The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom-is to die.

ELEGY

ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG.1

Good people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man

Of whom the world might say
That still a godly race he ran
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,

Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,

And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,

The dog, to gain some private ends,

Went mad, and bit the man.

1 First printed in "The Vicar of Wakefield,” 1766, though probably written at an earlier period; perhaps in 1760, as we find in The Citizen of the World (Letter lxix.) an amusing paper in which Goldsmith ridicules the fear of mad dogs as one of those epidemic terrors to which the people of England are occasionally subject.

Around from all the neighboring streets
The wondering neighbors ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seem'd both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;

And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
That show'd the rogues they lied:
The man recover'd of the bite,
The dog it was that died.

EPITAPH

ON EDWARD PURDON.1

HERE lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,

Who long was a bookseller's hack;

He led such a damnable life in this world,

I don't think he'll wish to come back.

1 From the "Poems and Plays," 1777. Mr. Purdon, "famous for his literary abiiities," says the obituary of the Gentlemen's Magazine, died "suddenly in Smithfield," 27th March, 1767. He was the college friend of Goldsmith, and the translator of "The Memoirs of a Protestant," to which Goldsmith wrote the printed preface (see Vol. VI.).

The original of all is the epitaph on "La Mort du Sieur Étienne:"

"Il est au bout de ses travaux,

Il a passé le Sieur Étienne;

En ce monde il eut tant des maux

Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne."

With this, perhaps, Goldsmith was familiar, and had therefore less scruple in laying felonious hands on the epigram in the Miscellanies (Swift, xiii. 372).

"Well, then, poor G

lies underground!

So there's an end of honest Jack.

So little justice here he found,

'Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back."

FORSTER, Goldsmith's Life and Times, ii. 80.

EPILOGUE TO "THE SISTER.""

A COMEDY.

Spoken by Mrs. Bulkley.

WHAT! five long acts-and all to make us wiser?
Our authoress sure has wanted an adviser.
Had she consulted me, she should have made
Her moral play a speaking masquerade;
Warm'd up each bustling scene, and in her rage
Have emptied all the greenroom on the stage.
My life on't, this had kept her play from sinking;
Have pleas'd our eyes, and sav'd the pain of thinking.
Well! since she thus has shown her want of skill,
What if I give a masquerade?—I will.

But how? ay, there's the rub! [pausing]-I've got my cue;
The world's a masquerade! the maskers, you, you, you.

[To Boxes, Pit, and Gallery.

Lud! what a group the motley scene discloses!

False wits, false wives, false virgins, and false spouses!
Statesmen with bridles on; and, close beside 'em,
Patriots in party-color'd suits that ride 'em.
There Hebes, turn'd of fifty, try once more
To raise a flame in Cupids of threescore;
These, in their turn, with appetites as keen,
Deserting fifty, fasten on fifteen.

Miss, not yet full fifteen, with fire uncommon,
Flings down her sampler and takes up the woman;
The little urchin smiles, and spreads her lure,

And tries to kill ere she's got power to cure.
Thus 'tis with all: their chief and constant care

Is to seem everything-but what they are.

Written by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, and first acted at Covent Garden Theatre, 18th January, 1769. The audience expressed their disapprobation of it with so much clamor and appearance of prejudice that she would not suffer an attempt to exhibit it a second time, but published her play (unauthor-like) without either remonstrance or complaint. See Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1769, p. 199.