Where Skipping Lambkins Feed: Christopher Smart's Hymns for the Amusement of Children

Perhaps the greatest barrier to any modern appreciation of the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart's Hymns for the Amusement of Children lies in understanding how they are at all poems for the child. In the first place, the constructions and metaphors often seem much too enigmatic for childish listeners. In Hymn XXII, the personified voice of "Gratitude" addresses the children thus:

Hear, ye little children, hear me.    I am God's delightful voice;They who sweetly still revere me,    Still shall make the wisest choice.

Hear me not like Adam trembling    When I walked in Eden's grove;And the host of heav'n assembling    From the spot the traitor drove.

Hear me rather as the lover    Of mankind, restor'd and free;By the word ye shall recover    More than that ye lost by Me.¹

It is difficult to find any clear meaning that would be available to a child in these lines, particularly in the last stanza. It is one thing to tell the child that gratitude is something men owe to God, but quite another to try to impress upon him that gratitude (since "God's delightful voice" is the Word made flesh) is in fact God himself. Smart would have the child understand not only that he must give thanks, but also that he must be grateful for the ability to do so, since man would be incapable of gratitude were it not for Christ's sacrifice. But the paradox of the "fortunate fall" is rather subtle doctrine for a child, and Smart's handling of it does more to obscure than simplify. Not all the hymns are so complex, but many of them are—enough to make us wonder whether Smart was unwilling or merely unable to keep himself within the "little prattler's" range of comprehension.²

Another serious obstacle arises when we consider even the simplest poems in the collection, for these hymns are not merely lisping thoughts to be sung to a benevolent Father. In the eighteenth century, "for children" was apparently synonymous with "for the children's moral instruction." And so the full didactic panoply is here in "This pictur'd Hymn-book on a plan, / To make good girls and boys." There are thirty-nine hymns, beginning with one for each of the cardinal virtues, and, when these are exhausted, going on to "Elegance" ("'Tis in the body, that sweet mien, / Ingenuous Christians all possess, / Grace, easy motions, smiles serene, / Clean hands and seemliness of dress") and "Loveliness," "Generosity," "Honour," "Good-nature to Animals," and the "Long-suffering of God," among others. In "The Conclusion of the Matter," the boys and girls are reminded that, in short, "There's nought like penitence and prayer."

Today, when the once popular eighteenth-century title Little Goody Two Shoes has become a term of opprobrium, we are likely to find this unending stream of virtues cloying. But the Hymns' apparent flaws are not necessarily evidence of Smart's carelessness or lack of ability. He was an experienced juvenile author, with more than a passing interest in the field. He was John Newbery's son-in-law, and although the relationship between them was not always friendly, he contributed at least one song, a "Morning Hymn," to The Lilliputian Magazine and may have had a hand in some of the other Newbery productions.³ In his last years, he devoted most of his time to writing for children. The Hymns were published in 1770, the year before Smart died. They were preceded by two other works for children: a translation of the Fables of Phaedrus, published in 1765, and The Parables of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, "done into familiar verse, with occasional applications, for the use and improvement of younger minds," published in 1768.

The qualities of Smart's verse that a modern reader finds alien reflect assumptions about the nature of childhood that, in a post-Romantic era, we no longer share. Although an English translation of Rousseau's Emile was published in 1763, in 1770 the most influential educational...