anthologies often include the curious and delightful ‘For I will consider my Cat
Jeoffrey’, a section of the unpublished Jubilate Agno (‘Rejoice with the Lamb’).
Jeoffrey is more spiritual than Mr Walpole’s cat, whose drowning was deplored by
Gray. Animal-lovers may find other sections stranger:
Let Noah rejoice with Hibris who is from a wild boar and a tame sow.
For I bless God for the immortal soul of Mr Pigg of DOWNHAM in NORFOLK.
Let Abdon rejoice with the Glede who is very voracious and may not himself be eaten.
For I fast this day even the 31st of August N.S. to prepare for the SABBATH of the Lord.(‘N.S.’ means ‘New Style’: in the Gregorian reform, the calendar lost 11 days in
1752.)
These productions of the madhouse were often dismissed as such. But they
mimic the antiphonal structure of Psalms: the ‘Let’ lines are quasi-biblical in
content, the ‘For’ lines autobiographical. This antiphonal alternation of biblical and
non-biblical would have been shockingly odd rather than obscure. Smart published
in 1763 A Song to David, a mystically organized and wonderful work, one of the
tamer stanzas of which is the 76th:
Strong is the lion – like a coal
His eye-ball – like a bastion’s mole outwork of masonry
His chest against the foes:
Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail
Strong against the tide, th’enormous whale
Emerges, as he goes.A comparison of this with William Blake’s poem ‘The Tyger’ makes both seem more
biblical, and Smart’s more Augustan. Smart’s last publication was a complete version
of Horace, who was in the 18th century almost an English poet.
William Cowper
The battle between the Psalms of David and the Odes of Horace was more tragically
lost by Cowper, a writer of light verse, who after a breakdown in 1763 tried to kill
himself. After an evangelical conversion, Cowper wrote the Olney Hymns. A worse
breakdown came in 1773, when he thought that God had commanded him to kill
himself. Failing in his attempt, he lived the rest of his life convinced that he was
damned, ‘damn’d below Judas: more abhorred than he was’.
The del uded but mild and sociable poet found protectors, one of whom set him
to write a Miltonic blank verse poem upon the Sofa on which they sat. Dr Johnson
wrote ofParadise Lost that ‘we desert our master and seek for companions’.The Task
(in six books, 1785) is by contrast a very companionable poem. The Argument of the
First Book beg ins:
Historical deduction of seats, from the stool to the Sofa. – A School-boys ramble. – A
walk in the country. – The scene described. – Rural sounds as well as sights delightful. –
Another walk. – Mistake concerning the charms of solitude, corrected. – Colonnades
commended. – Alcove and the view from it. – The Wilderness. – The Grove. – The
Thresher. – The necessity and the benefits of exercise. – The works of nature superior to
and in some instances inimitable by art.– The wearisomeness of what is commonly
called a life of pleasure. – Changes of scene sometimes expedient – A common
described, and character of crazy Kate introduced upon it. Gipsies. – The blessings of
civilized life. – etc.THE AGE OF JOHNSON 223