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
Christopher Smart
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.”
Christopher Smart was born on 11 April 1722 at Fairlawne, the estate near Shipbourne in Kent where his father, Peter Smart, worked as steward to the Vane family. He died on 21 May 1771, not 1770 as has sometimes been reported, in London after a life marked by extraordinary accomplishment, recurrent distress, financial insecurity, and long periods of confinement. Few English poets of the eighteenth century have seemed…
“He walks as if he had fouled his small-clothes, and looks as if he smelt it.”
About 124 km separate Southampton, England from Shipbourne, Kent, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
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. Christopher Smart: fairlawne, shipbourne, peter smart, winifred griffiths smart, durham school, pembroke college, john newbery, mrs. mary midnight.
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. Christopher Smart: Wonder, Tenderness, Joy.
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