pelas in the legs, which he neglected till it proved fatal. He died on the 17th June, 1762, and was interred with great pomp, all the actors attending. His eloge was pronounced by Piron, and a mausoleum was erected to his memory. Crébillon was a man of amiable manners, candid, modest, and simple; and though constitutionally subject to fits of gloom, he was often sprightly, fond of witty sallies, but never known to say anything that could offend others. In appearance he was tall, and had a fine head, with bright eyes full of expression.—J. F. W.
CREECH, Thomas, the translator of Lucretius, Horace, and Theocritus, was born at Blandford in Dorsetshire in 1659, and was educated at Wadham college, Oxford, of which he became a fellow. He was elected probationer fellow of All Soul's in 1683. His translation of Lucretius, published in 1682, is his best work, and has been highly praised by Dryden. In 1699 he was appointed to the college living of Woburn, Bedfordshire, and two years after, in June 1701, committed suicide in his chamber at Oxford. He was of a morose temper, and this act has been ascribed to some constitutional infirmity.—J. T.
CREECH, William, a well-known Edinburgh bookseller of facetious memory, whose name is associated with many of the literary men of the day. He was the son of the minister of Newbattle, and was born in 1795. For many years he carried on by far the most extensive bookselling business in Scotland. His shop stood at the east end of the Luckenbooths, now demolished, facing down the High Street, and was the regular haunt of the literati of Edinburgh at this period. From this place issued the works of Lord Karnes, Adam Smith, David Hume, Henry Mackenzie, and Robert Burns. Creech himself was the author of some fugitive pieces of no great merit; but he was a pleasant companion, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of amusing anecdote. He was remarkably penurious in his habits, and his stinginess and keen tenacity of his own interests disgusted most of the authors who had dealings with him. Burns revenged himself for his niggardly treatment of him by a biting poetical sketch of the acute and witty, but selfish bibliopole. Creech died in 1815.—J. T.
CRESCIMBENI, Giovanni Maria Ignazio Geronimo Saverio Giuseppe Antonio, an Italian poet and litterateur, was born at Macerata in 1663, and died in 1728. He was educated in his native town, and gave promise of literary excellence before he went in 1680 to join his uncle at Rome, where he spent the rest of his life. His earlier productions were written in the vicious style of that age; but the perusal of the writings of Filicaï and Leonio corrected this fault. From that time he laboured incessantly to diffuse a more correct taste amongst his countrymen. It was for this end that he founded the academy of the Arcadians, which was opened in 1690, and at the head of which he remained for thirty-eight years. Crescimbeni was a voluminous writer both in prose and verse. The most valuable of his works is "L'Istoria della volgar Poesia." It should, perhaps, be mentioned that he retained only the first two of his christian names.—R. M., A.
CRESPI, Giuseppe Maria, Cavaliere: this artist was born at Bologna in 1665. He was a pupil of Canuti and Cignani. From his gay apparel, he was called lo Spagnuolo. He was a mad reckless painter, but with a ready quick cleverness that came near to genius. Mengs condemns him as the destroyer of the Bolognese school. He had a strange talent for grotesque caricature. He died in 1747.—His two sons, Luigi and Antonio, were also successful painters. Luigi was a creditable writer on art. He died in 1779.—W. T.
* CRESWICK, Thomas: this painter was born at Sheffield in 1811. In 1828 he first came to London, and the same year exhibited two of his landscapes at the Royal Academy. From that time he became a steady contributor to the works of the academy, seldom losing a year, and at the same time sending many works to the minor exhibition of the British institution. The excellence of his pictures soon attracted attention; but it was not until 1842 that he was elected associate. In 1851 he was made royal academician. His productions are still highly valued, though they probably reached their highest point of worth some few years ago. His pictures are chiefly from scenes in England, and he has occasionally painted in conjunction with Mr. Ausdell, who has supplied the figures to the landscapes. His colour is rich, but inclines to heaviness—a characteristic which, of late years, has rather increased than otherwise—and he is partial to a monotone of hue. But his rocky streams often possess great vigour and reality, and his shady glens have many charms of depth and power of colour. Moreover, the popularity he has acquired, as a loving transcriber of English scenes, may enable him to disregard criticism almost entirely. His success is very nearly an answer to all cavil at his works.—W. T.
