GENIUS AND INSANITY

THE strange, rich beauty of Smart's Song to David, written while the author was supposed to be out of his mind and published in 1763, needs to be recalled as the preliminary to the extraordinary work which Mr. Stead has discovered and edited. The old notion, popularised by the eloquence of Browning, was that Smart only rose to greatness in poetry on the single occasion of the " Song "—an exciting theory, but incorrect; and its opponents may now add to their evidence against it a number of passages in the " prophetic book " which

time has brought to light at last. How the manuscript sur- vived, incomplete yet extensive, is not easy to state certainly; but it is thought to have passed through the hands of William Hayley, the friend of Blake, and on that belief those who will may raise agreeable conjectures.

For, as Mr. Stead notices in his excellent introduction, the newly found poem has many utterances which belong to the region of Blake's wisdom and mystery. Blake was a little boy when Smart was writing :

For a man speaks HIMSELF from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet.

For a LION roars HIMSELF compleat from head to tail . . . For the SUN is an intelligence and an angel of the human form. For the MOON is an intelligence and an angel in shape like woman .

Or in the long and quite unconventional description of his cat Jeoffry For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.

Apart from any affinities with other mystical writings, Rejoice in the Lamb is a great find. The editor makes no attempt to belittle the fact that it shows the derangement of mind under which it was written, through a long period; a great deal of it is the queerest-looking stuff, on this pattern :

Let Eli rejoice with Leucon—he is an honest fellow, which is a rarity or on this :

Let Westbrooke, house of Westbrooke rejoice with the Quail of Bengal. God be gracious to the people of Maidstone.

or, again :

For I pray God bless the Chinese which are of ABRAHAM and the Gospel grew with them at the first.

Sometimes there is no help for it; the man is mad. But to leave the matter there would be to miss the sudden seizings of truth and beauty which abound, and Mr. Stead's patient inquiries have revealed that many seemingly meaningless

phrases are, in fact, reasonable and determined. The difficulty is that Smart was one of the most learned men who ever wrote English poetry, not drearily learned, but full of uncommon purposeful observation in literature, the arts and sciences, and life itself—to quote him :

For I have seen the White Raven and Thomas Hall of Willingham and am myself a greater curiosity than both.

(Thomas Hall was a " gigantic boy.") Even where Smart's words and allusions appear fantastic it is probable that they contain some intellectual originality; and Mr. Stead's notes will assist in the recognition of the real power and art of numerous puzzling verses.

Smart's Song to David has maintained its hold on readers of poetry partly because of its sensuous vitality, partly because of its freshness and resourcefulness of English, partly for its panorama of nature. These qualities are here, with another effect, in Rejoice in the Lamb. Here is colour, music, per- fume, movement; one passage exhibits Smart's poetical per- ception—quite beyond his age—in his associating musical instruments with different types of rhyme; and another, reject- ing " Newton's notion of colours," moves with exquisite fine- ness through a spectrum which includes silver, and black, and —" black blooms, and it is PURPLE." As for the timeless strength of Smart's choice of language, Mr. Stead well points out one instance of hundreds : For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls.

Throughout the whole the delighted mind of Smart is wor- shipping the infinite variety and vigour of creation, and whereas mere encyclopaedic natural history may often fall into flabbi- ness, his own alertness as a direct and intuitive observer of nature energises even what he collects out of books, from "the Great Flabber Dabber Flat Clapping Fish with hands" to " Sandaserion a stone in India like Green Oil." It only remains to add that the editor, besides elucidating many details in the poem, has taken the opportunity to contribute largely to our knowledge of Smart's life and background; and that the publishers have honoured the occasion with a handsome