SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

MIOINIAPHY, Memolrof the Reverend Henry Francis Cary, MA., Translator of Dante. With his Literary Journal and Letters. By his Son, the Reverend Henry Cary, MA., Wor- oester College, Oxford. In two volumes Ficriow,

The Castle of Ehrenstein ; its Lords Spiritual and Temporal ; its Inhabitants Earthly and Unearthly. By G. P. R. James, Esq., Author of "-Heidelbere

The Stepmother," &c., &c. In three volumes &ad; and Rider. MEDICINE, On Indigestion, and certain Bilious Disorders often conjoined with it. To which ars added, short Notes on Diet. By George Chaplin Child, M.D., Physician to the Westminster General Dispensary MEMOIRS OF HENRY FRANCIS CART.

ALTHOUGH neither the events of his career nor the literary rank of .the translator of Dante required such a lengthened account or minute ex- hibition of passages of his life as are contained in these volumes, their minuteness is not devoid of interest. By this means we are admitted to the very arcana of domestic life, and see the man in his family privacy and his inmost thoughts. As Henry Francis Cary lived beyond the al- lotted threescore years and ten, and began to versify and praise versi- fiers very early, we are brought into contact with the celebrated mediocri- ties of the latter part of the last century. Of Mr. Hayley, indeed, we luckily only hear; but the literary dictatress of the old regime, Miss Anna Seward, comes visibly before us in the correspondence : and we must say that the letters of the deity are better than those of the worshiper. Though by no means a specimen of the English man of letters, Mr. Cary may rank as representative of one species of the literary divine, who falls or at least fell into the church less from any spiritual vocation than as a means of indulging literary leisure. Throughout the volumes we find slender traces of that deep sense of responsibility which should actuate the pariah pastor who has a due notion of what is even appropriate to his high calling. " Sunday duty," and the means of supplying its performance during the absence of the principal, with a look-out for advancement, is about the extent of the clerical topics handled either by the hero of the book or his friends. Amid its many advantages this is one of the evils of a state establishment. In the Romish communion such minds are pro- vided for in some congenial sphere, for the general interest of the church is the moving principle. The close connexion of Church and State in this country, with the secular interests connected with lay patronage, and the family ramifications arising from a married clergy, doubtless raise a formidable army of supporters among the influential classes; but they also conduce to a grievous misapplication of the resources of the church, and possibly lower the clerical tone in the mass of clergymen. Ecclesi- astical sinecures exist in plenty, but the "interests" we speak of divert them from their proper use ; and they are mostly filled by nobodies, who escape the imputation of dulness by doing nothing, whilst men like Cary are thrown upon the world to struggle with it as they may.

Henry Francis Cary was born in 1772, at Gibraltar, where his father, a captain of infantry, was then stationed. He was at Rugby for a couple of years, and afterwards at the Grammar School of Birmingham ; but his education was mostly private, and if we look at his early proficiency he may be ranked among the self-taught.

" When he was only eight or nine years old," says his son, "he had attained to a proficiency in the Greek and Latin languages unusual for so young a child: he was then at school at Uxbridge; and I have heard him say, pleasantly laugh- ing at his own precocious taste for translating and blank verse, that at that age he rendered a considerable portion of the first book of the Odyssey in his childish prose, and, having done so, cut it into lengths of ten syllables each, which he then wrote out under the persuasion that it was poetry."

In his fourteenth year, he not only wrote but published an ode on General Elliot, the defender of Gibraltar ; which was favourably noticed in the periodicals of the day. Before sixteen, he became a poetical con- tributor to the Gentleman's Magazine ; and about the same time a schoolfellow, who knew Miss Seward, seems to have brought the ode to Elliott and its author under her notice. At all events she was so struck with the lyric and the juvenile lyrist, as to say in a letter- " Cary, literally but just fifteen, is a miracle The strength and solidity of that boy's mind, his taste, his judgment, astonish me, if possible even more than the vigour and grace of his fancy." Doses less potent than this might have turned an older head than Cary's ; but it seems only to have induced him to reverentially appretiate the kindred excellences of Anna Seward; till nearly twenty years after, when she handled the Dante somewhat too freely, and then, we suspect, the friendship rather cooled. In 1790, Cary went to Christ Church, Oxford, on an exhibition of 351. a year ; and varied the studies of the place by cultivating Italian and the Provencal; which last gave rise to the most solid of his youthful attempts, a series of articles on the Provencal poets, for the Gentleman's Magazine.

" On the 14th of January 1794, my father," says his biographer, " was ad- mitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and to that of Master on the 23cl of November 1796.

" His college course being thus completed, the next question that presented it- self was as to the choice of a profession. His father thought him best fitted for the Church: he himself was desirous of entering the Army; certainly from no military ardour, but, as I have heard him say, from a desire to visit foreign coun- tries and extend his acquaintance with modern languages. Asa middle coarse, the bar was proposed; but the great expense of a legal education, and the very distant prospect of earning a sufficient maintenance in that profession, were great obstacles to this latter plan: this difficulty would be overcome if a lay-fellowship could be obtained; and with this view he became a candidate at Oriel College, but was there unsuccessful."

