LANGHORNE, JOHN, was born at Kirkby Stephen, in West morland, in 1735, and educated at the school of Appleby. Being too indigent to proceed to the university, he had recourse to private tuition, took orders, and in 1760 entered himself as a ten-year-man at Clare Hall, Cambridge. Having fallen in love with a &tighter of the gentleman in whose family he lived, he offered her his hand, and on being refused quitted his employment, and repaired to London, where ho obtained a curacy, helped to support himself by his pen, and soon became a well-known and popular author. Dr. Hurd appointed him assistant preacher of Lincoln's Inn Fields; and a short poem, called `Genius and Valour,'everitten in defence of the Scotch against the coarse abuse of Churchill and others, proditred for him, from the University of Edinburgh in 1760, the degree of D.D. In the follow ing year he renewed his suit, and was accepted. The living of Blagden in Somersetehire was purchased for him ; but in the first year of his marriage his happiness was interrupted by the death of his wife iu childbed. To solace his grief he undertook, with his brother, the new translation of Plutarch's ' Lives,' published in 1771, by which he is best known. In accuracy this has the advantage over Sir Thomas North's old version from the French of Auryot, but it is much inferior in spirit and effect. Having married again, ho lost his second wife in 1776, also in childbed. This double disappointment is said to have
led him into intemperate habits. Ile died in April 1779.
Langhorne wrote tales, poems (chiefly short), and sermons, which did not establish for him much reputation as a divine. His prose is flowery and sentimental, his verses pleasing and harmonious but over ornamented, seldom rising above prettiness, and often spoiled by affectation. They have a place in Chalmers's 'British Poeta' His l'oeme, published by his son in 1802, contain a Life of the author. LANOTOFT, PETER, an English chronicler who lived at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th century, was a canon-regular of the order of St. Austin at Bridlington in Yorkshire. He translated from the Latin into French verse Herbert Boseoham's (or Iloacam's) ' Life of Thomas is Becket,' and compiled, likewise in French verse, a Chronicle of England,' manuscripts of which are preserved in tho Cottonian Collection, Julius A.V., in the old Royal Library at the British Museum, and among the Arundel manuscripts in the library of Ileralde' College. The ' Chronicle' begins with the fable of the Trojans, and comes down to the end of the reign of Edward I. Langtoft is believed to have died early in tho reign of Edward II. Robert de Bruen° gave an English metrical 'version of Langtoft, which was edited at Oxford, in 2 vole. Svo, by Hearne, in 1725.