SOURCE: "Christopher Smart," in The Critic's Armoury, Richard Cobden-Sanderson, 1924, pp. 109-20.

In this essay, Falls extols A Song to David as an inspired poem and far superior to the rest of Smart's output.

We can but hope that Smart's words on David were true of himself. Great was his need of such consolation. A more miserable and, but for one bright flower budded in madness, a more worthless and barren life than his, were hard to conceive. Even of his madness we have no picture of a fine spirit wasting away in melancholy, like that of his greater and like-circumstanced contemporary, William Collins. When Dr. Johnson, good, kindly soul, went to visit him in Bedlam, he returned to tell Boswell that he was growing fat. Boswell suggested it might be for lack of exercise; but Johnson denied this, declaring that now he dug in the garden, whereas before...