"Ye Muses, pour the pitying tear, For Pollio snatched away; O, had he lived another year He had not died to-day."... He gives another on Madam Blaize-- "Good people all with one accord Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise." The Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog terminates in a stroke taken from the old epigram of Demodocus-- "Good people all, of everysort, 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 this town a dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelps, 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 seemed 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 showed the rogues they lied, The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died." The fine and elegant humour in "The Vicar of Wakefield" and "The Deserted Village," has greatly contributed to give those works a lasting place in the literature of this country. Goldsmith attacked, among other imposters, the quacks of his day, who promised to cure every disease. Reading their advertisements, he is astonished that the English patient should be so obstinate as to refuse health on such easy terms. We find from Swift that astrologers and fortune-tellers were very plentiful in these times. The following lament was written towards the end of the last century upon the death of one of them--Dr. Safford, a quack and fortune-teller. "Lament, ye damsels of our London City, Poor unprovided girls, though fair and witty, Who masked would to his house in couples come, To understand your matrimonial doom; To know what kind of man you were to marry, And how long time, poor things, you were to tarry; Your oracle is silent; none can tell On whom his astrologic mantle fell; For he, when sick, refused the doctor's aid, And only to his pills devotion paid, Yet it was surely a most sad disaster, The saucy pills at last should kill their master."