Smart, solely of such songmen [Milton and Keats], pierced the screen
’Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, –
Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal
Live from the censer – shapely or uncouth,
Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth
Undeadened by a lie, – (you have my mind) –
For, think! this blaze outleapt with black behind
And blank before, when Hayley and the rest …
But let the dead successors worst and best
Bury their dead: with life be my concern –
Yours with the fire-flame: what I fain would learn
Is just – (suppose me haply ignorant
Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt)
Just this – why only once the fire-flame was:
No matter if the marvel came to pass
The way folk judged – if power too long suppressed
Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed,
Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said),
A turmoil of the particles disturbed
Brain’s workaday performance in your head,
Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed:
And so verse issued in a cataract
Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed
Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact
That here a poet was who always could –
Never before did – never after would –
Achieve the feat: how were such fact explained?
ROBERT BROWNING: Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887)
The son of Peter Smart, a steward on the Vane family’s Kent estates, Christopher Smart became an outstanding scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a Fellowship in 1745. While at university he wrote a great deal of humorous and amatory verse, developed a taste for elegant clothes and drink, and was arrested for debt in 1747. He left Cambridge in 1749 and became a successful professional writer in London, viz. the subscription-list of celebrities who financed his first collection of verse, Poems on Several Occasions (1752): Thomas Arne, William Boyce, Roubilliac, Samuel Richardson, William Collins, Voltaire … Four times from 1750 to 1755 he won the Seatonian Prize of Cambridge University for his poems on the ‘Attributes of the Supreme Being’, but it was this increasing obsession with religion that began to undermine his health. His insanity took the form of religious mania, of following literally the Pauline injunction to ‘pray without ceasing’. As his friend Samuel Johnson put it: ‘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’ (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson). Smart was confined to St Luke’s Hospital and private asylums from 1756 to 1763, during which time he worked at several of his most important works: the Jubilate Agno, A Song to David (a verse translation of the Psalms, published in 1763, many of which were set to music by William Boyce) and the Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England (1765). They were not well received and Smart spent the last eight years of his life pursued by debt collectors. Though he kept on publishing works, which included such delightful volumes for children as the Poetical Translation of the Fables of Phaedrus (1764), the Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1768) and Hymns for the Amusement of Children (1770), he died within the Rules of the King’s Bench Prison.
Despite the admiration of Robert Browning in Parleying with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887), it was not until the 1920s that interest in Smart’s work was rekindled and he was recognized as a poet of some genius. The manuscript of Jubilate Agno was rediscovered and published by W. F. Stead in 1939 as Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam, the first part of whose title was chosen by Benjamin Britten for his festival cantata. Smart’s remarkable work celebrates the beauty of God’s Creation in poetry that is based on the model of Hebrew antiphonal verse, consisting of parallel sets of verses, one beginning ‘Let …’, followed by a response beginning ‘For…’. Every creature in Smart’s poem worships God simply by being itself:
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
A fragmentary manuscript of Jubilate Agno (only thirty-two folio pages survive) is housed at Harvard University. Smart wrote the poem at a snail’s pace during his confinement in the madhouse, sometimes three lines a day, sometimes one. It was probably begun between June 1758 and April 1759, and he worked on it until his release in January 1763. Britten uses a mere fifty-one verses of the original.
Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb.
Nations, and languages, and every Creature, in which is the breath of Life.
Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together.
Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his spear to the Lord.
Let Ishmael dedicate a Tyger, and give praise for the liberty in which the Lord has let him at large.
Let Balaam appear with an Ass, and bless the Lord his people and his creatures for a reward eternal.
Let Daniel come forth with a Lion, and praise God with all his might through faith in Christ Jesus.
Let Ithamar minister with a Chamois, and bless the name of Him, that cloatheth the naked.
Let Jakim with the Satyr bless God in the dance.
Let David bless with the Bear – The beginning of victory to the Lord – to the Lord the perfection of excellence – Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty.
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God.
For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.
For – this is a true case – Cat takes female mouse – male mouse will not depart, but stands threat’ning and daring.
[…] If you will let her go, I will engage you, as prodigious a creature as you are.
For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.
For the Mouse is of an hospitable disposition.
For the flowers are great blessings.
For the flowers have their angels even the words of God’s Creation.
For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.
For there is a language of flowers.
For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.
For I am under the same accusation with my Saviour –
For they said, he is besides himself.
For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites me with his staff.
For Silly fellow! Silly fellow! is against me and belongeth neither to me nor to my family.
For I am in twelve HARDSHIPS, but he that was born of a virgin shall deliver me out of all.
For H is a spirit and therefore he is God.
For K is king and therefore he is God.
For L is love and therefore he is God.
For M is musick and therefore he is God.
For the instruments are by their rhimes.
For the Shawm rhimes are lawn fawn moon boon and the like.
For the harp rhimes are sing ring string and the like.
For the cymbal rhimes are bell well toll soul and the like.
For the Bassoon rhimes are pass class and the like.
For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place beat heat and the like.
For the Clarinet rhimes are clean seen and the like.
For the trumpet rhimes are sound bound soar more and the like.
For the TRUMPET of God is a blessed intelligence and so are all the instruments in HEAVEN.
For GOD the father Almighty plays upon the HARP of stupendous magnitude and melody.
For at that time malignity ceases and the devils themselves are at peace.
For this time is perceptible to man by a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul.
Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty.