The celebrated translator of Virgil, was born in the year 1699. He received his early education in the college near Winchester; and in 1719 was removed from thence to new college in Oxford. When he had studied there four years, he was preferred to the living of Pimperne in Dorsetshire, by his friend and relation, Mr. George Pitt; which he held during the remaining part of his life. While he was at the university, he possessed the affection and esteem of all who knew him; and was particularly distinguished by that great poet Dr. Young, who so much admired the early displays of his genius, that with an engaging familiarity he used to call him his son. Amongst the first of Mr. Pitt's performances which saw the light, were a panegyric on lord Stanhope, and a poem on the Plague of Marseilles: But he had two large Folio's of MS. Poems, very fairly written out, while he was a school-boy, which at the time of election were delivered to the examiners. One of these volumes contained an entire translation of Lucan; and the other consisted of Miscellaneous pieces. Mr. Pitt's Lucan has never been published; perhaps from the consideration of its being the production of his early life, or from a consciousness of its not equalling the translation of that author by Rowe, who executed this talk in the meridian of his genius. Several of his other pieces were published afterwards, in his volume of Miscellaneous Poems. The ingenious writer of the Student hath obliged the world by inferring in that work several original pieces by Mr. Pitt; whose name is prefixed to them. Next to his beautiful Translation of Virgil, Mr. Pitt gained the greatest reputation by rendering into English, Vida's Art of Poetry, which he has executed with the strictest attention to the author's sense, with the utmost elegance of versification, and without suffering the noble spirit of the original to be lost in his translation. This amiable poet died in the year 1748, without leaving one enemy behind him. On his tombstone were engraved these words, "He lived innocent, and died beloved." Mr. Auditor Benson, who in a pamphlet of his writing, has treated Dryden's translation of Virgil with great contempt, was yet charmed with that by Mr. Pitt, and found in it some beauties, of which he was fond even to a degree of enthusiasm. Alliteration is one of those beauties Mr. Benson so much admired, and in praise of which he has a long dissertation in his letters on translated verse. He once took an opportunity, in conversation with Mr. Pitt, to magnify that beauty, and to compliment him upon it. Mr. Pitt thought this article far less considerable than Mr. Benson did; but says he, 'since you are so fond of alliteration, the following couplet upon Cardinal Woolsey will not displease you, 'Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred, How high his honour holds his haughty head.