Caryll, Lord John

(1625-1711)

   Caryll came from an old-established Roman Catholic family from West Harting in Sussex. He was temporarily the English agent at the court of Rome before becoming secretary to Mary of Modena, the second wife of James II, in 1686. He followed James into exile, where he died and was buried in the church of the English Dominicans at Paris. He was a minor poet and author of a few plays during the reign of Charles II: The English Princess, or the Death of Richard III, 1666 (tragedy); and Sir Salomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb, 1671 (comedy). He played a part in the translation of Ovid's Epistles (1680) and in the collection of Miscellany Poems by Dryden (1683). He translated the "First Eclogue" of Virgil, and in 1700 he published anonymously The Psalmes of David, translated from the Vulgat. In his long and vicious poem "The Hypocrite, Written upon the Lord Shaftesbury in the Year 1678," he compares Shaftesbury with the inconsistent wind or to a changeable woman. "Naboth's Vineyard," in which he refers to wealth and power as "siren charms," is based on the story of Naboth in 1 Kings 21:7-29.

   Sources: Anthology of Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714. George de F. Lord, ed. Yale University Press, 1975. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.