HENRY

See also:

• FRANCIS
• FRANCIS (FRarrcols) OF SALES, ST (1567-1622)
• FRANCIS (Lat. Franciscus, Ital. Francesco, Span. Francisco, Fr. Francois, Ger. Franz)
• FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP (174o-1818)

FRANCIS

See also:

• CARY, ALICE (1820-1871)
• CARY, ANNIE LOUISE (1842- )
• HENRY FRANCIS CARY (1772-1844)

CARY (1772-1844)  , English author and translator, was born at Gibraltar on the 6th of December 1772, the son of a captain in the army . He was educated at the grammar schools of Rugby, Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham, and at Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered in 1790 . He took holy orders, and was presented in 1797 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 school he had become a regular contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, and had published a volume of Sonnets and Odes . At Christ Church he devoted much time to the study of French and Italian literature; and the fruits of these studies appeared in the notes to his classic translation of Dante . The version of the Inferno was published in 1805, together with the original text . Soon afterwards Cary moved to London, where he became reader at Berkeley chapel, and subsequently lecturer at Chiswick and curate of the Savoy . His version of the whole Divina Commedia did not appear till 1814 . It was published at Cary's own expense, as the publisher refused to undertake the risk, owing to the failure incurred over the Inferno . The translation was brought to the notice of Samuel Rogers by Thomas Moore .

Rogers made some additions to an

article on it by Ugo Foscolo in the Edinburgh Review . This article, and praise bestowed on the work by Coleridge in a lecture at the Royal Institution, led to a general acknowledgment of its merit . Cary's Dante thus gradually took its place among standard works, passing through four editions in the translator's lifetime . It has the great merits of accuracy, idiomatic vigour and readableness; it preserves the sincerity and vividness of the original; and, although many rivals have since appeared in the field, it still holds an honourable place . Its blank verse, however, cannot represent the close woven texture and the stately music of the terza rimy of the original . In 1824 Cary published a translation of The Birds of Aristophanes, and, about 1834, of the Odes of Pindar . In 1826 he was appointed assistant-librarian in the British Museum, a post which he held for about eleven years . He resigned because the appointment of keeper of the printed books, which should have been his in the ordinary course of promotion, was refused him when it fell vacant . In 1841 a crown pension of £200 a year, obtained through the efforts of Samuel Rogers, was conferred on him . Cary's Lives of the early French Poets, and Lives of English Poets (from Johnson to Henry Kirke White), intended as a continuation of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, were published in a collected form in 1846 . He died in London on the 14th of August 1844, and was buried in Westminster Abbey . A memoir was published by his son, Henry Cary, in 1847 .