poets, which were published in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ after his death. A crown pension of 200l. a year was conferred upon him in 1841, principally through the influence of Rogers. He died, after a short illness, on 14 Aug. 1844, and was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of Samuel Johnson.
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. A translation of Valerius Flaccus was never completed, and nothing more seems to have been heard of the ‘Romeo and other Poems’ which his son announced his intention of publishing. The extreme tenderness and affectionateness of Cary's character appears sufficiently from his history. It would hardly have been inferred from his correspondence, which is in general rather commonplace, and tinctured with a reserve which can only have arisen from extreme sensitiveness.
[Memoir of the Rev. H. F. Cary, by his son, Henry Cary, 2 vols. 1847; Gent. Mag. April 1847; Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, pp. 547–52.]
CARY, JOHN (d. 1395?), judge, son of Sir John Cary, knight, bailiff of the forest of Selwood in Wiltshire, knight of the shire for Devon in 1362 and 1368, who died in 1371, by Jane, daughter of Sir Guy de Brien, knight, was put into commission as warden of the ports for Devonshire in 1373, and was made commissioner of array three years later. He was commanded by the king in 1383 to take the rank of serjeant-at-law, but refused. Three years later (5 Nov. 1386) he was created chief baron of the exchequer. In 1387–8 he underwent impeachment for having answered, in a sense favourable to the king, the interrogatories addressed to the judges at Nottingham in the preceding August, relative to the action of the parliament in dismissing Michael de la Pole, and vesting the supreme power in a council of nobles [see Bealknap, Sir Robert]. He was condemned to death, but the sentence having been commuted for one of banishment, he was transported to Waterford and confined within a circuit of two miles round the city, but was otherwise permitted to live at his own will, being allowed a pension of 20l. per annum for maintenance. He died about 1395 or 1396. His estates at Torrington and Cockington, which had been confiscated, were restored to his son, probably in 1402. By his wife, Margaret, daughter of Robert Holway of Holway in Devonshire, he had two sons, Robert (now represented by Robert Shedden Sulyarde Cary of Torr Abbey, Torquay) and John, sometime bishop of Exeter. The family has given origin to three peerages, of which one, held by Viscount Falkland, baron Hunsdon (b. 1803), is still extant.
[Cal. Inq. P.M. iii. 196, 308; Abbrev. Rot. Orig. ii. 281, 317, 323; Devon's Issues of the Exch. (Hen. III–Hen. VI), p. 236; Willis's Not. Parl. ii. 251; Foss's Lives of Judges; Rymer's Fœd. (ed. Clarke), iii. pt. ii. 976, 1046; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 53; Hist. Angl. Script. Decem. Col. 2727; Cobbett's State Trials, i. 119–20; Rot. Parl. iii. 484.]
CARY, JOHN (d. 1720?), merchant and writer on trade, was the son of Thomas Cary, vicar of St. Philip and St. Jacob, Bristol. Engaged in the West Indian sugar trade, he was led to take a political interest in commercial matters. He was a warden of the Merchant Venturers' Company at Bristol in 1683–4. In Jan. 1687–8, when the mayor and council were removed on account of their opposition to the abolition of the penal laws, he was placed on the substituted council (see Seyer, Bristol, ii. 534). He was removed in Oct. 1688. He was parliamentary candidate for Bristol in 1698. An essay on trade, which he published in 1695, attracted attention and brought him into correspondence with Locke. It ‘is the best discourse,’ Locke wrote to him, ‘I ever read on that subject.’ It is ‘written with so disinterested an aim,’ wrote another correspondent, ‘that no man can possibly tell where your trade lyes by it.’ Cary was evidently esteemed by his fellow citizens as a man of sound practical judgment, for he acted as an arbitrator in commercial disputes, and was chosen by the Bristol committee of trade as their representative in London to advise the city members in matters affecting
