Editing Christopher Smart (section)

===Death===
In response to his uncle's death, Christopher Hunter wrote, "I trust he is now at peace; it was not his portion here."<ref>{{harvnb|Curry|2005|p=103}}</ref> Fanny Burney, in her journal, wrote:

{{blockquote|But now I speak of authors, let me pay the small tribute of regret and concern due to the memory of poor Mr. Smart, who died lately in the King's Bench Prison; a man by nature endowed with talents, wit, and vivacity, in an eminent degree; and whose unhappy loss of his sense was a public as well as private misfortune. I never knew him in his glory, but ever respected him in his ''decline'', from the fine proofs he had left of his better day, and from the account I have heard of his youth from my father, who was then his intimate companion; as, of late years, he has been his most active and generous friend, having raised a kind of fund for his relief, though he was ever in distress. His intellects, so cruelly impaired, I doubt not, affected his whole conduct.<ref name="Sherbo p. 265">{{harvnb|Sherbo|1967|p=265}}</ref>}}

On 22 May 1771, a jury of twelve fellow inmates of the King's Bench Prison declared that Smart "upon the Twentieth day of May Instant died a Natural Death within the Rules of the Prison."<ref name="Sherbo p. 265" /> He was buried on 26 May in [[St Paul's Covent Garden]].<ref name="Sherbo p. 265" />