"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.
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