Between 1753 and 1755, Smart published or republished at least 79 works. However, even if he received money from each of these publications, these publications were unable to provide enough of an income to support a family, especially to his standard of living. While he was producing a poem each year for the "Seatonian Prize", this amounted to very little of his writing; he was forced into a life of "hack work", which was described by his contemporary, Arthur Murphy, as "a bookseller is his only friend, but for that bookseller, however liberal, he must toil and drudge." In December 1755, he finished "The Works of Horace, Translated Literally into English Prose", a translation of Horace, which was widely used but brought him little profit.