WILLIAM JULIUS, the translator of the Lusiad, was the son of Mr Alexander Mickle, a Scottish clergyman, who had formerly been an assistant to Dr Watts in London, and one of the translators of Bayle's Dictionary. He was born at Langholm in Dumfriesshire in 1784; and after his father's death he came to Edinburgh to reside with his uncle, who was a brewer there, and who admitted him to a share of his business. Not being qualified to succeed in this calling, however, he went to London about the conclusion of the war of 1755, to procure a commission in the marine service. In this he was disappointed; but he introduced himself to the first Lord Lyttelton, who encouraged him to persevere in his poetical studies.

From the time of Mickle's arrival in London till the year 1765 it is not known how he employed his time. In that year, however, he engaged himself as corrector to the Clarendon press. From this time till 1770 he published several small pieces in prose and verse, which brought him into some notice, the principal of which were Pollio, an elegiac ode (1765), and The Coneubine, written in imitation of Spenser (1767), and afterwards published, with alterations, under the title of Sir Mortyn. He also wrote against Arianism and Deism in his Letter to Dr Harwood, and in his Voltaire in the Shades. His tragedy of the Siege of Marceilles proved a failure, and was never produced. When not more than seventeen years of age, he had read the Lusiad of Camoens in French, and projected the design of giving an English version of that poem. Accordingly, in 1771, he published the first book as a specimen; and quitting his residence at Oxford, he went to a farm-house at Forest Hill, where he pursued his design with unremitting assiduity till the year 1775, when the work was completed. It met with severe censure for the diffuseness of the translation, and for the unwarrantable liberties taken with the original. During the time that Mr Mickle was engaged in this work he supported himself entirely as a corrector of the press; and on his quitting that employment he had only the subscriptions which he received for his translation to support him.

A second edition of the Lusiad was prepared in 1778; and whilst he was meditating a publication of all his poems, he was appointed secretary to Governor Johnstone, who had obtained the command of the Romney. In November 1779 he arrived at Lisbon, and was appointed by his patron joint agent for the prizes which were taken. Mickle received much honour from the Portuguese, and was admitted a member of their Royal Academy. On his return to England he fixed his residence at Whealney in Oxfordshire, and after writing several pieces in prose and verse, the last of which was a ballad called Eskdale Braes, he died on the 25th of October 1788. His poems possess but little general merit. The best of his ballads perhaps is Cumnor Hall, which suggested Scott's Kenilworth.