The Vicar of Wakefield [Christmas Summary Classics]

Christmas Summary Classics
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OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith, the most versatile and perhaps the most unstable of eighteenth century men of letters, was born in Ireland on November 10, 1728. At Trinity College, Dublin, he revealed three characteristics that clung to him throughout his career--high spirits, conversational brilliance, and inability to keep money in his pocket. After a spell of "philosophic vagabondage" on the Continent, he settled in London in 1756, earned money in various ways, and spent it all. "The Vicar of Wakefield," perhaps the greatest of all Goldsmith's works, was published on March 27, 1766, after Dr. Johnson had raised £60 for him on the manuscript of it. The liveliness and grace of Goldsmith's style were never more plainly manifested than in this delightful story; and its faults--it contains many coincidences and improbabilities--are far more than atoned for by the masterly portrait of the simple, manly, generous, and wholly lovable vicar who is the central figure of the story. "It has," says Mitford, "the truth of Richardson, without his minuteness, and the humour of Fielding, without his grossness; if it yields to LeSage in the diversified variety of his views of life, it far excels him in the description of domestic virtues and the pleasing moral of the tale." Goldsmith died on April 4, 1774. (See also Vol. XVII.)