The Hop-Garden by Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart , also known as "Kit Smart", "Kitty Smart", and "Jack Smart", was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout...

 was first published in Poems on Several Occasions, 1752. The poem is rooted the Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

ian georgic and Augustan literature

Augustan literature

Augustan literature is a style of English literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II on the 1740s with the deaths of Pope and Swift...

; it is one of the first long poems published by Smart. The poem is literally about a hop

Hops

Hops are the female flower clusters , of a hop species, Humulus lupulus. They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, to which they impart a bitter, tangy flavor, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine...

 garden, and, in the Virgilian tradition, attempts to instruct the audience in how to farm hops properly.

While the poem deals with natural and scientific principles, there is a strong autobiographical tendency. While the poem marks Smart's classical and Latin influences, it also reveals Smart's close association and influence with Miltonic

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 poetic form, especially with the reliance on Miltonic blank verse

Blank verse

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...

.

Background

In 1726, Peter Smart, Christopher Smart's father, purchased Hall-Place in East Barming

East Barming

East Barming is a village in the civil parish of Barming in the Maidstone District of Kent, England. The village is located on the A26 road out of Maidstone, three miles from the town centre, and is virtually part of its built-up area....

, which included a mansion house, fields, orchards, gardens, and woodland; this property was influential throughout Smart’s later life. From the age of four until eleven, he spent much time around the farms, but varying reports of his level of participation during the day to day activities lead some to speculations that he sat out during most of the work and possibly suffered from asthma attacks. However, not all scholars agree that he was a "sickly youth." Instead, there is substantial evidence to suggest that Smart spent his time enjoying the country side and immersing himself in the nature around East Barming.

The Medway

Medway

Medway is a conurbation and unitary authority in South East England. The Unitary Authority was formed in 1998 when the City of Rochester-upon-Medway amalgamated with Gillingham Borough Council and part of Kent County Council to form Medway Council, a unitary authority independent of Kent County...

 river that runs through the area was of particular interest to Smart as a young boy, and it is remembered in The Hop-Garden along with mention few of Smart's other poems. The first edition of The Hop-Garden, in Poems on Several Occasions, 1752, included plates from Smart's friends Francis Hayman

Francis Hayman

Francis Hayman was an English painter and illustrator who became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768 and later its first librarian....

 and Thomas Worlidge

Thomas Worlidge

-Life:He was born in Peterborough of Roman Catholic parents, and studied art in London as a pupil of the Genoese refugee Alessandro Maria Grimaldi . He painted portraits of his master Grimaldi and his master's wife about 1720. He married Grimaldi's daughter, and remained on close terms with...

. The original edition of Poems on Several Occasions, 1752, had 751 subscribers and sold 851 of 1,000 printed copies, even though it sold for ten shillings each.

The Hop-Garden

The Hop-Garden is split into two books totaling 733 lines (429 lines and 304 lines respectively) and written in Miltonic blank verse. It may have been expected that Smart would rely on Augustan rhyming couplets for his poem, even though Pope stated that Miltonic language might be inappropriate for a pastoral theme. However, Smart does not hide this fact; instead, he emphasizes it when he says:

Under what sign to pluck the crop, and how

To cure, and in capacious sacks infold,

I teach in verse Miltonian

(The Hop-Garden Book the First, 4-6).

With these words Smart also introduces the georgic basis of the poem and that he would "teach" how to farm hops in order to use them to flavor alcoholic drinks. However, Smart does more than "teach in verse Miltonian" as he relies on various forms and styles to "express a variety of viewpoints."

While the poem discusses farming methods, it also expresses a "'Patriot' hostility" to Walpole

Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....

 and the later Carteret

John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville

John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, 7th Seigneur of Sark, KG, PC , commonly known by his earlier title as Lord Carteret, was a British statesman and Lord President of the Council from 1751 to 1763.-Family:...

/Compton

Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington

Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington KG, KB, PC was a British Whig statesman who served continuously in government from 1715 until his death. He served as the nominal head of government from 1742 until his death in 1743, but was merely a figurehead for the true leader of the government, Lord...

 administration of the British Parliament. The poem, in essence, is anti-Hanoverian, although he would later change this view.

