Christopher Smart
born April 11, 1722, Shipbourne, Kent, Eng.
died May 21, 1771, London
English religious poet, best known for A Song to
David (1763), in praise of the author of the
Psalms, notable for flashes of childlike
penetration and vivid imagination. In some
respects his work anticipated that of William
Blake and John Clare.
After his education at the University of
Cambridge, Smart was elected a fellow of
Pembroke Hall (1745), but at about the age of 27
he became a hack writer in London. He was three
times confined for madness (a mild religious
mania), but his strange yet engaging personality
won him such friends as Samuel Johnson,
actor-manager David Garrick, playwright Oliver
Goldsmith, and both Dr. Charles Burney, the
musicologist, and his daughter, Fanny, the
novelist. Smart died in a debtor’s prison.
