Born, at Gibraltar, 6 Dec. 1772. Father settled in Staffordshire. Educated first at Uxbridge; at Rugby, 1783–85; at Sutton Coldfield Grammar School, 1785–87; at Birmingham Grammar School, 1787–90. Contrib. to “Gentleman’s Magazine,” from 1788. To Ch. Ch., Oxford, 29 April 1790; B.A., 14 Jan. 1794; M.A., 23 Nov. 1796. Ordained, Spring of 1796; Vicar of Abbott’s Bromley, Staffordshire. Married Jane Ormsby, 19 Sept. 1796. Instituted in living of Kingsbury, Warwickshire, 27 June 1800; removed thither, 12 Nov. 1800. Occupied on Dante translation, 1797–1812. To London, 1807. Reader at Berkeley Chapel, 1810–13. To Chiswick, as Curate and Lecturer, 1814. Curate of Savoy, June 1816. Contrib. to “London Magazine,” 1821–24. Assistant-Keeper of printed books in British Museum, June 1826 to July 1837. Crown pension, 23 Aug. 1841. Died, at Willesden, 14 Aug. 1844. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Works: “Sonnets and Odes,” 1788; “Ode to General Kosciusko,” 1797. Posthumous: “Lives of English Poets,” 1846; “The Early French Poets,” 1846. He translated: Dante’s “Divina Commedia,” 1814 (“Inferno,” 1805); Aristophanes’ “Birds,” 1824; Pindar, 1833; and edited: Cowper’s Poems, 1839; Milton, Thomson, and Young’s Poems, 1841. Life: by his son, H. Cary, 1847.

Personal

  Cary was one of Coleridge’s frequent visitors; I saw him at Highgate; but he was more often seen at the British Museum, where he had a position that gave him congenial occupation. His translation of Dante retains its place of honour on the bookshelves. Ugo Foscolo, than whom there could be no better authority, told me he considered it not only the best English translation of any foreign poet, but the best in any language. I recall him to memory as very kindly, with a most gracious and sympathizing expression; slow in his movements, as if he were always in thought, living among the books of which he was the custodian, and seeking only the companionship of the lofty spirits who had gone from earth—those who though dead yet speak.

General

  To whom Dante owes more than ever poet owed to translator…. I will only say that there is no other version in the world, as far as I know, so faithful, yet that there is no other version which so fully proves that the translator is himself a man of poetical genius. Those who are ignorant of the Italian language should read it to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy. Those who are most intimate with Italian literature should read it for its original merits: and I believe that they will find it difficult to determine whether the author deserves most praise for his intimacy with the language of Dante, or for his extraordinary mastery over his own.

  Cary’s literary fame is almost wholly identified with one work. There will probably always be two schools of Dante translation in England, the blank verse and the terza rima, and until some great genius shall have arisen capable of thoroughly naturalising the latter metre, Johnson’s terse remark on the translators of Virgil will continue to be applicable. “Pitt,” he says, “is quoted, and Dryden read.” Cary’s standard is lower, and his achievement less remarkable, than that of many of his successors, but he, at least, has made Dante an Englishman, and they have left him half an Italian. He has, nevertheless, shown remarkable tact in avoiding the almost inevitable imitation of the Miltonic style, and, renouncing the attempt to clothe Dante with a stateliness which does not belong to him, has in a great measure preserved his transparent simplicity and intense vividness. In many other respects Cary’s taste was much in advance of the standard of his day; his criticisms on other poets are judicious, but not penetrating. His original poems and his translation of Pindar scarcely deserve a higher praise than that of elegance.

  His famous translation of the “Divina Commedia,” published in 1814, is not only one of the best verse translations in English, but, after the lapse of eighty years, during which the study of Dante has been constantly increasing in England, in which poetic ideas have changed not a little, and in which numerous other translations have appeared, still attracts admiration from all competent scholars for its combination of fidelity and vigour.