Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Isaac Watts
Tobias George Smollett
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England, on 17 July 1674, into a household where religious conviction was inseparable from risk. He died on 25 November 1748, having become one of the most widely read and sung English writers of his age. To later generations he would be called the “father of English hymnody,” a title that is not merely honorary. Before Watts, English Protestant congregations, especially among the…
“Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavour.”
Tobias George Smollett, baptized on 19 March 1721 and generally believed to have been born shortly before that date, was one of the most forceful, combative, and variously gifted writers of eighteenth-century Britain. He died on 17 September 1771, only about fifty years old, yet in that compressed lifetime he became a surgeon, naval observer, playwright, poet, translator, journalist, editor, political polemicist, his…
“I consider the world as made for me, not me for the world. It is my maxim therefore to enjoy it while I can, and let futurity shift for itself.”
About 601 km separate Southampton, England from Dalquhurn, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
Isaac Watts: southampton, father of english hymnody, hymns and spiritual songs, when i survey the wondrous cross, nonconformist minister, isaac chauncey, thomas rowe, john hughes. Tobias George Smollett: dalquhurn, vale of leven, dumbartonshire, the regicide, the tears of scotland, the adventures of roderick random, the adventures of peregrine pickle, hms chichester.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Isaac Watts: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair. Tobias George Smollett: Peace, Joy, Tenderness.
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