# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lyte, Henry Francis

​LYTE, HENRY FRANCIS (1793–1847), hymn-writer, born at Ednam, near Kelso, Roxburghshire, 1 June 1793, was second son of Captain Thomas Lyte, and a lineal descendant of Henry Lyte [q. v.] and Thomas Lyte [q. v.] He was educated at Portora (the royal school of Enniskillen) in Ireland, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became scholar in 1813, and competed successfully for three prize poems in three successive years. Abandoning an intention of entering the medical profession, he took holy orders, and in 1815 he was made curate of Taghmon, near Wexford. Ill-health led him to resign this post, and after a visit to the continent he went to Marazion, Cornwall, where he married Anne, daughter and eventual heiress of the Rev. W. Maxwell, D.D. of Falkland, co. Monaghan, who wrote the twenty-fourth chapter of Boswell's ‘Life of Johnson.’ Subsequently he held the curacies of Lymington, Hampshire, where much of his verse was written, and of Charlton, Devonshire. At Lower Brixham he laboured for twenty-five years in charge of a new parish. His health compelled him to make frequent foreign tours. He died on 20 Nov. 1847 at Nice, where his grave, in the English cemetery, is marked by a marble cross. A portrait by John King (1788–1847) [q. v.] was engraved by Phillips. In conjunction with his son, J. W. Maxwell Lyte, he formed a very extensive library, chiefly of theology and old ​English poetry, the sale of which in London in 1848 occupied seventeen days.
Lyte is chiefly remembered for his hymns. The best known are: ‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,’ and ‘Pleasant are Thy courts above;’ but others, like ‘Far from my heavenly home,’ ‘Jesus, I my cross have taken’ (sometimes erroneously attributed to James Montgomery), and ‘Praise, my soul, the King of heaven,’ are of acknowledged excellence. All these appear in most hymnals. Two of Lyte's secular poems—‘On a Naval Officer’ and ‘The Poet's Plea’—are remarkable for their true poetic feeling. The former was set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. The earliest volume of Lyte's poems, ‘Tales in Verse,’ written at Lymington, appeared in 1826, and reached a second edition. Wilson, reviewing this book in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ justly characterised Lyte's verse as ‘the right kind of religious poetry.’ Some of his hymns were first published by him in his ‘Poems chiefly Religious’ (London, 1833); others in his ‘Spirit of the Psalms,’ a metrical version of the Psalter (London, 1834), which passed through several editions. A volume of ‘Remains,’ consisting of poems, sermons, and letters, with a prefatory memoir by his daughter, was published in London in 1850; and the verse in this and in ‘Poems chiefly Religious’ was reprinted under the title of ‘Miscellaneous Poems,’ London, 1868. Lyte also wrote the appreciative ‘Biographical Sketch of Henry Vaughan,’ prefixed to the latter's ‘Sacred Poems,’ London, 1847.
[Remains, with memoir, as above; Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, with authorities there given; Ashwell's Life of Bishop Wiberforce; Holland's Psalmists of Great Britain, ii. 344; Miller's Singers and Songs of the Christian Church; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vii. pp. 10, 182; Edinburgh Review, lix. 171–82; Dean Hole's Memories (1893), pp. 74 sq.]
J. C. H.