, during the progress of the work, he lived in the village of Duddingston, in the house of a washerwoman, whose tub, inverted, formed the only desk he could command; and the editor of this dictionary has heard one of his children relate, that she was frequently despatched to town with a small parcel of copy, upon the proceeds of which depended the next meal of the family. It is curious to reflect that the proceeds of the work which included so much of