THOMAS

See also:

• THOMAS CREECH (1659-1700)

CREECH (1659-1700)  , English classical scholar, was born at Blandford, Dorsetshire, in 1659 . He received his early education from Thomas Curgenven, master of Sherborne school . In 1675 he entered Wadham College, Oxford, and obtained a fellowship in 1683 at All Souls' . He was headmaster of Sherborne school from 1694 to 1696, and in 1699 he received a college living, but in June 1700 he hanged himself . The immediate cause of the act was said to be a money difficulty, though according to some it was a love disappointment; both of these circumstances no doubt had their share in a catastrophe primarily due to an already pronounced melancholia . Creech's fame rests on his translation of Lucretius (1682) in rhymed heroic couplets, in which, according to Otway, the pure ore of the original " somewhat seems refined." He also published a version of Horace (1684), and translated the Idylls of Theocritus (1684), the Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal (1693), the Astronomicon of Manilius (1697), and parts of Plutarch, Virgil and Ovid .