Christopher Smart was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.
Background
Smart was born on April 11, 1722 in Shipbourne, England, the son of Peter Smart, of an old north country family. His father was steward for the Kentish estates of William, Viscount Vane, younger son of Lord Barnard of Raby Castle, Durham. His mother was Winifred Smart of the Griffiths family of Radnorshire, Wales. During Smart's younger years, Fairlawne was the residence of Christopher Vane, 1st Baron Barnard and Lady Barnard, who bequeathed £200 to Smart. In 1726, three years after Christopher Vane died, Peter Smart purchased Hall-Place in East Barming, which included a mansion house, fields, orchards, gardens, and woodland, a property that was influential throughout Smart's later life.
Education
Christopher Smart received his first schooling at Maidstone, and then at the grammar school of Durham. 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 1750 he contributed to The Student, or The Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany. About 1732 he permanently left Cambridge for London, though he kept his name on the college books, as he had to do in order to compete for the Seaton prize.
Career
Smart spent part of his vacations at Raby Castle, and his gifts as a poet gained him the patronage of the Vane family. 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 Pair, acted in 1747 by the students of Pembroke, was from his pen.
He wrote in London under the pseudonym of " Mary Midnight " and " Pent-weazle. " He had edited The Midwife, or the Old Woman's Magazine (1751-1753), and had a hand in many other "Grub Street" productions.
Some criticisms made by John Hill (1767-1775) on his Poems on Several Occasions (1752) provoked his satire of the Hilliad (1753), noteworthy as providing the model for the Rolliad.
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.
A Commission of Lunacy was taken out against Smart, and he was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics on 6 May 1757 as a "Curable Patient". It is possible that Smart was confined by Newbery over old debts and a poor relationship between the two; Newbery had previously mocked Smart and his immorality in his A Collection of Pretty Poems for the Amusement of Children six Foot High. Regardless of the exact reasons, there is evidence suggesting that Newbery's admittance of Smart into the mental asylum was not based on "madness". However, there is also evidence that an incident of some kind took place in St. James's Park in which Smart started to pray loudly in public until he had "routed all the company". During his confinement he conceived the idea of the single poem that has made him famous, "A Song to David, " though the story that it was indented with a key on the panels of his cell, and shaded in with charcoal, may be received with caution. A Song to David was printed on 6 April 1763 along with a proposal for a new translation of the Psalms. The poem was received harshly, which was possibly just thinly veiled personal attacks over Smart being freed from the asylum just weeks before. However, Kenrick, Smart's former rival, praised the poem in one of his own printed on 25 May 1763. Also, John Lockman followed on 21 June 1763, with his own poem in praise of Smart's and Samuel Boyce followed this on 15 July 1763 with another. Along with this support, Smart responded to his critics at the Critical Review; in regards to Smart's response, the Critical Review claimed that they would "say no more of Mr. Smart".
After A Song to David, he tried to publish a collection of his Psalms translations, and Newbery sought to ruin him by hiring James Merrick to produce his own translations. Newbery then hired Smart's new publisher, James Fletcher, which in turn forced Smart to find a new publisher, delaying the printing of his Psalms. Finally, on 12 August 1765, he printed A Translation of the Psalms of David, which included Hymns and Spiritual Songs and a second edition of A Song to David. This work was criticised by Tobias Smollett who was working with Newbery at the time, and Newbery's edition by Merrick was constantly compared with Smart's. However, modern criticism has received Smart's version in a more favourable light. While working on this project, he was also working on a translation of the Phaedrus and a verse translation of Horace. His verse Horace was published in July 1767 including a preface in which he attacked Newbery, but the attack was in vain because Newbery died soon after.
On 20 April 1770, Smart was arrested for debt. On 11 January 1771, he was tried by Lord Mansfield, the gentleman who originally introduced Smart to Alexander Pope, and he was soon recommended to the King's Bench Prison. Although he was in prison, Charles Burney purchased the "Rules" (allowing him some freedom), and Smart's final weeks may have been peaceful although pathetic. In his final letter, Smart begged for money from Rev. Mr. Jackson, saying: "Being upon recovery from a fit of illness, and having nothing to eat, I beg you to send me two or three shillings which (God willing) I will return, with many thanks, in two or three days. " On 20 May 1771, Smart died from either liver failure or pneumonia shortly after completing his final work, Hymns, for the Amusement of Children.