Autobiography

The Hop-Garden is a personal work and contains many biographical references.

One of such as his mention of his deceased friend, Theophilus Wheeler, who died at Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...

, a year after starting. In particular, Smart was working on the poem when Theophilus died, and he dedicated a portion of the second book to his memory:

THEOPHILUS, thou dear departed soul,

What flattering tales thou told'st me? How thou'dst hail

My Muse, and took'st imaginary walks

All in my hopland groves! Stay yet, oh stay!

Thou dear deluder, thou hast seen but half-

He's gone! and ought that's equal to his praise

Fame has not for me, tho' she prove most kind.

Howe'er this verse be sacred to thy name,

These tears, the last sad duty of a friend.

Oft I'll indulge the pleasurable pain

Of recollection; oft on Medway's banks

I'll muse on thee full pensive; while her streams

Regardful ever of my grief, shall flow

In sullen silence silverly along

The weeping shores - or else accordant with

My loud laments, shall ever and anon

Make melancholy music to the shades,

The hopland shades, that on her bank expose

Serpentine vines and flowing locks of gold.

(The Hop-Garden Book the Second, 25-43)

Part of the motivation to dedicating such a large portion of the poem to a discussion about Wheeler comes from his relationship with the writing of the poem; Smart showed an early version of the first book to Wheeler in 1743 before Wheeler's death.

Satire

In Chris Mounsey's biography of Christopher Smart, the fourth chapter is devoted to an examination of The Hop-Garden. However, this examination admittedly does not focus on the poem as a georgic, but emphasizes an Augustan nature of the poem, especially its potential as a satirical attack upon John Philip

John Philip

John Philip may refer to:*John R. Philip, Australian physicist*John Woodward Philip, American admiral-See also:*John Phillip , artist*John Philips, poet*John Phillips...

's Cyder (1708). By mocking the use of poetry for praise in the poem's epigram, Smart sets the stage for his work to satirize a previous work that indulged too much in a desire for praise, and, as Mounsey points out, Philip's Cyder was an earlier poem that shared alcoholic agriculture-subject of The Hop-Garden. The main point of criticism by Smart against Philip would be Philip's use of "Roman" farming methods instead of "up-to-date scientific methods".

However, Juan Pellicer reviewed Mounsey's theory of The Hop-Garden as a satire and believed that Mounsey's chapter underestimated Philip's background. Furthermore, as Pellicer claims, there would be no need for a dispute to be made over farming methods, and Smart is instead writing a poem that complements Philip's instead of satirizes it. Philips, like Smart, had an intimate background with farming methods for their respective industries, and they both relied on scientific techniques that were shown to work in their respective communities. To view the poem as a satire would be incorrect, because "One should hesitate to consider agricultural methodology 'the nub' of Smart’s poem."

Critical reception

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, friend of Smart, joked about the poem as proof that "one could say a great deal about cabbage." However, not everyone was as playful, and one of Smart's later literary opponents, John Hill

John Hill (author)

John Hill , called because of his Swedish honours, "Sir" John Hill, was an English author and botanist. He contributed to contemporary periodicals and was awarded the title of Sir in recognition of his illustrated botanical compendium The Vegetable System.He was the son of the Rev. Theophilus Hill...

, was one of the first to review The Hop-Garden; Hill used his piece in the Monthly Review to attack the poem. It was this review, even after Smart's reply in The Hilliad, that guided the future negative reception of the poem that Chris Mounsey describes as a "litany of abuse".

Among Smart's biographers, the quality of the work is very debatable: Arthur Sherbo claims that the work "is remarkable for the poorness of the blank verse and the stilted Latinate quality of its language" while Chris Mounsey responds, "Possibly because of its complexity, allied to the fact that it does not meet with the expectations of most readers of Smart, the poem has hitherto been ill interpreted." However, they both agree that the work provides valuable insight into Smart's earlier years and portrays nature and farming in a realistic manner.