Henry Francis Cary was born in
Gibraltar, on 6 December 1772. He was the eldest son of Henrietta Brocas and William Cary. Henrietta was the daughter of
Theophilus Brocas, Dean of Killala and William, at the time, was a captain of the
First Regiment of Foot. His grandfather, Henry Cary was archdeacon, and his great grandfather,
Mordecai Cary, bishop of that diocese. illustrations He was educated at
Rugby School and at the grammar schools of
Sutton Coldfield and
Birmingham, as well as at
Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered in 1790 and studied French and Italian literature. While at school he regularly contributed to the ''
Gentleman's Magazine, and published a volume of Sonnets and Odes''. He took holy orders and in 1797 and became vicar of
Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire. He held this benefice until his death. In 1800 he also became vicar of
Kingsbury in Warwickshire. At Christ Church he studied French and Italian literature, his command of which is evidenced in his notes to his translation of
Dante. The version of the
Inferno was published in 1805 together with the original text. Cary moved to London in 1808, where he became reader at the Berkeley Chapel and subsequently, lecturer at
Chiswick and curate of the
Savoy Chapel. His version of the whole
Divina Commedia in
blank verse appeared in 1814. It was published at Cary's own expense, the publisher refusing to undertake the risk, since the publication of the
Inferno in 1805 had been a failure. 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 gradually took its place among standard works, passing through four editions in his lifetime. In 1826, he was appointed assistant-librarian at the reading room of the
British Museum, a post he held for about eleven years. In 1833, Cary was granted six months' leave of absence because of illness and travelled with his manservant and his son, Francis, to Italy visiting Amiens, Paris, Lyons, Aix, Nice, Mentone, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Sienna, Rome (a month), Naples, Bologna, Verona, Venice (a month), Innsbruck, Munich, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Ghent, and Bruges. His friend
Charles Lamb was a regular visitor at his workplace. On 10 May 1834, Lamb wrote, In 1824, Cary published a translation of
The Birds of
Aristophanes, and, about 1834, he published his translation of the
Odes of
Pindar. He resigned from the museum because the appointment of keeper of the printed books, which should have been his in the ordinary course of promotion, was refused to 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
Samuel Johnson to
Henry Kirke White), intended as a continuation of Johnson's
Lives of the Poets, were published in collected form in 1846. He died in Charlotte St., St. George's, Bloomsbury, London, in 1844 and was buried in
Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. A memoir was published by his son, Judge
Henry Cary, in 1847. Another son,
Francis Stephen Cary, became a well-known art teacher, succeeding
Henry Sass as the head of his art academy in London. ==See also==