The church was consequently adopted. Cary was admitted to orders in 1796, and presented by the Earl of Uxbridge to the Vicarage of Ab- botte Bromley, in Staffordshire. In the same year he married ; and hence- forth his life was little varied, save by the common incidents of humanity. He slowly advanced in Church preferment, still more slowly in literary reputation. His first part of Dante, published in 1805, "dropped still-born from the press.' The completion was more unlucky still ; no bookseller would undertake it ; and in 1813 the author had to print it at

his own expense, and for some years to remain the money out of pocket. An accidental meeting with Coleridge, in 1817, seems, in the family opinion, to have made a literary man of Cary : for Coleridge soon after recommended the translation in his lectures ; notices followed in the Edinburgh and Quarterly ; the translation was sold off, and a new edition published, for which the author received 1251. The mere recom- mendation of the work seems scarcely equal to such an effect : it is probable that the taste for early Italian poetry had been growing in the public mind, and that whilst this taste gave the reviewers a topic, the use of the translation as a help to the original induced a demand, when Coleridge had advertised it. The incident, however, is a curious one, and characteristic of both men : it is thus told by the biographer, who was present : the scene was the sands at Littlehampton, near Wor- thing.

Several hours of each day were sp'nt by Mr. Cary in reading the Classics with the writer of this memoir, who was then only thirteen years of age. After a morning of toil over Greek and Latin composition it was our custom to walk on the sands and read Homer aloud; a practice adopted partly for the sake of the sea-breezes, and not a little, I believe, in order that the pupil might learn to read ore rotundo, having to raise his voice above thenoise of the sea that was breaking at our feet. For several consecutive days Coleridge crossed us in our walk. The atumd of the Greek, *al especially the expressive countenance of the tutor, at- tracted his notice; so one day, as we met, he placed himself directly in my father's way, and thus accosted him= Sir, yours is a face I should know: I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge.' His person was not unknown to my father, who had already pointed him out to me as the great genius of our age and country. " Our volume of Homer was shut up: but as it was ever Coleridge's custom to -speak (it could not be called talking or conversing) on the subject that first offered itself; whatever it might be, the deep mysteries of the blind bard engaged our at- tention during the remainder of a long walk. I was too young at that time to carry away with me any but a very vague impression of his wondrous speech. All that I remember is, that I felt as one from whose eyes the scales were just re- moved, who could discern and enjoy the light, but had not strength of vision to bear its fulness. Till that day I had regarded Homer as merely a book in which boys were to learn Greek; the description of a single combat had occasionally power to interest me: but from this time, I was ever looking for pictures in the poem, endeavouring to realize them to my mind's eye, and especially to trace out virtues and vices as personified in the heroes and deities of the Homeric drama. "The close of our walk found Coleridge at our family dinner-table. Amongst other topics of conversation Dante's divine' poem was mentioned: Coleridge had never heard of my father's translation, but took a copy home with him that night. On the following day, when the two friends (for so they may from the first day of their meeting be called) met for the purpose of taking their daily stroll, Coleridge was able to recite whole pages of the version of Dante; and, though he bad not the original with him, repeated passages of that also, and commented on the translation. Before leaving Littlehampton he expressed his determination to bring the version of Dante into public notice: and this, more than any other single person, he had the means of doing in his course of lectures delivered in Lon- don during the winter months."

The translator of Dante soon took a literary place. He wrote pretty constantly in the London Magazine: there was a notion of making him editor of a new Quarterly proposed by Taylor and Walton ; but he shrank from the extent and responsibility, and the project was subse- quently abandoned: but, except his Pindar and his continuation of John- son's Lives of the Poets, he did not undertake any large work, though he thought of one or two. In 1826, be was appointed Assistant Librarian at the British Museum. This office he held till 1837; when he resigned it, in consequence of Mr. Panizzi (a person of whose ambidexterous inge- nuity the world has lately heard somewhat) being promoted over his head. Ill health consequent upon the death of Mrs. Cary seems to have been the alleged reason of this supersession ; but when Cary produced medical certificates as to his fitness, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave him his vote, but was overpowered by the two votes of Speaker and the Chancellor. The body of Trustees felt that it was a hard case, and recommended him to Government for a pension ; but lie was just one shade too liberal for the Liberal Ministry. He had written a sonnet to Lord Durham on his return from Canada ; and on this miserable plea the pension was refused till the grant lost all the grace of a gift. Rogers, in the following hearty and spirited letter, urged it upon Lord Holland, but without effect.

" Christmas-Day 1838.

