CAREY, Henry (died 1743), a humorous poet and musical composer, was an illegitimate son of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and was born towards the end of the 17th century. He studied music under Lennert, Roseingrave, and Geminiani, but never attained to excellence in the higher departments of composition. His ballads and songs, however, were exceedingly popular at the time. He wrote several dramatic pieces for Covent Garden theatre, among which may be mentioned a burlesque tragedy called Chrononhotonthologos (1734); an operetta called the Honest Yorkshireman ; two interludes, called Nancy and Thomas and Sally ; and two burlesque operas, called The Dragon of Wantley (1737) and Margery, or the Dragoness. His songs were collected and published by himself in a work called The Musical Century (1740); and one of them, Sally in our Alley, the most graceful and natural of English lyrics, is yet popular. His dramatic works were published in 1743. Carey died at an advanced age the same year. It has often been said that he put an end to his own life, but the story had no good foundation....
CAREY, William, D.D. (1761-1834), a Baptist missionary and Oriental scholar, was born at Paulerspury, Northamptonshire, in 1761. When a youth he worked with his father, who was a shoemaker; but before he was twenty years of age he joined the Baptists, and devoted a large portion of his time to village preaching. In 1787 he became pastor of a Baptist congregation in Leicester, and five years after was chosen by a Baptist missionary association to proceed to India as their missionary. On reaching Bengal, Carey and his companions lost all their property in the Hugli; but having received the charge of an indigo factory at Maida, he was soon able to prosecute the work of translating the Bible into Bengali. In 1799 he quitted Maida for Serampore, where he established a church, a school, and a printing press for the publication of the Scriptures and philological works. In 1801 Carey was appointed professor of Oriental languages in a college founded at Fort-William by the Marquis of Wellesley From this time to his death he devoted himself to the preparation of numerous philological works, consisting of grammars and dictionaries in the Mahratta, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Telinga, Bengali, and Bhotanta dialects. The Sanskrit dictionary was unfortunately destroyed by a fire which broke out in the printing establishment. From the Serampore press there issued no fewer than twenty-four different translations of the Scriptures, all edited by Dr Carey. He died in 1834.
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