(Dr Francis), a very elegant writer and excellent philosopher, was the son of a dissenting minister in the north of Ireland, and was born on the 8th of August 1694. He early discovered a superior capacity; and having gone through a school-education, began his course of philosophy at an academy, whence he removed to the university of Glasgow, where he applied himself to all the parts of literature, in which his progress was suitable to his uncommon abilities.

He then returned to Ireland; and entering into the ministry, was just about to be settled in a small congregation of dissenters in the north of Ireland, when some gentlemen about Dublin, who knew his great abilities and virtues, invited him to take up a private academy there. He complied with the invitation, and met with much success. He had been fixed but a short time in Dublin, when his singular merits and accomplishments made him generally known; and his acquaintance was sought by men of all ranks, who had any taste for literature, or any regard for learned men. The late lord vicount Molesworth is said to have taken great pleasure in his conversation, and to have assisted him with his criticisms and observations upon his "Inquiry into the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue," before it came abroad. He received the same favour from Dr Synge, lord bishop of Elphin, with whom he also lived in great friendship. The first edition of this performance came abroad without the author's name, but the merit of it would not suffer him Hutcheson to be long concealed. Such was the reputation of the work, and the ideas it had raised of the author, that lord Granville, who was then lord lieutenant of Ireland, sent his private secretary to inquire at the bookseller's for the author; and when he could not learn his name, he left a letter to be conveyed to him: in consequence of which he soon became acquainted with his excellency, and was treated by him, all the time he continued in his government, with distinguished marks of familiarity and esteem.

From this time his acquaintance began to be still more courted by men of distinction either for station or literature in Ireland. Archbishop King, the author of the celebrated book De origine malorum, held him in great esteem; and the friendship of that prelate was of great use to him in screening him from two several attempts made to prosecute him, for daring to take upon him the education of youth, without having qualified himself by subscribing the ecclesiastical canons, and obtaining a licence from the bishop. He had also a large share in the esteem of the primate Bolter, who through his influence made a donation to the university of Glasgow of a yearly fund for an exhibition to be bred to any of the learned professions. A few years after his "Inquiry into the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue," his "Treatise on the Passions" was published: both these works have been often reprinted; and always admired, both for the sentiment and language, even by those who have not attended to the philosophy of them, nor allowed it to have any foundation in nature. About this time he wrote some philosophical papers, accounting for laughter, in a different way from Hobbes, and more honourable to human nature: which papers were published in the collection called Hibernicus's Letters.

After he had taught in a private academy at Dublin for seven or eight years with great reputation and success, he was called, in the year 1729, to Scotland, to be a professor of philosophy in the university of Glasgow. Several young gentlemen came along with him from the academy, and his high reputation drew many more thither both from England and Ireland. Here he spent the remainder of his life in a manner highly honourable to himself and ornamental to the university of which he was a member. His whole time was divided between his studies and the duties of his office; except what he allotted to friendship and society. A firm constitution and a pretty uniform state of good health, except some few slight attacks of the gout, seemed to promise a longer life; yet he did not exceed the 53rd year of his age. He was married, soon after his settlement in Dublin, to Mrs Mary Wilson, a gentleman's daughter in the county of Languedoc; by whom he left behind him one son, Francis Hutcheson, doctor of medicine. By this gentleman was published, from the original manuscript of his father, "A System of Moral Philosophy, in three books, by Francis Hutcheson, LL.D. at Glasgow, 1755," in two volumes, 4to.