SMART, CHRISTOPHER, now chiefly remembered by his prose translation of Horace, was born at Shipbourne, in Kent, on the 11th of April 1722. He received his education successively at Maidstone, at Durham, and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He early gave evidence of possessing a power of versification; and on entering college he rose to immediate distinction as a classic, a rhymster, and a frequenter of taverns. Smart was chosen fellow of his college in 1745, and gained the Seatonian prize for five successive years, for poems composed on the Supreme Being. In 1752 he married Miss Carman, a relation of
1 This garden was first established by the company in 1673; and having, after that period, been stocked by them with a great variety of plants for the improvement of botany, Sir Hans, in order to encourage so serviceable an undertaking, granted to the company the inheritance of it, being part of his estate and manor of Chelsea, on condition that it should be for ever preserved as a physic garden. As a proof of its being so maintained, he obliged the company, in consideration of the said grant, to present yearly to the Royal Society, in one of their weekly meetings, fifty specimens of plants that had been grown in the garden the preceding year, and which were all to be specifically distinct from each other, until the number of 2000 should be completed. This number was completed in the year 1761. In 1733 the company erected a marble statue of Sir Hans, executed by Rysbrack, which is placed upon a pedestal in the centre of the garden, with a Latin inscription expressing his donation, and the design and advantages of it.
Smeaton. Newberry the publisher, gave up his fellowship, and took himself to London, to commence the career of author. He wrote a satire, called the Hilliad, against the notorious Sir John Hill, who had previously attacked him in a criticism of his poems. He was not deficient in those mental qualities which ensure success in the literary calling, but he was hopelessly addicted to drinking and other vices, which speedily wrecked his constitution. Harassed by disease, and plunged irrecoverably in poverty, he lost his reason, and was confined in a lunatic asylum for two years. During his intervals of sanity he executed prose translations of the Psalms, of Phædrus, and of Horace. He was in the receipt of £50 a year out of the treasury, yet his confirmed habits as a spendthrift could not be broken through, and he died in great poverty in King's Bench prison, where he had been confined during the latter part of his life, on the 22d of May 1771. Poor Smart was not quite destitute of good qualities. He was generous and open-hearted, and was possessed of considerable sensibility. He was known after a debauch to pen fervid lines on his knees, so great was his contrition; but as usually happens, when the next temptation came, he had forgotten all his vows. He was the friend of Garrick, of Goldsmith, and of Johnson. He was the Edgar Allan Poe of the eighteenth century, though he fell considerably short of that ideal writer in all the higher qualities of his genius. A quarto edition of his poems was published in 1753, and a collected edition of them in 1791.