STANZA S.

ON WOMAN.1

WHEN lovely Woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray;
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?

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.2

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.

1 First printed in "The Vicar of Wakefield," 1766.

* 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 Ixix), 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.

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.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours 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.'

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.

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;

From the Poems and Plays, 1777. Mr. Purdon, "famous for his literary abilities," says the obituary of "The Gentleman'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 Etienne.

Il est au bout de ses travaux

Il a passé le Sieur Etienne;

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.

• 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 clamour and appearance of prejudice, that she would not suffer an

Warm'd up each bustling scene, and in her rage
Have emptied all the green-room 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 masquers, 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-colour'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 every thing-but what they are.
Yon broad, bold, angry spark, I fix my eye on,
Who seems t' have robb'd his vizor from the lion;
Who frowns, and talks, and swears, with round parade,
Looking, as who should say, Dam'me! who's afraid?

Strip but his vizor off, and sure I am
You'll find his lionship a very lamb.

Yon politician, famous in debate,

Perhaps, to vulgar eyes, bestrides the state;
Yet, when he deigns his real shape t' assume,
He turns old woman, and bestrides a broom.

[Mimicking.

attempt to exhibit it a second time; but published her play (un-author like) without either remonstrance or complaint. See Gentleman's Mag. for April, 1769, p. 199.

Yon patriot, too, who presses on your sight,
And seems, to every gazer, all in white,

If with a bribe his candour you attack,

He bows, turns round, and whip-the man's a black!
Yon critic, too-but whither do I run ?

If I proceed, our bard will be undone !

Well then, a truce, since she requests it too :
Do you spare her, and I'll for once spare you.'

VERSES

IN REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO DINNER AT DR. BAKER'S. 2

"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.

* Written about the year 1769, in reply to an invitation to dinner at Dr. afterward 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.