Smart's Fables

Among the shorter poems, the fables were the pieces most highly prized by Smart's contemporaries, and they still wear well, showing a lightness of touch and acuteness of social observation that made eighteenth-century critics put him in the same league as John Gay. Charles Burney in the Monthly Review (January 1792) rated him "the most agreeable metrical Fabulist in our language" after Gay, finding that although his versification was less polished and "his apologues in general perhaps less correct" than those of Gay and Edward Moore, nevertheless "in originality, in wit, in humour, the preference seems due to Smart."

English Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Smart's Fables

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fables.

• Smart, C. (1791). The Poems, of the Late Christopher Smart, ... Consisting of His Prize Poems, Odes, Sonnets, and Fables, Latin and English Translations; ... Smart and Cowslade; and sold by F. Power and Company, London.
• Selected Poems by Christopher Smart^{[permanent dead link]}

• The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart: Volume IV: Miscellaneous Poems, English and Latin Edited by Karina Williamson Oxford University Press, USA (May 21, 1987) ISBN 0-19-812768-5 ISBN 978-0-19-812768-0