The dog, to gain some private ends. The first edition reads ‘his private ends.’ The dog it was that died. This catastrophe suggests the couplet from the _Greek Anthology_, ed. Jacobs, 1813–7, ii. 387:— Kappadoken pot exidna kake daken alla kai aute katthane, geusamene aimatos iobolou. Goldsmith, however, probably went no farther back than Voltaire on Fréron:— L’autre jour, au fond d’un vallon, Un serpent mordit Jean Fréron. Devinez ce qu’il arriva? Ce fut le serpent qui creva. This again, according to M. Edouard Fournier (_L’Esprit des Autres_, sixth edition, 1881, p. 288), is simply the readjustment of an earlier quatrain, based upon a Latin distich in the _Epigrammatum delectus_, 1659:— Un gros serpent mordit Aurelle. Que croyez-vous qu’il arriva? Qu’Aurelle en mourut?—Bagatelle! Ce fut le serpent qui creva. SONG FROM ‘THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.’ First published in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 78 (chap. v). It is there sung by Olivia Primrose, after her return home with her father. ‘Do, my pretty Olivia,’ says Mrs. Primrose, let us have that little melancholy air your pappa was so fond of, your sister Sophy has already obliged us. Do child, it will please your old father.’ ‘She complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic,’ continues Dr. Primrose, ‘as moved me.’ The charm of the words, and the graceful way in which they are introduced, seem to have blinded criticism to the impropriety, and even inhumanity, of requiring poor Olivia to sing a song so completely applicable to her own case. No source has been named for this piece; and its perfect conformity with the text would appear to indicate that Goldsmith was not indebted to any earlier writer for his idea. His well-known obligations to French sources seem, however, to have suggested that, if a French original could not be discovered for the foregoing lyric, it might be desirable to invent one. A clever paragraphist in the _St. James’s Gazette_ for January 28th, 1889, accordingly reproduced the following stanzas, which he alleged, were to be found in the poems of Segur, ‘printed in Paris in 1719’:— Lorsqu’une femme, après trop de tendresse, D’un homme sent la trahison, Comment, pour cette si douce foiblesse Peut-elle trouver une guérison? Le seul remède qu’elle peut ressentir, La seul revanche pour son tort, Pour faire trop tard l’amant repentir, Helas! trop tard—est la mort.