Born, at Shipbourne, Kent, 11 April 1722. Early education at Maidstone and at Durham, 1733–39. Matric. Pembroke Coll., Camb., 30 Oct. 1739; B.A., 1743; Fellow, 1745–53; M.A., 1747. Edited “The Student,” 1750–51. Married Anna Maria Carnan, 1753. Contrib. to “The Universal Visitor,” “The Midwife,” “The Old Woman’s Mag.,” etc. Confined in a lunatic asylum for two years. Died in King’s Bench Prison, 18 May 1770. Works: “On the Eternity of the Supreme Being,” 1750; “A Solemn Dirge, sacred to the Memory of … Frederic, Prince of Wales,” 1751; “An Occasional Prologue and Epilogue to Othello” [1751]; “On the Immensity of the Supreme Being,” 1751; “On the Omniscience of the Supreme Being,” 1752; “Poems on Several Occasions,” 1752; second series [1763]; “The Hilliad,” 1753; “On the Power of the Supreme Being,” 1754; “Hymn to the Supreme Being,” 1756; “On the Goodness of the Supreme Being,” 1756; “A Song to David,” 1763; “Poems” (priv. ptd.) [1763?]; “Hannah” [oratorio libretto] [1764?]; “Ode to … the Earl of Northumberland,” 1764; “Abimelech” [oratorio libretto] [1768?]. He translated: “Carmen Alexandri Pope in S. Cæciliam latine redditum,” 1743; Horace’s Works (2 vols.), 1756; “The Poems of Phædrus,” 1765; “The Psalms of David,” 1765; “The Parables of our Lord,” 1768. Collected Poems: in 2 vols., with memoir, 1791.

Personal

  And as to Sm[art]: he must necessarily be abîmé, in a very short time. His debts daily increase (you remember the state they were in, when you left us). Addison, I know, wrote smartly to him last week; but it has had no effect, that signifies only I observe he takes hartshorn from morning to night lately: in the meantime he is amusing himself with a Comedy of his own writing, which he makes all the boys of his acquaintance act, and intends to borrow the Zodiack room, and have it performed publickly. Our friend Lawman, the mad attorney, is his copyist; and truly the author himself is to the full as mad as he. His piece (he says) is inimitable, true sterling wit, and humour by God; and he can’t hear the Prologue without being ready to die with laughter. He acts five parts himself, and is only sorry, he can’t do all the rest. He has also advertised a collection of Odes; and for his Vanity and Faculty of Lying, they are come to their full maturity. All this, you see, must come to a Jayl, or Bedlam, and that without any help, almost without pity.

  We have a man here that writes a good hand; but he has little failings that hinder my recommending him to you. He is lousy, and he is mad: he sets out this week for Bedlam; but if you insist upon it, I don’t doubt he will pay his respects to you.

  Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart shewed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.

  The author of the “Old Woman’s Magazine” and of several poetical productions; some of which are sweetly elegant and pretty—for example: “Harriet’s Birthday,” “Care and Generosity,”—and many more. This ingenious writer is one of the most unfortunate of men—he has been twice confined in a mad-house—and but last year sent a most affecting epistle to papa, to entreat him to lend him half-a-guinea!—How great a pity so clever, so ingenious a man should be reduced to such shocking circumstances. He is extremely grave, and has still great wildness in his manner, looks, and voice; but ’tis impossible to see him and to think of his works, without feeling the utmost pity and concern for him.

  The history of his life is but melancholy. Such was his habitual imprudence, that he would bring home guests to dine at his house, when his wife and family had neither a meal, nor money to provide one. He engaged, on one occasion, to write the Universal Visitor, and for no other other work, by a contract which was to last ninety-nine years. The publication stopped at the end of two years. During his bad health, he was advised to walk for exercise, and he used to walk for that purpose to the ale-house; but he was always carried back.

  A type of one who has “no enemy but himself.”

  In manner Smart seems to have been abnormally nervous and retiring, but when this shyness was overcome, he was particularly amiable, and had a frank and engaging air which, with children especially, often overflowed with drollery and high spirits. Latterly, however, owing to bad habits, penurious living, and his constitutional melancholia, he became a mere wreck of his earlier self.

Song to David

  Neither Dr. Anderson, nor the present editor [Alexander Chalmers] has been able to discover a copy of the “Song of David,” which Smart composed when confined in a mad-house, indenting the lines with a key upon the wainscot. The loss of a poem composed under such circumstances, by a man of such talents, is greatly to be regretted. The following are some of the few stanzas which have been preserved by the Reviewers; Smart has never written with more strength and animation,—and perhaps never with so much feeling.

