the eighteenth century, like the ancient Romans, prolonged their pleasures by an early start, and the dinner hour was probably twelve or one. Dinner was only a beginning, and we may assume that it was followed by the drinking of wine in the parlour, that the afternoon was passed pleasantly with tea and tobacco, and a cheerful supper crowned the end.

In the small, low - pitched, oak-panelled hall of the College, destroyed by the vandalism of a bad architect some fifty years ago, there must have been a glowing fire in the big open fireplace, and as the day waned the silver candlesticks were brought in to give a mellow light. We know that the expenses of the feast were half as much again as usual; we lament that we have not the list of the First and Second and Third Courses," but we may be sure that the food was more substantial than delicate, a solid work of knife and fork. An "Ode on a College Feast Day," written, it is true, some fifty years later, may help us to imagine the scene

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Unnumber'd heroes, in the glorious Thro' fish, flesh, pies and puddings, cut strife,

their destin'd way."

The neighbouring College of Peterhouse has preserved the cook's bills of about the same date, and we shall probably not be wrong in assuming that Pembroke had similar fare. Soup is not on the list, but pikes and eels, or salmon and lobster sauce, would be followed by the sirloin, boiled turkey and oysters, hash't calf's head, a sucking pig, or a chine of pork and wild-fowl. For sweets Plum-pudding and Mince-pies would not be lacking, and perhaps Marrow-pudding, for which Mrs Glass gives an elaborate recipe, and "Triffel" and Jellies. After the feast the Foundress' cup was passed round, and then there would be a move to the Parlour. The same Ode may be quoted :—

"From the table now retreating,

And with wine, the sons of eating
All around the fire they meet,

Crown at length their mighty treat.

At length with dinner, and with wine, oppressed,

Down in the chairs they sink, and gave themselves to rest."

And from their rest they rose, no doubt, to supper. Perhaps most of the guests had retired, and supper was a simpler, more intimate entertainment.

It was for the banquet that Smart wrote his poem; it bears the stamp of being written to order, and it was

perhaps recited in hall or printed and circulated among the guests. Its title "Secular Ode" recalls the 66 Carmen Saeculare" of Horace, a poem written at the command of Augustus to celebrate a great anniversary at Rome. Smart had a few months before published a Latin translation of "The Ode on St Cecilia's Day," and received the commendation of Mr Pope. His poem has

reminiscences of the other ode. The subject is the foundation of Pembroke College by Mary de Valence, Countess of Pembroke. The first two stanzas may be described as invocation and the last two as narrative. Apollo, hailed as God of science, light divine," is invited to favour and assist with Melpomene and Bacchus :

And contrasting, to their disfavour, nunneries and convents with the "mansion for the muse," the poem proceeds

"Religious joy, and sober pleasure,
Virtuous ease, and learned leisure,
Society and books, that give
Th' important lesson, how to live;
These are gifts, and gifts divine,
For, fair Pembroke, these were thine."

And thus concludes the Secular Ode. It leaves the impression that Smart was on his best moral and literary behaviour; but though much is trite and conventional, he showed a sense of rhythm and a choice of words which promised that the youth of twenty-one might some day be a great poet.

He had a long journey to go

before he ascended Parnassus. His career at Cambridge continued prosperously. Within a few weeks of the Jubilee he took his Bachelor's degree, and celebrated the occasion by an imitation of Horace

""Tis done: I tow'r to that degree

And catch such heav'nly fire, That Horace ne'er could rank like me, Nor is King's chapel higher. My name in sure recording page Shall time itself o'erpow'r, If no rude mice with envious rage The buttery books devour."

In 1745 he was chosen fellow of Pembroke and appointed Prælector of Philosophy in the College, and a year later Prælector of Rhetoric as well. The titles are magnificent, but the posts were not important in duties or emolument. In October 1746 he was private tutor

to Mr Delaval, afterwards Lord Delaval, and one of his patrons. The tutorship was of brief duration, for the young man had to leave the College at the end of his first term for an escapade, of which Gray gives a lively account.

Smart's chances were good, had he not spoilt them by drink that led to debts, and debts that drove him to drink. One of his biographers tells us that "he was wholly inattentive to economy," and another that "at Cambridge he ruined himself by returning the tavern treats of strangers." The shy youth, brought up in poverty, could not resist the temptations which his position offered. Early in 1747 Gray wrote that "he must necessarily be abîmé his in a very short time; Debts daily increase." He was distracting his thoughts by writing a comedy, 'A Trip to Cambridge or the Grateful Fair," which was performed in the hall of Pembroke. "He makes all the Boys of his Acquaintance act . . . his Piece (he says) is inimitable, true Sterling Wit and Humour by God; and he can't hear the Prologue without being ready to die with Laughter. He acts five Parts himself, and is only sorry he can't do all the rest. He has also advertised a Collection of Odes; and for his Vanity and Faculty of Lyeing, they are come to their full Maturity. All this must come to a Jayl or Bedlam, and that without any Help, almost

without Pity." Gray's prophecy was in time doubly fulfilled. Smart was twice confined as a madman, and he died within the rules of the King's Bench.

