He was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student, and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding.

Even after Smart's eventual release, a negative reputation continued to pursue him as he was known for incurring more debt than he could repay; this ultimately led to his confinement in debtors' prison until his death.

It is even more unclear when the works were written, as Jubilate Agno was not published until 1939 when it was found in a library archive, and A Song to David received mixed reviews until the 19th century.

[15] It was his closeness with the Vane family along with his skill for learning that encouraged Henrietta to allow him a pension of 40 pounds yearly, continued by her husband after her death in 1742.

In April 1747, a comedy he wrote just months before, A Trip to Cambridge, or The Grateful Fair, was performed in Pembroke College Hall, with many parts, including female roles, played by Smart himself.

[58] This feud lasted as attacks published in a few issues of The Midwife, but it soon died out when Smart focused his attention to writing a prologue and epilogue for a production of Othello and using the magazine to promote it.

[68] Before the release of Smart's poem, Hill was engaged in a large literary battle between various members of Grub Street's and London's writing community, especially Henry Fielding.

He is said to have married Anna-Maria Carnan around 1752 or 1753, although the exact date is unknown; they initially kept their marriage a secret so Smart could continue to get money from his Cambridge fellowship, which ended shortly thereafter.

[72] As a married man, he could no longer remain enrolled at Pembroke and collect his scholarship money when his marriage and children were made apparent to the heads of the college.

[78] He signed a 99-year contract in November 1755 to produce a weekly paper entitled The Universal Visitor or Monthly Memorialist for Thomas Gardner and Edmund Allen.

[81] The Hymn to the Supreme Being marks the time in Smart's life after the mysterious "fit" was resolved and the beginning of his obsession with religion and his praying "without ceasing".

[85] However, there is also evidence that an incident of some kind took place in St. James's Park in which Smart started to pray loudly in public until he had "routed all the company" (Jubilate Agno B89).

[96] A century later, Robert Browning remarked that A Song to David was great because Smart was mad, and that the poem allowed him to rank alongside of Milton and Keats.

[48] Elizabeth, his daughter, claimed: "He grew better, and some misjudging friends who misconstrued Mr Newbery's great kindness in placing him under necessary & salutary restriction which might possibly have eventually wrought a cure, invited him to dinner and he returned to his confinement no more.

"[117] Fanny Burney, in her journal, wrote: But now I speak of authors, let me pay the small tribute of regret and concern due to the memory of poor Mr. Smart, who died lately in the King's Bench Prison; a man by nature endowed with talents, wit, and vivacity, in an eminent degree; and whose unhappy loss of his sense was a public as well as private misfortune.

I never knew him in his glory, but ever respected him in his decline, from the fine proofs he had left of his better day, and from the account I have heard of his youth from my father, who was then his intimate companion; as, of late years, he has been his most active and generous friend, having raised a kind of fund for his relief, though he was ever in distress.

[118] Christopher Smart received occasional mentions by critics and scholars after his death, especially by Robert Browning, but analysis and commentary on his works increased dramatically with the "discovery" of Jubilate Agno in 1939.

[119] Many recent critics approach Smart from a religious perspective (Neil Curry, Harriet Guest, Clement Hawes, Chris Mounsey).

Although Smart wrote the "Seatonian Prize" poems early on, there is a contrast between the mimicked Miltonic blank verse and the intense exploration of religion found in his later works.

"[121] By establishing a debate between these two forms, Harriet Guest claims that Smart creates "a poetic space which allows the poet to make provisional, even questionable statements", which are important to his later works.

[128] Jeanne Walker goes further than Guest and claims that the "Let " and "For" sections are united with the Hebrew tradition and "iterate both present and future simultaneously, that is, they redeem time.

[136] As part of his desire to bring back the divine language to poetry and science, he creates an "Ark of Salvation" in order to describe a prophetic and apocalyptic future which emphasises the importance of Christ and England.

[144] However, the Psalms perform a secondary function: they allow Smart to relate to the suffering of David and to reinforce his own religious convictions by following his Biblical model.

[167] Thomas Keymer further verified this point about Smart's translations by revealing that the poet claims, in William Toldervy's The History of Two Orphans, "But what heaven-exciting harmony might we not expect from that exalted genius, who can produce such lines as these following!"

[168] Regardless of where he stood on the specific issue of translation Smart believed that there was an importance to language, which carried over to his constant revising of his poems to slowly correct them.

"[179] In response to this possible cuckolding, Jubilate Agno predicts a misogynistic future while simultaneously undermining this effort with his constant associations to female creation.

[185] He actively participated in the 18th-century taxonomy systems established by Carl Linnaeus; however, Smart is mythologising his view of nature and creation when he adds information from Pliny the Elder into his work.

[189][190] The information available has led Marie Roberts to declare in her 1986 book British Poets and Secret Societies, "It has been universally accepted by scholars that Christopher Smart ... was a Freemason yet no record of his membership has been traced.

"[192] Smart's involvement with Masonry can be traced through his poems, including Jubilate Agno and A Song to David, with his constant references to Masonic ideas and his praise of Freemasonry in general.

[189] A two-volume edition of the Complete Poems of Christopher Smart was published in 1949 by Norman Callan, Professor of English at Queen Mary College, London (now University).