Many poets of the first class, of those times, addressed Mr. Creech in commendatory verses, which are prefixed to the translation of Lucretius: but this sudden blaze of reputation was soon obscured, by his failing in an arduous task, which the success of his Lucretius prompted him to attempt. This was a translation of the works of Horace, an author more 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.