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It

Smart's colleagues must have thought that he was ill-fitted for the offices he held, and in the October following the production of his play he was not reappointed to his offices. In November he was arrested for a debt of £50 at the suit of a London tailor. Three of the fellows found the money to save him from jail, and an arrangement was made with his creditors in Cambridge (to whom he owed over £350) on an assignment of £50 a year from his income of £140. is clear that Smart had run heavily into debt on an income on which he could have lived in easy comfort. Drunkenness," says Gray, "is one great source of all this, and he may change it." And it is probable that he did mend his ways, for next year he was reappointed to his old posts and given another of a more profitable kind. And he found a fresh outlet for his poetic talent. Under the will of Mr Seaton, a prize was offered every year for an English poem by a Master of Arts on a subject given out every year, "which subject shall, for the first year, be one or other of the perfections or attributes of the supreme Being; and so on in the succeeding years till that subject be exhausted." This

prize Smart won for the first four years in succession, and his poems were all printed and reprinted.

But, as his biographer says, "while he was advancing his reputation as a poet, his extravagance involving him in debt with vintners and College cooks, occasioned his fellowship to be sequestered, and obliged him to leave the University." And probably convinced himself that he was not suited for an academic career, the more so that he was not ordained, in 1749 he left Cambridge for London, and began to write for the magazines. He remained a fellow, and for three years the College gave him a sum in addition to the dividend of his fellowship, in lieu of the Commons which he would have received in College. The grant was made "in consideration of his circumstances," presumably of his debts and the necessity to provide payment for them. The College was treating Smart generously, and perhaps felt that it was repaid by the honour which Smart brought to it every year by winning the Seatonian prize. Smart, however, added to his responsibilities by a secret marriage, and when this came to the knowledge of the College, his fellowship was in due course declared vacant; but leave was given to him "to keep his name on the College books without charge, so long as he continues to write for the premium left by Mr Seaton."

This he won for the last time in 1755, and henceforth his connection with the College ceased.

Smart's Cambridge career has been followed his life in London must be briefly dismissed. He became a hack writer, and in 1756 sold himself into bondage with a bookseller called Gardner, who acquired who acquired the rights in perpetuity to everything that Smart wrote. For Gardner he edited the Universal Visiter,' in which the Jubilee Ode appeared, and soon after his mind gave way, and he was confined for more than two years. in London: Johnson wrote for him ; 1; Garrick gave him a benefit at Drury Lane when he was released from confinement; and Goldsmith promoted a promoted a subscription for him. It is significant that between his breakdown in 1756 and 1763 there is no evidence of his literary activity; and it is possible that he was again confined. But early in 1763 his Song to David' burst upon the world.

He had friends

There is a persistent legend, which started almost as soon as the song was published, that it was composed while Smart was confined as a madman. The legend grew, and it came to be believed that the poem was written with charcoal on the walls or indented with a key on the panels of his cell. The legend scarcely needs discussion. Apart from the physical impossibility that over

500 lines could be inscribed in this fashion, the structure and perfection of the poem carry sufficient refutation. But Smart had been mad, and the majesty and mystery of his verses were not calculated to appeal to the sober mind of the eighteenth century. Mason, the uninspired poetaster, wrote to Gray: "I have seen his 'Song to David,' and from thence conclude him as mad as ever." We may wish that we had Gray's opinion. Boswell's literary sense was truer than Mason's when he wrote to Sir David Dalrymple that it was "a very curious composition, being a strange mixture of dun obscure and glowing genius at times." The reviewers were favourable: the Monthly Review' called it “irregularly great"; the 'Critical Review' talks of the "great rapture and devotion discernible in this ecstatic song."

But the public showed little appreciation. Of the first edition, of which the Oxford Press has just issued a type facsimile, but three or four copies are known to exist. That Smart was conscious of what he had achieved may be inferred from the fact that he reprinted the Song at the end of his poetical translation of the Psalms, which appeared two years later. This had been already completed when the Song to David' was published, and in his versions of many of the Psalms we recognise his true poetic gift. If we try to trace the