May 21, 1771

Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 to May 21, 1771) was an English poet. His story is well-known,  but regarding this artist, the facts always bear retelling:

'His father, a steward on the estate of Lord Vane, died when Smart was eleven. Smart ....was... educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where he was well known for his Latin verses.

'The Odes of Horace would remain influential throughout Smart's career; he translated The Works of Horace in 1756. After college, Smart earned a living in London editing and writing copy for periodicals and composing songs for the popular theater. During this time, he became known for his reckless drinking and spending habits; he was arrested for debt in 1747. In 1752 he published his first collection, Poems on Several Occasions, and married Anna Maria Carnan. They had two daughters.

'In the 1750s Smart developed a form of religious mania that compelled him to continuous prayer. Samuel Johnson remarked, "My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place." In 1756 he published Hymn to the Supreme Being, on Recovery from a Dangerous Fit of Illness. However, from that time onward, Smart was confined, with one brief Intermission, until 1763 in St. Luke's Hospital and then in Mr. Potter's Madhouse in Bethnal Green.

'During his confinement he wrote what many see as his most original and lasting works—: Song to David, and the lengthy manuscript of Jubilate Agno. The last five years of Smart's life were marked by increasing debt and need; he was arrested again for debt in 1770 and died on May 21, 1771.

'Smart is best known for "A Song to David" (1763), which praises the author of the Psalms as an archetype of the Divine poet. Although in its own time the poem was greeted largely with confusion, later poets such as Browning and Yeats would single out this poem for its affirmation of spirituality in an increasingly materialistic world.

'In this respect Smart has been considered as a forerunner to poets such as John Clare and William Blake. ..

'Smart is also known for his distinctive and often anthologized homage to his cat, Jeoffry. This poem comes from the surviving fragments of Jubilate Agno, which was also written during his confinement but not published in a definitive edition until 1954.'

May 21, 1771

About Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 to May 21, 1771) the Poetry Foundation has a great biographical sketch, and we excerpt::

...It is notable that beginning with Robert Browning, it has been poets rather than critics who have been the warmest and most perceptive admirers of the poetry of Christopher Smart. In a 1975 radio broadcast in Australia,Peter Porter spoke of Smart as "the purest case of man's vision prevailing over the spirit of his times." While it would be facile and unilluminating to characterize Smart as a proto-Romantic, there can be no doubt that the combination of visionary power, Christian ardor, and lyrical virtuosity in his finest poetry was unappreciated and unmatched in his own age.


That does not mean he did not have sympathetic attention from his contemporaries:

[Samuel] Johnson's brisk and charitable comments have often been quoted but bear repetition: "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." And: "I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it."


Kit Smart's fame today rests upon his religious praise in poetry which features his cat Jeoffrey as an example of the beauty and intelligence of god's creation. Jubilate Agno includes these lines about Smart's cat:

For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

May 21, 1771

The lady on the left  is Lady Elizabeth, on the right is Lady Henrietta Fitzroy (1705 -1742) . Christopher Smart (April 11 1722 to May 21, 1771) fell in love with Lady Fitzroy's niece, Anne Vane, when Smart and Anne were both quite young.Though the details are not incontrovertible, apparently they planned to run away, and were only just stopped. So it is interesting that when Kit Smart went to Cambridge (Pembroke College) he received from Lady Henrietta Fitzroy an annual allowance. It would be centuries before the full genius of the man she sponsored was completely revealed. It was not until 1939 that the text of Jubilate Agno was published. It contained these words describing Geoffrey, Smart's cat:

.....
For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.

For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.

...

The deep philosophy above does not tell us about Lady Fitzroy, and the kiss in kindness her gift represented. So we will have to keep researching. What happier occupation is there. 

April 11, 172

The poem for which we remember Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 to May 21. 1771)  was not made public during his lifetime, not public until 1939, so almost two hundred years. During his lifetime Smart was a well-known figure in English literary life. Samuel Johnson, hearing complaints about how Smart asked strangers in the city streets to stop and pray with him, said he would as soon have Smart's company as that of anyone else. Here are some of the verses of "Jubilate Agno":

...

For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Thus Christopher Smart details his amazing cat Jeffrey. I should like to clamber intellectually as well as Smart does. 

April 11, 1722

Christopher Smart (April 11, 1722 to May 21, 1771) is the Cambridge educated poet well known during his lifetime and ours, but more forgotten during the 19th century. Christopher Smart's father was an estate manager for the aristocratic Vane family in Kent. His youth was spent surrounded by relative affluence and the Vane money. Yet his father died bankrupt, due to unwise investments, and some scholars feel this turmoil -- young Christopher at the age of 11, witnessing the public auction of all his family's goods, -- explains later episodes in Smart's career which were interpreted as mental instability.
The adult poet would spend time confined for mental incapacity and also in debtor's prison. Still, I find this explanation cheap. Modern science has not really dealt convincingly with a distinction between mental illness and mystical experiences. What we do know is that Smart is the author of a glorious poem famous for it's depiction of his cat Jeoffrey: Jubilate Agno.