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INTRODUCTION

OLDSMITH is above all things a cheerful writer, and although many scenes in The Vicar of Wakefield are distressing to the point of poignancy, and the action oscillates to the very last between tragedy and comedy, none of his works produces a stronger impression of serenity of mind and joyful trust in the moral order of the world. This effect is in part obtained by the happy expedient of making the Vicar the narrator of his own story, which, while it adds force to the tale of his afflictions, excludes the element of painful suspense. We instinctively feel that as Robinson Crusoe could not have related his adventures if he had been devoured by the cannibals, so the Vicar could not have dwelt upon his misfortunes with such composure if he had

not surmounted them at last. But still more is due to the author's invincible geniality of spirit, investing his work with an atmosphere as incompatible with discontent and repining as the sunbeam with the bat. Dr. Primrose occupies an intermediate position between two other great exemplars of patience, Job and Mark Tapley; if he has not Mark's exuberant jollity under discouraging circumstances, he would not under any stress of affliction have cursed, like Job, the hour in which he was born.

The buoyancy of spirit evinced in Goldsmith's novel will appear the more remarkable when it is considered that, according to the testimony of Johnson, it was composed at a time of difficulty and distress. This is Johnson's account as reported by Boswell :

I sent him

"I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as he was drest, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a

bottle of Madeira and a glass before him.1 I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit, told the landlady I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill."

It is impossible to doubt the substantial accuracy of this narrative, but it may be observed that the publisher can hardly have given sixty pounds on the spot for a manuscript which he had had so little opportunity of inspecting, and in the absence of any written agreement between buyer and vendor, but may very well have practically promised to take it, and have advanced a portion of the sixty pounds (more probably guineas) asked for it on account, retaining the manuscript for further examination, and

1 This circumstance would be misinterpreted if deemed to indicate that Goldsmith was a man of intemperate habits. He may well have felt the need of a cordial on so depressing an occasion; but Cooke, a familiar acquaintance, testifies that "he was never much given to drinking."

as security; Johnson regarding the whole series of incidents as virtually one transaction. This would account for the puzzling circumstance that, as discovered by Mr. Welsh, in October 1762, a third share was bought for twenty guineas by Collins, a Salisbury bookseller, by whom the first edition was subsequently printed, and who probably participated in the final agreement between Goldsmith and Newbery, the London publisher. The composition of the tale has usually been referred to 1764, on account of Johnson's remark that Goldsmith would have obtained a higher price if he had waited until after the publication of his Traveller in December of that year. But Johnson does not say that the publishers had not had it in their hands long before the publication of The Traveller, and from the interval which elapsed even then before the appearance of the book it seems probable that they had. It was eventually published on March 27, 1766. Mr. Austin Dobson makes it fairly certain that the novel was written at Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, in 1762, and we may be allowed to reinforce his lucid argument by a piece of internal evidence. "What!" exclaims the patriotic butler in Chapter XIX, "give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazetteer says, lie down like slaves to be

saddled with wooden shoes!" There would be little point in this delightful piece of inconsequence if it were not a genuine quotation from an actual Gazetteer, and it is unlikely that such would be exhumed after the conclusion of peace in 1763.

Other interesting questions have been raised respecting The Vicar of Wakefield, upon which we are unable to enlarge the various tokens of its not being entirely finished, and the inquiry how far it can be said to have had a precursor. "The Man in Black,"

in The Citizen of the World (1760), is evidently a foreshadowing of the Vicar, but as evidently an unconscious one. "The History of Miss Stanton," published in The British Magazine of the same year, has been thought to contain the germ of The Vicar of Wakefield; but it is hard to believe Goldsmith the author of a fiction which terminates by the villain offering his hand to the heroine as she lies in a swoon upon the body of her father, whom he has just shot in a duel, and being accepted at the injunction of the parent himself, "who has only pretended to be dead." Another interesting question is whether “The Vicar” owes anything to an actual visit to Yorkshire. Mr. Edward Ford has attempted with great ingenuity to localise some of the scenes, but his theory rests on the