COUNT GUSTAF FILIP

See also:

• COUNT GUSTAF FILIP CREUTZ (1729-1785)

CREUTZ (1729-1785)  , Swedish poet, was born in Finland in 1729 . After concluding his studies in Abo he received a post in the court of chancery at Stockholm in 1751 . Here he met Count Gyllenborg, with whom his name is indissolubly connected . They were closely allied with Fru Nordenflycht, and their works were published in common; to their own generation they seemed equal in fame, but posterity has given the palm of genius to Creutz . His greatest work is contained in the 1762 volume, the idyll of Atis och Camilla; the exquisite little pastoral entitled "Daphne" was published at the same time, and Gyllenborg was the first to proclaim the supremacy of his friend . In 1763 Creutz practically closed his poetical career; he went to Spain as ambassador, and after three years to Paris in the same capacity . In 1783 Gustavus III. recalled him and heaped honours upon him, but he died soon after, on the 3oth of October 1785 . Atis och Camilla was long the most admired poem in the Swedish language; it is written in a spirit of pastoral which is now to some degree faded, but in comparison with most of the other productions of the time it is freshness itself . Creutz introduced a melody and grace into the Swedish tongue which it lacked before, and he has been styled " the last artificer of the language." See Creutz och Gyllenborgs Vitterhetsarbeten (Stockholm, 1795) . CREUZER, GEORG FRIEDRICH (1771-1858), German philologist and archaeologist, was born on the loth of March 1771, at Marburg, the son of a bookbinder . Having studied at Marburg and Jena, he for some time lived at Leipzig as a private tutor; but in 1802 he was appointed professor at Marburg, and two years later professor of philology and ancient history at Heidelberg . The latter position he held for nearly forty-five years, with the exception of a short time spent at the university of Leiden, where his health was affected by the Dutch climate .

He was one of the

principal founders of the Philological Seminary established at Heidelberg in 1807 . The Academy of Inscriptions of Paris appointed him one of its members, and from the grand-duke of Baden he received the dignity of privy councillor . He died on the 16th of February 1858 . Creuzer's first and most famous work was his Symbolik and Mythologie der alien Vdlker, besonders der Griechen (1810-1812), in which he maintained that the mythology of Homer and Hesiod came from an Eastern source through the Pelasgians, and was the remains of the symbolism of an ancient revelation . This work was vigorously attacked by Hermann in his Briefen caber Homer and Hesiod, and in his letter, addressed to Creuzer, Ober das Wesen and die Behandlung der Mythologie; by J . H . Voss in his Antisymbolik; and by Lobek in his Aglaophamos . Of Creuzer's other works the principal are an edition of Plotinus; a partial edition of Cicero, in preparing which he was assisted by Moser; Die historische Kunst der Griechen (1803); Epochen der griech . Literaturgeschichte (18o2); Abriss der romischen Antiquitaten (1824) Zur Geschichte altromischer Cultur am Oberrhein and Neckar (1833); Zur Gemmenkunde (1834); Das Mithreum von Neuenheim (1838); Zur Galerie der alien Dramatiker (1839); Zur Geschichte der classischen Philologie (1854) . See the autobiographical Aus dem Leben eines alten Professors (Leipzig and Darmstadt, 1848), to which was added in the year of his death Paralipomena der Lebenskizze eines alien Professors (Frankfort, 1858); also Starck, Friederich Kreuzer, sein Bildungsgang and seine bleibende Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1875) .