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.

Smart was born on 11 April 1722 at Shipbourne in Kent, the youngest of three children of Peter and Winifred Griffiths Smart. He was proud of having Welsh ancestry through his mother, who belonged to a family from Radnorshire; his boast in Jubilate Agno (first published in 1939 as Rejoice in the Lamb), "For I...