SOURCE: An introduction to Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam by Christopher Smart, J. Cape, 1939, pp. 13-49.

Stead was the discoverer and first editor of the manuscript of Jubilate Agno. The following excerpt is taken from his introduction to the first edition of the work, which he called Rejoice in the Lamb. Stead views the poem as valuable principally for the light it sheds on Smart's composition of A Song to David.

This is a curiosity, an extraordinary document; but if it were nothing more, I would not have troubled to edit it. Bewildering at the first glance, it contains much that is intelligent and beautiful, which I believe will reward the reader who makes an allowance for absurdities and examines the obscurities. Imagine that the foundations had sunken under one of those fantastic gothic palaces built by the mad King of Bavaria, and that in...