The descendant of a Pembrokeshire family living at Prickeston, he was eldest son of Roger Lort, major of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who married Anne, only child of Edward Jenkins, vicar of Fareham, Hampshire.
From 1759 to 1771 he held the post of Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, and in 1768 he applied for the professorship of modern history, when Thomas Gray was given the chair.
While driving down North Hill, Colchester, in August 1790, Lort was thrown out of his carriage, and he died from the effects of the accident at 6 Savile Row, London, 5 November 1790.
She died on 5 February 1792, aged 50, and was buried in the same vault with her husband in the church of Friday Street, a white marble tablet being placed on its north wall.
He printed a couple of sermons (1760 and 1770), edited in 1769 A Projecte conteyning the State of Governmente of the University of Cambridge, in the 43d year of the raigne of Queen Elizabeth, in 1785 had ‘a copy of the Alexandrian New Testament printed off on fine vellum,’ and in 1790 published A Short Commentary on the Lord's Prayer, from which Granville Sharp in 1806 took the observations on the last two petitions as an appendix to his own work on that subject.
James Granger obtained his aid in his portrait-dictionary, he assisted John Nichols in the Gentleman's Magazine and in other undertakings, and he contributed to Archæologia.
The Greek verses in four collections of the University of Cambridge (1760–63) which bear Lort's name are reprinted in Zouch's Works (by whom it appears that they were written).