CARY, Henry Francis (1772-1844), translator of Dante, and miscellaneous writer, was born at Gibraltar, December 6, 1772. He was the son of a captain in the army, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered at the age of eighteen, having two years earlier made his appearance as an author, in a volume of Sonnets and Odes. In 1796 he took his master’s degree, and having entered the church was presented, in the following year, to the vicarage of Abbott’s Bromley in Staffordshire. This benefice he held till his death. In 1800 he was also presented to the vicarage of Kingsbury in Warwickshire. While still at Christ Church he had devoted much time to the study of modern literature, not only English but French and Italian; and the fruits of his studies in these fields appeared in the notes to his translation of Dante, the work on which his reputation now chiefly rests. The version of the Inferno was published in 1805, together with the original text. The version of the whole Divina Commedia did not appear till 1814. It attracted little attention for some years. But when Coleridge, in his lectures at the Royal Institution spoke of it in terms of high praise, the world was persuaded to acknowledge its merits. It gradually took its place among “standard” works, and passed through four editions in the translator’s lifetime. It has the great merits of accuracy, idiomatic vigour, and readableness, and, although many rivals have since appeared in the field, still holds its honourable place. Its blank verse, however, cannot represent the close woven texture and the stately music of the terza rima of the original· In 1824 Cary published a translation of The Birds of Aristophanes. Two years later he was appointed assistant-librarian in the British Museum, a ...post which he held for about eleven years. He resigned in consequence of being refused the appointment, in ordinary course on a vacancy, to the post of keeper of the printed books. From this time he applied himself to literary work on his own account, for which his duties at the museum had left him little opportunity. For the old London Magazine he wrote a series of Lives of the early French Poets, and Lives of English Poets (from Johnson to Henry Kirke White), the latter intended as a continuation of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. These works were published in a collected form in 1846. He was also engaged in editing the works of Cowper, Milton, Pope, and other poets. He published about 1834 a translation of the Odes of Pindar, and at the time of his death was preparing a body ot illustrative notes for a new edition. A pension of £200 per annum was conferred on Cary by Lord Melbourne in 1841. He died in London, August 14, 1844, and his remains were interred in Westminster Abbey. A memoir of his life, with his literary journal and letters, was published in two volumes by his son, the Rev. Henry Cary, Μ. A, in 1847.
CARY, Sir Lucius, second Viscount Falkland, was born at Burford, co. Oxon, in 1610 or 1611, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, his father being at that time lorddeputy of Ireland. On leaving the university he served for a short time in the Low Countries, but failing to attain promotion returned to England, and found a refuge from domestic troubles in the study of ancient literature and the society of the most eminent men of learning. Among his intimate associates were Jonson, Suckling, and Cowley; and at his country seat, Great Tew in Oxfordshire, he subsequently gathered around him a small group of theologians whose liberal opinions were not without influence in the religious rivalries of the day. In 1633 he succeeded to his father’s title, and was appointed gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles I. In 1640 he entered the House of Commons as member for Newport, Isle of Wight, and quickly assumed there a prominent part upon the side of the king, while at the same time he supported Pym in his schemes of moderate reform in church and state, and himself introduced the Bill for the exclusion of bishops from the House of Peers. But having been chosen by Charles to be one of his secretaries of state, Falkland found himself irretrievably committed to a cause which he could not wholly approve, and to the service of a king whom in his heart he distrusted, though his chivalry forbad him to abandon his cause. On the eve of the Civil War he joined his royal master at York, and having raised a troop of horse, did good service at Edgehill, Oxford, and the siege of Gloucester. In the indecisive battle of Newbury (20th September 1643) he fell fighting in the front rank of Lord Byron’s regiment, with the words “Peace, Peace” upon his lips. Had his life been spared it is possible that he might at least have succeeded in mitigating the rancour of the contending parties. His poems and political writings, published after his death, do not increase a reputation which is based rather upon single-mindedness and patriotic self-devotion than upon his contributions to literature.
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