Oliver Goldsmith

Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog

6. Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog.

Sermon tone

The opening mimics a preacher addressing a congregation. 'Good people all' and 'Give ear' are pulpit language—Goldsmith is setting up a mock-serious delivery that undercuts the trivial subject matter.

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.
A kind and gentle heart he had
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad

Ironic virtue

The man's goodness is described in absurdly contradictory terms: he 'clad / The naked every day / When he put on his clothes.' This isn't charity—it's just him getting dressed. The syntax deliberately creates the illusion of virtue.

When he put on his clothes.
And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,

Catalog of dogs

Listing dog types ('mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, / And curs of low degree') echoes the social hierarchies of human society. The dog is literally described in class terms—it's a 'cur of low degree.'

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 neighb'ring streets,
The wond'ring 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,

Moral inversion

The neighbors assume the good man will die from a mad dog's bite—the expected outcome of the moral order. But the poem's final revelation reverses this: the man lives, the dog dies. Goodness doesn't guarantee safety.

They swore the man would die.
But soon a wonder came to light,

Expose the lie

The word 'rogues' appears only here, referring to the neighbors who made false assumptions. Goldsmith uses it to mock not the dog or man, but the community's tendency to construct false narratives.

That shew'd the rogues they lied;
The man recovered of his bite,
The dog it was that died.
Goldsmith.
Source

Reading Notes

Satire of sentimental morality

This poem demolishes the 18th-century convention of the 'good man' rewarded by Providence. The protagonist is described with exaggerated virtue—he comforts 'friends and foes,' he's 'kind and gentle'—but Goldsmith makes the description absurd. The punchline isn't that the man survives; it's that the dog dies instead, violating the moral logic the poem has set up.

Goldsmith published this in 1766, during an era of sentimental literature that treated virtue as a guarantee of earthly reward. By making the virtuous man survive a mad dog bite through pure luck (not virtue), and by killing the dog for its crime, Goldsmith suggests that morality and outcomes are disconnected. The real satire is on the neighbors who immediately construct a moral narrative ('the dog was mad, the man is good, therefore the man will die') only to be proven wrong. They don't learn anything—they just swap their false assumption for the opposite one.

Sermon structure as mockery

The poem's formal structure mimics a moral fable or sermon. It opens with a preacher's address, introduces a virtuous protagonist, presents a trial, and offers a resolution. But every element is undercut. The 'godly race' the man runs is just going to church. His charity is redefined as wearing clothes. The climactic reversal—the man lives, the dog dies—teaches no moral lesson at all.

[CONTEXT: Goldsmith was known for satire of contemporary literary trends. This poem appeared in *The Vicar of Wakefield* and became one of his most famous works, likely because readers missed the joke entirely.] The rhyming couplets and ballad meter give it the sound of serious verse, but the content is deliberately trivial. By using the formal machinery of moral instruction to tell a story with no moral, Goldsmith exposes how much 18th-century literature relied on form to signal importance rather than content to earn it.