The only art her guilt to cover, ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG.' GOOD people all, of every sort, Give ear unto my song; In Islington there was a man Of whom the world might say A kind and gentle heart he had, And in that town a dog was found, 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. 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 wound it seem'd both sore and sad And while they swore the dog was mad, But soon a wonder came to light, EPITAPH ON EDWARD PURDON.1 HERE lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, 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 abilities," 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. III.). 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. WHAT! five long acts--and all to make us wiser? But how? ay, there's the rub! [pausing]--I've got my cue; [To Boxes, Pit, and Gallery. Lud! what a group the motley scene discloses! False wits, false wives, false virgins, and false spouses! Patriots in party-color'd suits that ride 'em. Miss, not yet full fifteen, with fire uncommon, And tries to kill ere she's got power to cure. 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. Yon broad, bold, angry spark I fix my eye on, Strip but his visor off, and sure I am Perhaps, to vulgar eyes, bestrides the State; [Mimicking. He bows, turns round, and whip-the man's a black! If I proceed, our bard will be undone! Well, then, a truce, since she requests it too: "There are but two decent prologues in our tongue-Pope's to 'Cato'Johnson's to Drury Lane. These, with the epilogue to 'The Distrest Mother,' and, I think, one of Goldsmith's, and a prologue of old Colman's to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster,' are the best things of the kind we have."-LORD BYRON, Works, vol. ii. p. 165. 2 Written about the year 1769, in reply to an invitation to dinner at Dr. (afterwards Sir George) Baker's (d. 1809), to meet the Misses Horneck, Angelica Kauffman, Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others. For the above verses, first published in 1837, the reader is indebted to Major-General Sir Henry Bunbury, Bart. As I hope to be sav'd, When he comes to enlist. For the foot-guards so stout Yet how can I, when vext, Your Devonshire crew, Miss Mary Horneck, afterwards Mrs. Gwyn. She died in 1840, aged eighty-eight. 2 Miss Catherine Horneck, afterwards (1771) Mrs. Bunbury. Her portrait by Sir Joshua, one of his finest works, is now at Bowood. Ensign (afterwards General) Horneck, son of Mrs. Horneck, widow of Captain Kane Horneck. |