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.