Background
There is no evidence proving that Christopher Smart wrote A Song to David while locked away in a mental asylum for seven years. However, John Langhorne claimed, in the 1763 Monthly Review, "that it was written when the Author was denied the use of pen, ink, and paper, and was obliged to indent his lines, with the end of a key upon the wainscot." It is unlikely that Christopher had to go to such extremes to actually write the poem, but many scholars believe that it was written during his confinement. However, Christopher Hunter, Christopher Smart's nephew, claims:
- "our Author wrote a Poem called a Song to David, and a new Version of the Psalms: he also translated the Works of Horace, and the Fables of Phaedrus into English Metre; and versified our Saviour's Parables. These, with two small pamphlets of Poems, were written after his confinement, and bear for the most part melancholy proofs of the recent estrangement of his mind."
One of Christopher Smart's biographers, Arthur Sherbo, claims that the A Song to David, the translation of the Psalms, and Hymns and Spiritual Songs were "largely composed between March, 1759, and August 26, 1760."
The first publication was advertised on April 6, 1763. Smart later republished the work in his 1765 A Translation of the Psalms of David, Attempted in the Spirit of Christianity, and Adapted to the Divine Service, which included a translation of the Psalms and Christopher Smart's Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Later, A Song to David was not included in a collection of Christopher Smart's works by either Christopher Hunter, his nephew, or Elizabeth LeNoir, his daughter. Neither of Christopher Smart's anthologies, Anderson and Chalmers, could find a complete edition of the work. The text was then lost until the 1819 and 1827 editions of the poem.
Four stanzas of the poem were set as the anthem "Praise Above All, for Praise Prevails" by the British composer Malcolm Archer specifically to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Parish Church of St. Helena, Beaufort, South Carolina in 2012.
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