And there forlorn, despairing, hid, etc. The first edition for this and the next two stanzas substitutes the following:— And there in shelt’ring thickets hid, I’ll linger till I die; ’Twas thus for me my lover did, And so for him will I. ‘Thou shalt not thus,’ the Hermit cried, And clasp’d her to his breast; The astonish’d fair one turned to chide,— ’Twas Edwin’s self that prest. For now no longer could he hide, What first to hide he strove; His looks resume their youthful pride, And flush with honest love. ’Twas so for me, etc. Cf. _Gentle Herdsman_:— Thus every day I fast and pray, And ever will doe till I dye; And gett me to some secret place, For soe did hee, and soe will I. Forbid it, Heaven. _Vicar of Wakefield_, first edition, like the version of 1765, has ‘Thou shalt not thus.’ My life. _Vicar of Wakefield_, first edition, has ‘O thou.’ No, never from this hour, etc. The first edition reads:— No, never, from this hour to part, Our love shall still be new; And the last sigh that rends thy heart, Shall break thy Edwin’s too. The poem then concluded thus:— Here amidst sylvan bowers we’ll rove, From lawn to woodland stray; Blest as the songsters of the grove, And innocent as they. To all that want, and all that wail, Our pity shall be given, And when this life of love shall fail, We’ll love again in heaven. These couplets, with certain alterations in the first and last lines, are to be found in the version printed in _Poems for Young Ladies_, 1767, p. 98. AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG. This poem was first published in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, i. 175–6, where it is sung by one of the little boys. In common with the _Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize_ (p. 47) it owes something of its origin to Goldsmith’s antipathy to fashionable elegiacs, something also to the story of M. de la Palisse. As regards mad dogs, its author seems to have been more reasonable than many of his contemporaries, since he ridiculed, with much common sense, their exaggerated fears on this subject (_v. Chinese Letter_ in _The Public Ledger_ for August 29, 1760, afterwards Letter lxvi of _ The Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 15). But it is ill jesting with hydrophobia. Like _Madam Blaize_, these verses have been illustrated by Randolph Caldecott. In Islington there was a man. Goldsmith had lodgings at Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming’s in Islington (or ‘Isling town’ as the earlier editions have it) in 1763–4; and the choice of the locality may have been determined by this circumstance. But the date of the composition of the poem is involved in the general obscurity which hangs over the _Vicar_ in its unprinted state. (See _Introduction_, pp. xviii-xix.)