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HENRY FRANCIS CARY (1772-1844)

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Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 439 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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HENRY FRANCIS CARY (1772-1844)  ,
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English author and translator, was born at
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Gibraltar on the 6th of December 1772, the son of a captain in the army . He was educated at the grammar
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schools of
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Rugby, Sutton Coldfield and
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Birmingham, and at Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered in 1790 . He took
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holy orders, and was presented in 1797 to the vicarage of Abbott's Bromley in
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Staffordshire . This benefice he held till his
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death . In 1800 he was also presented to the vicarage of Kingsbury in
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Warwickshire . While still at school he had become a
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regular contributor to the Gentleman's
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Magazine, and had published a
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volume of Sonnets and Odes . At Christ Church he devoted much time to the study of French and
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Italian literature; and the fruits of these studies appeared in the notes to his classic
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translation of
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Dante . The version of the Inferno was published in 1805, together with the
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original text . Soon afterwards Cary moved to
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London, where he became reader at Berkeley
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chapel, and subsequently lecturer at
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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
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risk, owing to the failure incurred over the Inferno . The translation was brought to the
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notice of
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Samuel Rogers by Thomas Moore .

Rogers made some additions to an

article on it by Ugo Foscolo in the
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Edinburgh Review . This article, and praise bestowed on the
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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
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works, passing through four
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editions in the translator's lifetime . It has the
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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
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woven texture and the stately
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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
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British Museum, a
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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
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crown pension of £200 a
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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 .

End of Article: HENRY FRANCIS CARY (1772-1844)
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