Smart

Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 – May 21, 1771) was an English poet. His works include A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, both of which were at least partly written during his confinement in an insane asylum. Image File history File links Christopher_Smart. ... Image File history File links Christopher_Smart. ... April 11 is the 101st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (102nd in leap years). ... // Events Abraham De Moivre states De Moivres theorem connecting trigonometric functions and complex numbers Publication of the first book of Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier Fall of Persias Safavid dynasty during a bloody revolt of the Afghani people. ... May 21 is the 141st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (142nd in leap years). ... 1771 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... The English are an ethnic group or nation primarily associated with England and the English language. ... A psychiatric hospital (also called at various places and times, mental hospital, mental ward, asylum or sanitarium) is a hospital specializing in the treatment of persons with mental illness. ...

Early life

Smart was the son of Peter Smart, of an old north country family, was born at Shipbourne, Kent. His father was steward for the Kentish estates of William, Viscount Vane, younger son of Lord Barnard of Raby Castle, Durham. Shipbourne (ponounced Shibbun) is located four miles north of Tonbridge in Kent, and is one of the parish councils in Tonbridge and Malling borough. ... Kent is a county in England, south-east of London. ... The terms steward or stewardess can refer to a number of different professional roles. ... Viscount Vane was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. ... Christopher Vane, 1st Baron Barnard (May 21, 1653–October 28, 1723) was an English peer and the son of Henry Vane the Younger. ... Raby Castle from Jones Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen (1819). ... Statistics Population: 42,939 (2001) Ordnance Survey OS grid reference: NZ274424 Administration District: City of Durham Shire county: Durham Region: North East England Constituent country: England Sovereign state: United Kingdom Other Ceremonial county: Durham Historic county: Durham Services Police force: County Durham Ambulance service: North East Post office and telephone...

Christopher Smart received his first schooling at Maidstone, and then at Durham School. He spent part of his vacations at Raby Castle, and his gifts as a poet gained him the patronage of the Vane family. Henrietta, Duchess of Cleveland, allowed him a pension of 40 pounds yearly which was paid until her death in 1742. Thomas Gray, writing to his friend Thomas Wharton in 1747, warned him to keep silent about Smart's delinquencies lest they should come to the ears of Henry Vane (afterwards Earl of Darlington), and endanger his allowance. At Cambridge, where he was entered at Pembroke College in 1739, he spent much of his time in taverns, and got badly into debt, but in spite of his irregularities he became fellow of his college, praelector in philosophy and keeper of the common chest in 1745. In November 1747 he was compelled to remain in his rooms for fear of his creditors. At Cambridge he won the Seaton prize for a poem on one of the attributes of the Supreme Being in 1750 (he won the same prize in 1751, 1752, 1753 and 1755); and a farce entitled A Trip to Cambridge, or The Grateful Fair, performed in 1747 by the students of Pembroke, was from his pen. In 1750 he contributed to The Student, or, The Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany. During one of his visits to London he had made the acquaintance of John Newbery, the publisher, whose step-daughter, Anna Maria Carman, he married with the result of forfeiting his fellowship in 1753. Maidstone (pronounced either mādstun or mādstone) is the county town of Kent, in South East England, United Kingdom. ... Durham School is an independent British boarding and day school in Durham. ... Thomas Gray (December 26, 1716 – July 30, 1771), English poet, classical scholar, and professor of history at Cambridge University. ... Henry Vane, 1st Earl of Darlington PC (c. ... Shown within Cambridgeshire Geography Status: City (1951) Region: East of England Admin. ... Full name Pembroke College Motto - Named after Countess of Pembroke, Mary de St Pol Previous names Marie Valence Hall (1347), Pembroke Hall (?), Pembroke College (1856) Established 1347 Sister College(s) Queens College Master Sir Richard Dearlove Location Trumpington Street Undergraduates ~420 Postgraduates 194 Homepage Boatclub Pembroke College is a... Full name Pembroke College Motto - Named after Countess of Pembroke, Mary de St Pol Previous names Marie Valence Hall (1347), Pembroke Hall (?), Pembroke College (1856) Established 1347 Sister College(s) Queens College Master Sir Richard Dearlove Location Trumpington Street Undergraduates ~420 Postgraduates 194 Homepage Boatclub Pembroke College is a... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ... John Newbery (baptized 9 July 1713 – 22 December 1767) was an English publisher of books who specialized in childrens literature. ...

