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…
Compare Poets
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.
Poet A
Christopher Smart
Poet B
Thomas Paine
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 60%
Blended 60%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Thomas Paine, born 9 February 1737 and dead on 8 June 1809, was one of the most consequential writers of the revolutionary Atlantic world. He was not primarily a poet in the conventional sense, nor should his occasional verses be allowed to obscure the achievement for which he is remembered: he made political argument into a popular literary force. In pamphlets, newspaper essays, public letters, and philosophical tre…
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
In time
Christopher Smart
Thomas Paine
1722
1809
They overlapped for 34 years (1737–1770).
When Thomas Paine was born, Christopher Smart was about 15.
Thomas Paine was about 33 when Christopher Smart died.
On the map
About 134 km separate Shipbourne, Kent, England from Thetford, Norfolk, England. Both have ground in England.
Christopher Smart
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
religious
Christopher Smart: fairlawne, shipbourne, peter smart, winifred griffiths smart, durham school, pembroke college, john newbery, mrs. mary midnight. Thomas Paine: thetford, norfolk, common sense, the american crisis, benjamin franklin, mary lambert, elizabeth ollive, deism.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Christopher Smart
Thomas Paine
1802
Return to America
Emotional landscapes
Christopher Smart: Wonder, Tenderness, Joy. Thomas Paine: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy.