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

Abstract

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 the ability to do so, since man would be incapable of gratitude were it not Christ's sacrifice. But the paradox of the fortunate fall is rather subtle doctrine 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, 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 in-