SOURCE: Christopher Smart as a Poet of His Time: A Re-Appraisal, Mouton & Co., 1966, 182 p.

In the following excerpt, Blaydes discusses the intrinsic value of Smart's Seatonian poetry, as well as its relationship to the author's later work, particularly A Song to David.

Since the time of the Victorians many readers of the Song to David have had little, if any, interest in Smart's minor religious poetry. His Seaton poems were forgotten and shelved with other eighteenth-century literary fads; his work in the asylum, Jubilate Agno, was regarded as proof of his madness; his metrical version of the Psalms was, at most, considered a step towards the composition of the Song. Today, however, those who are familiar with Smart's work are discovering that it displays striking echoes of the Song in theme and technique….

Smart's most popular and most acclaimed works were the five early prize Seaton poems. They...