" My dear Lord Holland—The more I reflect upon it the more I am convinced it could not be: for a gentler, meeker spirit does not exist than Cary's. He may write with warmth under a wrong impression, he may turn when he thinks him- self trodden upon; but if ever I knew a man, and I have known Cary in all weathers, he cannot be what you say he was thought to be. " His case is a very cruel one. He laboured long in a subordinate place; and, when a vacancy occurred an under-servant was put over his head. The measure was perhaps a just one—I cannot say it was not; but the reason could not be ex- plained to him, though it was a reason to create an interest in every generous mind, and he gave in his resignation. " Well, there be was—a man of great merit, great learning and genius, and in his old age without bread. Such indeed was his merit, such his learning and genius, such the cruelty of his case, that the Trustees of the Museum went out of their way, opposite as most of them were to him in political sentiments, and re- commended him as a proper object of bounty to the Government: and yet nothing has been done.

" Was the Pension-list Committee averse to such pensions? Quite otherwise, as I am assured by Lord John Russell. " But he has written a sonnet. What had not Montgomery done, when Sir Robert Peel gave him what he did? If Dryden and Johnson were now alive and pouring forth Toryism or bigotry, would not I serve them if I could? Cary has now withdrawn his friendship from me: be thinks I was his enemy in this matter: but that shall not make me less anxious to render him any service in my power; but power I have none. " Yours ever, S. R. " He is now slaving for the booksellers."

At last, in August 1841, when the Melbourne Ministry was in the agonies of dissolution, one of its last acts was to grant a pension of 2001. Conscientious oljections that Cary's private income or prefer- ments in the Church put him above absolute want could not be the reason of the delay, or the pension should not have been granted at all ; as little could the lingering gift be out of regard to Cary : an obvious presumption is that it was done to forestall Peel.

Compared with nine-tenths of the Civil List pensions, Cary's was a proper one ; but his compulsory resignation at the Museum gave him the valid claim. There is no question but that Rogers was convinced of all

he wrote, and that Cary was in narrow circumstances ; but perhaps—the author of the Pleasures of Memory spoke both as poet and millionaire when he talked of " without bread.' If we have read rightly, Cary still retained the vicarage of Abbots Bromley, and to this had been added, in 1800, the vicarage of Kingsbury,—which two, after his curates were paid, produced him some 1001. a year : his private fortune, in 1814, yielded him "less than double that sum " : his father for many years had allowed him 2001. a year ; and just before Cary's resignation of office, the old gentle- man had died at the good old age of eighty-nine, " making such provision for his family as made the subject of this memoir, as far as worldly cir- cumstances were concerned, feel less forcibly than he would otherwise have done the loss of his office at the British Museum." The " slaving for the booksellers" was editing some very useful editions of the British Poets ; a congenial amusement rather than a task, which Cary would sooner have undertaken, we suspect, than rusted in idleness, even at sixty-six. For his family and his position, he never had more than a limited income ; but we opine that a genial nature, and the poetical indifference to pecuniary matters, did not make the most of this, and always kept him in difficulties, if not in debt. We once hear of .five ser- vants on about 4001. a year.

He however passed through life happily, if we except its common af- fictions. His literary labours were works of love, and his satisfied dis- position prevented him from feeling very acutely the first want of success of his Dante. His own health seems to have been affected from 1801 to 1806, in a way not clearly known to his son, and again from 1807 till 1810, in consequence of the death of a little daughter. Death, indeed, seems to have been his great affiieter ; first in the case of his mother, next in 1807, then again in 1816, on the death of his only surviving daughter, and lastly in 1832, on that of his wife. There is something very touching in this picture of parental grief in 1816. " The morning after my sister's death was the first on which I became ac- quainted with sorrow. My father sat all day long in what appeared to me a state of awful silence, neither showing nor seeking sympathy. But what most impressed me at the time was the bearing of my mother: she manifested none of the usual tokens of grief, offered no word or sign of comfort to her fellow-sufferer, but sat watching him with more than a mother's anxiety for a helpless dying infant. It was not till many years later, on the occasion of her own death, that I was able to unravel the mystery of this and several following days. She mast have been longing to see an outburst of grief, yet not daring to provoke it. It was doubtless owing to her self-devotion, to the concealment of her own sufferings, in order that he might not feel the full extent of his, that is to be attributed his escope from that awful visitation which had attended the loss of his youngest daughter in 1807."

He died in 1844, at seventy-two; comparatively active till within a day or two of his dissolution.

It seems to have been the habit of Cary, whenever his health permitted, to record his observations on books and on foreign life in a daily journaL And of such journals, and his correspondence, with a slight connecting narrative, these volumes chiefly consist. As we intimated at the outset, there is rather too much of detail. Even had Cary's name excited greater interest in the general public than it did, mere entries of the titles of books he read, day after day, would have been better omitted, and the jotting narratives of his Continental excursions, would have been improved by condensation, especially when the most striking passages had been told in letters. The topics of some of the epistles too are personal and trifling: but everything has been written and is published in good faith ; and the very minutenesses of which we speak contribute to a view of Cary's mind.