  It is only in our own day that attention has been recalled to the single poem by which he deserves to be not only remembered, but remembered as a poet who for one short moment reached a height to which the prosaic muse of his epoch was wholly unaccustomed. There is nothing like the “Song to David” in the eighteenth century; there is nothing out of which it might seem to have been developed. It is true that with great appearance of symmetry it is ill-arranged and out of proportion; its hundred stanzas weary the reader with their repetitions and with their epithets piled up on a too obvious system. But in spite of this touch of pedantry, it is the work of a poet; of a man so possessed with the beauty and fervour of the Psalms and with the high romance of the psalmist’s life that in the days of his madness the character of David has become a “fixed idea” with him, to be embodied in words and dressed in the magic robe of verse when the dark hour has gone by. There are few episodes in our literary history more interesting than this of the wretched bookseller’s hack, with his mind thrown off its balance by drink and poverty, rising at the instant of his deepest distress to a pitch of poetic performance unimagined by himself at all other times, unimagined by all but one or two of his contemporaries, and so little appreciated by the public that when an edition of his writings was called for it was sent into the world with this masterpiece omitted.

  When in the mad-house Christopher Smart wrote the “Song to David”—a poem which not only transcends anything he ever did or was supposed capable of doing in his saner moments, but actually stands alone in the literature of the age for beauty, intensity, and occasional sublimity. Smart is said to have inscribed the poem with a key upon the wainscot of the room in which he was confined—an obvious physical impossibility, unless the wainscot was unusually large or the key unusually small! Some of the eighty-five stanzas may thus have been written, and the whole afterwards committed to paper. In any case, the “Song” is one of the greatest curiosities and wonders of English literature; and Mr. Browning has been attracted to it, as by a congenial theme. That a writer of merely ordinary powers—a clever scribbler of miscellaneous commonplaces—should suddenly soar to so great a height, then as suddenly fall flat again, is just such a mental phenomenon as our philosophical modern poet delights in analysing.

  Its power of metre and imaginative presentation of thoughts and things, and its mingling of sweet and grand religious poetry ought to make it better known.

  It is hardly disputable that the “Song to David” supplies a very remarkable link between the age of Dryden and the dawn of a new era with Blake; and it combines to a rare degree the vigour and impressive diction of the one with the spirituality of the other. There are few episodes in our literary history more striking than that of “Kit Smart,” the wretched bookseller’s hack, with his mind thrown off its balance by poverty and drink, rising at the moment of his direst distress to the utterance of a strain of purest poetry.

General

  As a poet his genius has never been questioned by those who censure his carelessness, and commiserated an unhappy vacillation of his mind. He is sometimes not only greatly irregular, but irregularly great. His errors are those of a bold and daring spirit, which bravely hazards what a vulgar mind could never suggest. Shakspeare and Milton are sometimes wild and irregular; but it seems as if originality alone could try experiments. Accuracy is timid and seeks for authority. Fowls of feeble wing seldom quit the ground, though at full liberty, while the eagle unrestrained soars into unknown regions.

  If Smart had any talent above mediocrity, it was a slight turn for humour. In his serious attempts at poetry, he reminds us of those

  The author of “David,” under happier circumstances, might have conferred additional poetic lustre, even upon the college of Spenser.

  No one can afford to be entirely indifferent to the author of verses which one of the greatest of modern writers has declared to be unequalled of their kind between Milton and Keats…. Save for one single lyric, that glows with all the flush and bloom of Eden, Smart would take but a poor place on the English Parnassus. His odes and ballads, his psalms and satires, his masques and his georgics, are not bad, but they are mediocre.

  Johnson defended him half-jocularly, but the piece of Smart’s work which was least likely to appeal to Johnson is that which has secured him his vogue of late years. This is the now famous “Song to David,” to which the praise given to it in Mr. Ward’s “Poets,” and Mr. Browning’s allotment to the author of a place in the “Parleying with Certain People of Importance,” have given a notoriety certainly not attained by the rest of Smart’s work, familiar as, for a century or so, it ought to have been by its inclusion in Chalmers, where the “Song” is not. Smart, as there presented, is very much like other people of his time, giving some decent hackwork, a good deal of intentionally serious matter of no value, and a few light pieces of distinct merit.