CRETIN, or as it is sometimes written, Crestin, the real name being Dubois, a French poet, the date or place of whose birth is not ascertained. Probably he was a Parisian, and we know from his writings that he lived in the fifteenth and commencement of the sixteenth century. Francis I. having appointed him his chronicler. Cretin undertook to write the history of France, which he accomplished in twelve books in a metrical form, but, as was the fashion with other metrical chroniclers, in a dry and prosaic style. He was a man of considerable learning and praised by his contemporaries, who called him "Souverain poete françois;" a supremacy which the witty Rabelais ignored in his Pantagruel, where, in the character of Raminagrobis, he exhibits the vices and affectation of Cretin's style. He died somewhere about the year 1525. A modern critic has happily observed of him that he never could make rhyme and reason agree.—J. F. W.
CREUZER, Georg Friedrich, an eminent German philologist, was born on the 10th of March, 1771, at Marburg, where he studied, and some years after was appointed professor of philology. In 1804 he was called to the chair of ancient literature and eloquence at Heidelberg; and from that time, till his death on the 16th of February, 1858, was one of the greatest ornaments of this university. Creuzer's fame chiefly rests upon his opus magnum, "Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen," which involved him in a vehement and protracted controversy with several prominent philologists. Unlike the Symbolik, Creuzer's second great work, the "Opera Omnia of Plotinus," Oxford, 1835, 8 vols., enjoyed the general approbation. His numerous editions, as well as his antiquarian treatises, are not less distinguished by learning than by deep and original thinking. To the collected edition of his German writings, Leipzig, 1837-47, 9 vols., the author added his autobiography, "Ans dem Leben eines alten Professors," as an interesting supplement.—K. E.
CREWE, Nathaniel, as English prelate, was the fifth son of John, Lord Crewe; born in 1633; died in 1721. He was promoted to the see of Oxford in 1671, and three years after translated to Durham. Being a member of the privy council of James II. he favoured the measures of the court, and after the Revolution his name was excepted from the act of indemnity of 1690. His pardon was afterwards procured by his friends.
CRICHTON, James, "the Admirable." So much romance has been thrown around this extraordinary individual, that it is difficult to ascertain the real facts of his biography. He was born, not in the castle of Cluny, but more probably at Elliock in Dumfriesshire in August, 1560, his mother being a granddaughter of Lord Lindsay of the Byres, and daughter of Sir James Stewart of Beath, a descendant of Murdac, duke of Albany, third son of King Robert II.; his father being lord-advocate, and connected with the Crichtons of Sanquhar, the ancestors of the earl of Dumfries; and his granduncle, Lord Methven being third husband of Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV. In 1570, and when ten years of age, he was sent to St. Salvator's college, St. Andrews, then adorned by many illustrious men, and he had for some time the young king as a fellow-pupil. He took his degree of A.M. in 1575 with no little honour, his name being third in the first or highest circle of graduates. The elder Crichton espoused the doctrines of the Reformation, but the son, adhering to the old faith, went over to France. There, in the university of Paris and in the college of Navarre, he issued a universal challenge, that is, to all men upon all things, and to be held in any of twelve languages named. The rhapsodist, Sir Thomas Urquhart, repeats the programme in a style of characteristic magniloquence; adding that he spent the interval in all kinds of gymnastic exercises, in music, dancing, and pastime, but that on the appointed day he for nine hours vanquished all his opponents in all the faculties. According to another authority, not greater than the last, he went to Rome, and re-enacted the same feat there. He appears also to have been some time in Genoa, and there is no doubt that he arrived in Venice about the year 1580, and made the acquaintance of the famous printer Aldus Manutius, who dedicated exuberant eulogies to his living genius, and strewed pathetic elegies over his tomb. His appearance at Venice, both
