Hymns for the Amusement of Children

It was completed while Smart was imprisoned for outstanding debt at the King's Bench Prison, and the work is his final exploration of religion.

Although Smart spent a large portion of his life in and out of debt, he was unable to survive his time in the prison and died soon after completing the Hymns.

[2] Although he was in prison, Charles Burney purchased the "Rules" (allowing him some freedom) in order to help make Smart's final weeks peaceful although pathetic.

[2] It is unknown how many poems published in the Hymns were written before Smart was imprisoned or during his final days, but at least one, titled "Against Despair" was produced during this time.

The sense and subjects might be borrow'd plentifully from the Proverbs of Solomon, from all the common appearances of nature, from all the occurrences in the civil life, both in city and country: (which would also afford matter for other Divine Songs.)

Here the language and measures should be easy and flowing with chearfulness, and without the solemnities of religion, or the sacred names of God and holy things; that children might find delight and profit together.

The final works introduce the miscellaneous Christian virtues that were necessary to complete Christopher's original self-proclaimed "plan to make good girls and boys.

However, later editions of the work sometimes included illustrations that did not match the corresponding hymn, which was the fault of "a general deterioration of standards in book production".

"[18] As a poem, it "restates Smart's certainty that the long-suffering God will eventually bestow his grace upon the barren human soul"[18] as it reads: This final poem fittingly ends in "manic exultation" and shows "that for Smart, presentiments of the grace and mercy of God were inseparable from madness.

"[22] Arthur Sherbo disagreed with this sentiment strongly and claims the Hymns "are more than mere hack work, tossed off with speed and indifference.

Into these poems, some of them of a bare simplicity and naiveté that have few equals in literature of merit anywhere..."[17] However, he does admit some of the argument when he claims that "Generosity", along with a handful other hymns, was "not so simple and surely proved too much for the children for whom they were bought.