WILLIAM, a learned member of Lincoln's Inn, was born in the year 1666. He was called to the bar in 1719, was treasurer of Lincoln's Inn for the year 1730, and died in 1743. In conjunction with Mr Peter Williams, Mr Melmoth was the publisher of Vernon's Reports, under an order of the Court of Chancery. But the performance for which he is justly held in remembrance is The Great Importance of a Religious Life Considered, London 1749; of which above 100,000 copies were sold during the last century. This admirable treatise was published anonymously, and was for some time erroneously attributed to John Percival, the first Earl of Egmont. A new edition of this work, with a memoir of the author and four appendices, was privately printed as a present to the benchers of Lincoln's Inn by Charles P. Cooper, Esq., London, 1849. (See Memoirs of William Melmoth, published by his son, 1796.)

William, son of the preceding, was born in 1710. He was bred to the law, and appointed a commissioner of bankrupts in 1756; but the greater part of his life was spent in retirement, partly at Shrewsbury and partly at Bath, where he was distinguished alike for integrity of conduct and for scholarly culture and an elegant taste. He first appeared as a writer in 1742, when, under the name of Sir Thomas Fitzosborne, he published two volumes of Letters on Several Subjects, which have been much admired for the just and liberal remarks with which they abound on various topics, moral and literary. In 1747 he published a translation of the Letters of Pliny, in 2 vols. 8vo, which, for elegance, precision, and correctness, is one of the best versions of a Latin author that has appeared in our language. In 1753 he published a translation of Cicero's Letters, in 3 vols, which were followed up in 1773 and 1779 by richly annotated translations of the treatises De Amicitia and De Senectute. In his remarks on the treatise De Amicitia he combated the opinion of Lord Shaftesbury, who had imputed it to Christianity as a defect, that it contained no precepts in favour of friendship; and also that of Soame Jenyns, who had represented this very omission as a proof of its divine origin. The concluding work of Mr Melmoth consisted of memoirs of his father, published in 1796. He died at Bath on the 15th of March 1799, at the age of eighty-nine.