re
diversified, and consequently more difficult than Lucretius. Some have
insinuated, that Mr. Dryden, jealous of his rising fame, and willing
to take advantage of his vanity, in order to sink his reputation,
strenuously urged him to this undertaking, in which he was morally
certain Creech could not succeed. Horace is so, various, so exquisite,
and perfectly delightful, that he who culls flowers in a garden so
replenished with nature's productions, must be well acquainted with her
form, and able to delineate her beauties. In this attempt Creech failed,
and a shade was thrown over his reputation, which continued to obscure
it to the end of his life. It is from this circumstance alleged, that
Mr. Creech contracted a melancholy, and moroseness of temper, which
occasioned the disinclination of many towards him, and threw him into
habits of recluseness, and discontent. To this some writers likewise
impute the rash attempt on his own life, which he perpetrated at Oxford,
in 1701. This act of suicide could not be occasioned by want, for Mr.
Jacob tells us, that just before that accident, he had been presented by
the college to the living of Welling in Hertfordshire. Mr. Barnard
in his Nouvelles de la Republiques de Lettres, assigns another cause
besides the diminution of his fame, which might occasion this disastrous
fate. Mr. Creech, though a melancholy man, was yet subject to the
passion of love. It happened that he fixed his affections on a lady who
had either previously engaged hers, or who could not bestow them upon
him; this disappointment, which was a wound to his pride, so affected
his mind, that, unable any longer to support a load of misery, he hanged
himself in his own chamber. Which ever of these causes induced him,
the event was melancholy, and not a little heightened by his being a
clergyman, in whose heart religion should have taken deeper root, and
maintained a more salutary influence, than to suffer him thus to stain
his laurels with his own blood.

Mr. Creech's works, besides his Lucretius already mentioned, are chiefly
these,

The Second Elegy of Ovid's First Book of Elegies. The 6th, 7th, 8th, and
12th Elegies of Ovid's Second Book of Elegies. The 2d and 3d Eclogue of
Virgil. The Story of Lucretia, from Ovid de Fastis. B. ii. The Odes,
Satires, and Epistles of Horace already mentioned, dedicated to John
Dryden, esq; who is said to have held it in great contempt, which gave
such a shock to Mr. Creech's pri