Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 - May 21, 1771), English poet, 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.

Christopher Smart received his first schooling at Maidstone, and then at the grammar school of Durham. 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 which was paid until her death in 1742. Thomas Gray, writing to his friend Thomas Wharton in 1747, warned hini to keep silence about Smarts 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, acted 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.

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 pseudonym of Mary Midnight and Pentweazle. He had edited The Midwife, or the Old Womans Magazine (1751-1753), and had a hand in many other 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.

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 I8I9, and has since received abundant praise. In an abridged form it is included in T. H. Wards English Poets, vol. iii., and was reprinted in 1895, and in 1901 with an introduction by R. A. Streatfeild. Smarts other poems are included in Andersons Britfsh Poets. Christopher Smart is one of Robert Brownings subjects in The Parleyings with Certain Peoplr (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.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.