as orator and debater, commanded universal admiration, as he seems to have had incomparable command of the "knowledges" as then taught—mathematics no less than scholastic lore—and to have been strikingly fluent in various tongues. Retiring in bad health to Padua, he there again produced unbounded astonishment, and during six hours improvised a Latin poem in praise of the city, discussed the sciences—each with some one supposed to be a master in it—and exposed also some of the errors which belonged to the reigning Aristotelian philosophy. Returning to Venice, he gave himself to the same astounding displays, and Manutius has preserved the programme in the dedication of his Paradoxa Nobilissimo Juveni Jacobo Critono, Scoto. The challenge is broad and formal. He pledged himself to review the schoolmen, allowed his opponents the privilege of selecting their topics either from branches publicly or privately taught, and promised to return answers in logical figure, or in numbers estimated according to their occult power, or in any one of a hundred sorts of verse. For the space of three days, in the church of St. John and St. Paul, he sustained the trial, and justified before many competent witnesses his magnificent pretensions. After such a triumph he betook himself to Mantua, and there is said to have challenged and killed in combat one of the most renowned of gladiators, who had just slain three opponents who had rashly ventured to encounter him. The duke appointed him tutor to his son, and he not long after got up a dramatic performance, in which, during five hours, he represented effectively no less than fifteen different characters, such as a divine, a lawyer, a mathematician, a physician, and a soldier. But his career came to a sudden and tragical end. Meeting some persons in the street who quarrelled with him and set upon him, he defeated them, but one of them, his own pupil, threw off his mask and begged his life. Crichton at once fell on his knees and presented his sword to the prince, who received it, but immediately stabbed him with it to the heart. At his assassination Crichton had scarcely completed his twenty-third year. What the prince's motives were is not known—whether jealousy, envy, or the momentary rage of an "irefull heart;" or perhaps the admirable Crichton simply fell a victim in a drunken frolic. The lamentation over his untimely end was great and unusual. It is difficult to form a just estimate of Crichton's mind and attainments. He was no charlatan, though erudition of any depth, or the fruits of patient study, could not be expected of one of his years. Others had the same means of education as he had enjoyed, but he stood out among all his compeers for the number and variety of his precocious accomplishments. His verses are deficient both in poetry and Latinity, nor does his genius seem to have been equal to his undoubted acquirements. But after all allowance for exaggeration, he must have possessed a thorough familiarity with all branches of knowledge current and popular in those days, a quick apprehension, a ready and retentive memory, a marvellous promptitude and presence of mind, a boldness arising from his conscious stores and powers, an unlimited command of language in declamation and reply, a fluent mastery of several tongues, along with elegant manners and a graceful figure, improved by an eager cultivation of physical games and exercises. That he was a prodigy is admitted by Scaliger, Johnson, and Bayle.—(Life by Sir Thomas Urquhart, "Discovery of a most exquisite jewel" 1652. Biography by Mackenzie, by Tytler, by Irving, and by Imperialis.)—J. E.
CRIGHTON or CREIGHTON, Robert, a learned prelate, was born of an ancient family at Dunkeld In 1593, and died in 1672. At the beginning of the civil war he joined the king at Oxford. He afterwards followed Charles II. abroad, and after the Restoration was promoted to the bishopric of Bath and Wells. Crighton boldly denounced the vices of the court.—R. M., A.
CRITIAS, son of Callæschrus, was a pupil of Socrates, and is noteworthy both as a statesman and man of letters. In 406 b.c. he was in Thessaly endeavouring to set up a democracy. On his return to Athens he became leader of the oligarchical party. He was conspicuous among the thirty tyrants named by Lysander in 404 b.c., and in the same year was killed in battle. Cicero speaks of some of the speeches of Critias as extant in his time. He wrote a work on politics, and is said to have produced some tragedies, which are now lost. Some fragments of his elegies are still preserved.—J. B.
