VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, The. (The Vicar of Wakefield; a Tale) by Oliver Gold smith seems to have been begun during the year 1761 and was sold to a publisher in Octo ber of the following year, but it remained in manuscript nearly four years, finally coming out in March 1766, when its author, thanks to (The Traveler) (1764), was a more famous man than he had been in 1762. The (Vicar) promptly became an English— and then a European— classic. Goethe thought it one of the best novels ever written. A similar opinion has been agreed in by a long line of notable critics, even when so diverse as Henry James and Joel Chandler Harris. For the most part the book's charm resists analysis, but much can be ascribed to the mingled gayety and tender ness with which Goldsmith therein recounts his own experiences. It is not merely that in the 20th chapter George Primrose, the ((philo sophic vagabond,) claims adventures on the Continent which Goldsmith himself had had during his travels; nor that the Vicar is studied in many respects from Goldsmith's father. It is rather that the characters so often give utterance to Goldsmith's own mellow doctrines, and that the incidents so often re flect his fresh and benign observations of life. Many passages fail to rise above conventional 18th-century prejudices: pretty notions about the state of nature and the natural man abotmd; the political Ideas advanced are as often as not simply incredible; while the attitude of tne Primrose family toward Sir William Thornhill is of a snobbishness at which one cannot help wincing. Such matters must be classed with
the °hundred faults') which Goldsmith ad mitted °are in this Thing.* Doubtless he meant by °faults) quite different matters, such as a certain aimlessness of structure and the absence of a high decorum, but these. if not now held to be actually the book's virtues, are yet tmderstood to contribute to its principal charm— its easy rnovement of idyllic events recorded in language felicitously naive. The scene has, indeed, almost no alocalityp; the purpose obtrudes itself everywhere; the plot skirts melodrama at a dozen places; not a few of the characters hint of the stage. The total effect, however, is of a reality which will not fade. VVIto that has read the story can pos sibly forget Moses' purchase of the green spectacles or the family portrait which was too large to be hung? The tale is full of such episodes, as memorable as proverbs. Few books of the length present such a variety of life and such a sum of unsoured human wisdom. Perhaps its greatest triumph is that it reveals the most artless simplicity and virtue without either malting fun of them or forgetting that the world at large is less apostolic than the Vicar's little realm. Irony, so rarely in the service of kindness, is here merely method employed by one of the gentlest, best and quaintest of men in a novel which is as sincere and touching as a lyric.