Professional Life

About 1752 he left Cambridge permanently, for London, though he kept his name on the college books, as he had to do in order to compete for the Seaton prize. He wrote in London under the pseudonyms of Mary Midnight and Pentweazle. He edited The Midwife, or the Old Womans Magazine (1751-1753), and had a hand in many other Grub Street productions. Some criticisms made by Sir John Hill (1716-1775) on his Poems on Several Occasions (1752) provoked Smart's satire of the Hilliad (1753), noteworthy as providing the model for the Rohliad. In 1756 he finished a prose translation of Horace, which was widely used, but brought him little profit. He agreed in the same year to produce a weekly paper entitled The Universal Visitor, for which Samuel Johnson wrote some numbers. Grub Street is the former name of the present day Milton Street, London, EC2. ... John Hill (c. ... Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ...

Asylum Confinement

In 1751 Smart had shown symptoms of mental aberration, which developed into religious mania. Smart was wont to accost passers-by in Hyde Park and demand that they kneel down and pray for him, and between 1756 and 1758 he was in St. Luke's Hospital, an asylum. Dr Johnson visited him and thought that he ought to have been at large. He once stated, "I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else." During his confinement he conceived the idea of the single poem that has made him famous, A Song to David, though the legend that Smart scratched his poems into the wainscoting of his cell with a key, and shaded in with charcoal, must be taken with a grain of salt. It shows no trace of morbid origin. After his release Smart produced other religious poems. His wife and children had gone to live with friends, as he was unable to support them. For some time before his death, he lived in the Rules of King's Bench Prison, and was supported by small subscriptions raised by Dr Burney and other friends. These included the actor David Garrick and author/poet/essayist Oliver Goldsmith. Mania is a medical condition characterized by severely elevated mood. ... Hyde Park is the name of: Hyde Park, a Royal Park in London (the original location) Hyde Park in Sydney - a park some places in the United States of America: Hyde Park, Massachusetts Hyde Park, New York - a town in Dutchess County, New York Hyde Park, Vermont - a town Hyde... St. ... This article is about the literary figure. ... Charles Burney by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1781 Charles Burney (April 12, 1726 – April 12, 1814) was an English music historian and father of author Fanny Burney. ... Portrait of David Garrick David Garrick (February 19, 1717 – January 20, 1779) was an English actor, dramatist, theatrical producer and theatrical manager, and a friend and pupil of Samuel Johnson. ... Oliver Goldsmith Oliver Goldsmith (November 10, 1730(?) – April 4, 1774) was an Irish writer and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) (written in memory of his brother), and his plays The Good-naturd Man (1768) and She Stoops...

Works

Of all that he wrote, A Song to David is generally thought to be the most significant. Unlike anything else in 18th. century poetry in its simple forceful treatment and impressive directness of expression, as has been said, the poem on analysis is found to depend for its unique effect also upon a certain ingenuity of construction, and the novel way in which David's ideal qualities are enlarged upon. This will be more readily understood on reference to the following verse, the first twelve words of which become in turn the key-notes, so to speak, of the twelve succeeding verses: Great, valiant, pious, good, and clean, Sublime, contemplative, serene, Strong, constant, pleasant, wise!

Bright effluence of exceeding grace; Best man the swiftness, and the race, The peril, and the prize.

The last line is characteristic of another peculiarity in A Song to David, the effective use of alliteration to complete the initial energy of the stanza in many instances. But in the poem throughout is revealed a poetic quality which eludes critical analysis. Alliteration is a stylistic device, or literary technique, in which successive words (more strictly, stressed syllables) begin with the same consonant sound or letter. ...

Another of Smart's poems penned during his confinement, his idiosyncratic Jubilate Agno, was published in 1939 and has become relatively well-known. The Jubilate praises the divine architecture of the natural world. Many modern critics posit that Smart meant the poem to serve as an alternative to the conventional Anglican liturgical text. One section of the poem, beginning with "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey", has been reprinted separately and is popular among cat-lovers. The modern English composer Benjamin Britten used the Jubilate as the basis for his festival cantata "Rejoice in the Lamb". Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH (November 22, 1913 – December 4, 1976) was a British composer, conductor, and pianist. ... Rejoice in the Lamb (op. ...

Further reading

See The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Ian Ousby, editor.

From the Poems of the late Christopher Smart (1791) the Song to David: (pr. 1763) was excluded as forming a proof of his mental aberration. It was reprinted in 1819, and has since received abundant praise. In an abridged form it is included in T. H. Ward's English Poets, vol. iii., and was reprinted in 1895, and in 1901 with an introduction by R. A. Streatfeild. Smart's other poems are included in Anderson's British Poets. Christopher Smart is one of Robert Browning's subjects in The Parleyings with Certain People (1887). See also the contributions to Notes and Queries of March 25th and May 6th, 1905, by the Rev. D. C. Tovey, who has read, and in some places revised, the above article. Notes and Queries (originally subtitled a medium of inter-communication for literary men, artists, antiquaries, genealogists, etc) is a correspondence magazine where scholars and interested amateurs exchange miscellaneous knowledge. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.