CRŒSUS, the last king of Lydia, succeeded to the throne 560 b.c. By a rapid series of conquests, he subdued all the Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, and extended his dominions over almost all the country, from the Ægean Sea to the river Halys. He was deemed the richest monarch of his age; and the fame of his wealth, power, and magnificence, attracted to his court many of the most illustrious sages and poets of Greece. When the prosperity of the Lydian monarchy was at its zenith, a new power suddenly arose in the East, which was destined to overthrow many of the existing dynasties, and to absorb their territories. By his accession to the throne of Media, Cyrus had obtained the sovereignty of Upper Asia, and was meditating schemes of vast ambition. Jealous of his growing power, Crœsus resolved to attack him; assembled an army of four hundred and twenty thousand men; crossed the Halys, gave him battle in Cappadocia, and was defeated, on which he retreated to Sardis, his capital. Cyrus followed him, laid siege to the city, and took it b.c. 546; annexed Lydia to Persia, and condemned its vanquished king to the flames, but afterwards pardoned him and took him into favour. Crœsus survived his conqueror, and enjoyed the friendship of his son Cambyses; but the date and manner of his death are unknown.—W. M.
CROFT, Sir Herbert, an English writer, was born in 1751, and died in 1816. After having studied law for some time, he entered the church, but devoted himself principally to literature. He wrote "A Brother's Advice to his Sisters;" "Love and Madness;" and issued proposals for an improved edition of Johnson's Dictionary—an undertaking that was never completed. The life of Young in Johnson's Lives of the Poets was written by Croft.—R. M., A.
CROFT, Herbert, an English prelate, was born in 1603, and died in 1691. Sent first to Oxford, he was next, on his father's conversion to popery, placed at Douay. He returned, however, to Oxford, and rose to be bishop of Hereford. His treatise entitled "Naked Truth," excited much attention at the time. A reply to it by Dr. Turner of Cambridge, was answered by the celebrated Andrew Marvell, who was an admirer of the bishop.
CROKE, Richard (in Latin Crocus), one of the revivers of classical learning in England, was born in London, and educated at Cambridge. He afterwards studied on the continent, and on his return was appointed teacher of Greek at Oxford. Henry VIII. sent him to bring over the university of Padua to his side in the matter of the divorce—a commission in which he was completely successful. He died in 1558.—R. M., A.
CROKE or CROOK, Sir George, an English lawyer, born in Buckinghamshire in 1559, and died in 1641. He was knighted in 1623, and in 1628 succeeded Sir John Doderidge on the king's bench. In 1636 Croke defended Hampden in the celebrated case of the ship-money, and this, strange to say, without offending the king.—R. M., A.
CROKER, John Wilson, the Right Hon., LL.D., F.R.S., distinguished as a politician and man of letters, was born in the year 1780 in the county of Galway in Ireland; his father, who was of an English family, holding the office of surveyor-general in that county. Croker received his education in the university of Dublin. He was called to the Irish bar in 1802, and a few years afterwards was returned to parliament for the borough of Downpatrick. In the year 1827 he was elected a representative for the university of Dublin, which constituency he continued to represent until the passing of the reform bill in 1832, when he finally retired from public life. He attached himself from the first to the tory party, and at an early age obtained office under Lord Liverpool's government, having been appointed secretary to the admiralty in the year 1809. This influential post he held until 1830. During this period Mr. Croker had become familiarly known to the public in the capacity of a wit and man of letters. Croker established in 1809 the Quarterly Review, to which periodical he contributed largely for many years. Amongst the papers attributed to his pen, some reviews have been censured as exceeding the legitimate bounds of criticism, thus exposing their author to perhaps exaggerated obloquy. But the most remarkable writings with which he enriched the Quarterly Review had reference to Louis Philippe and the revolution of 1830, many of the materials for which were known to have been furnished by the ex-king himself, a resident at the time at Clermont, close to Mr. Croker's villa at West Molesey in Surrey, and holding constant intercourse with him. The earliest of Mr. Croker's works were poetical, none of them displaying a high order of talent. His "Life of the Duke of Wellington," at once adulatory in its tone and prejudiced in its views, is quite unworthy of the hero it
