CHAPTER X.

GOLDSMITH. THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.' CHARACTER

OF LATER NOVELS AND ROMANCES.-MACKENZIE. THE MAN OF FEELING,' 'THE MAN OF THE WORLD,' AND 'JULIA DE ROUBIGNÉ.'-MISS BURNEY. EVELINA,' AND 'CECILIA.-MISS EDGEWORTH.-' BELINDA.'-JANE AUSTEN.-USES OF NOVELS.-RESPONSIBILITY OF THE NOVELIST.

Ir is a sensible relief to turn from the maudlin sentimentality of Richardson and the coarseness of Fielding and Smollett, to the purity of the pages of Goldsmith. We seem to breathe all at once

"An ampler ether, a diviner air,"

and have as sweet a picture as was ever drawn of family life in a country parsonage, with its joys and sorrows, its trials and rewards. One great charm of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' is its gentle irony-very different indeed from the vicious double entendre of Swift or Sterne, where the implied meaning is almost always impure. With all the childlike simplicity of Dr. Primrose, there is in him an under-current of sound good sense, which makes him fully sensible of the folly of his wife and daughters, while he indulges

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their vanity and smiles at their credulity. With what a soft touch of sarcasm he describes the good lady whom he chose, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well! "She could read any English book without much spelling; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself upon being an excellent contriver in housekeeping; though I could never find that we grew richer with all her contrivances." The key to his character is, I think, contained in the following sentence about his wife, when he tells us how she began to build castles in the air when Mr. Burchell had rescued their youngest daughter, Sophia, from drowning, and she said that if he had birth and fortune to entitle him to match into such a family as theirs, she knew no man she would sooner fix upon. "I could not but smile to hear her talk in this lofty strain; but I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy." When, after the loss of his fortune, and the removal of his family to an humbler abode, his wife and daughters come down-stairs on Sunday morning dressed out in all their former finery, "their hair plastered up with pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up in a heap behind, and rustling at every motion," the way

us;

in which Dr. Primrose rebukes their vanity is by ordering his son, with an important air, to call their coach. 66 6 Surely, my dear, you jest,' cried my wife, 'we can walk perfectly well: we want no coach to carry us now.' 'You mistake, child,' returned I, 'we do want a coach; for if we walk to church in this trim, the very children in the parish will hoot after "" and he ends with the wise apothegm, "I do not know whether such flouncing and shredding is becoming, even in the rich, if we consider, upon a moderate calculation, that the nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain." When Squire Thornhill was expected to pay them a visit, and Mrs. Primrose went to make the venison pasty, the Vicar observed his daughters busy cooking something over the fire. He at first thought that they were assisting their mother, but little Dick whispered that they were making a wash for their faces. Washes he abominated. "I therefore approached my chair by sly degrees to the fire, and, grasping the poker, as if it wanted mending, seemingly, by accident, overturned the whole composition, and it was too late to begin another."

The introduction into this scene of innocent happiness of the two town ladies-or rather ladies of the town-Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina

Amelia Skeggs, is characteristic of the manners of the age; but it unpleasantly breaks in upon the harmony of the tale. Their attempt at personation is too gross, and no family, who were not all idiots, could have been deceived as to their real character. But Dr. Primrose only very gently hints his suspicions. "One of them, I thought, expressed her sentiments upon this occasion in a very coarse manner, when she observed that 'by the living jingo she was all of a muck of sweat.'" Possibly the family may have thought themselves disqualified by their rustic habits from appreciating the wit of conversation in fashionable life, as retailed by the two strangers, and may have fancied that something more was meant than met the ear, when they were informed by them that "the next morning my Lord Duke cried out three times to his valet de chambre, 'Jernigan, Jernigan, Jernigan, bring me my garters.""

How exquisitely the story is told of Moses and the colt and the gross of green spectacles! Here, again, Dr. Primrose's good sense and temper are finely contrasted with his wife's impetuous anger. "A fig for the silver rims,' said my wife in a passion; 'I dare swear they won't sell for above half the money at the rate of broken silver, five shillings the ounce.' You need be under no uneasiness,' cried I, ' about selling

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the rims; for they are not worth sixpence, for I perceive they are only copper varnished over." "What!' cried my wife, 'not silver, the rims not silver!' 'No,' cried I, no more silver than your saucepan.' 'And so,' returned she, we have parted with the colt, and have only got a gross of green spectacles, with copper rims and shagreen cases! A murrain take such trumpery! The blockhead has been imposed upon, and should have known his company better.' There, my dear,' cried I, 'you are wrong; he should not have known them at all.' 'Marry, hang the idiot,' returned she, 'to bring such stuff! If I had them, I would throw them into the fire!' There, again, you are

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wrong, my dear,' cried I, ' for though they are copper, we will keep them by us, as copper spectacles, you know, are better than nothing.'

He takes

But, however Dr. Primrose may have plumed himself on his worldly wisdom, he, like his son Moses, was destined to be tricked by the same sharper-and that, too, in the matter of the sale of a horse. him to the fair, and puts him through his paces-but the would-be purchasers find so many faults in himone declaring that he had a spavin; another that he had a wind-gall; others that he had the botts-that at last his owner begins to have a most hearty contempt for the poor animal himself. At this juncture,