Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/75

Rh, "are ever successful." Olivia, when the squire played off a dullish joke, "mistook it for humour. She thought him, therefore, a very fine gentleman." The powders and patches for the country church, the ride thither on Blackberry, in so strange a procession, the face-wash, the dreams and omens, are all good gentle comedy; we are completely convinced of the tedium of Mrs. Primrose's dreams, which she told every morning. But there are other points of comedy that ought not to precede an author's appeal to the kind of sentiment about to be touched by the tragic scenes of The Vicar of Wakefield.

In odd sidling ways Goldsmith bethinks himself to give his principal heroine a shadow of the virtues he has not bestowed upon her. When the unhappy Williams, above-mentioned, has been used in vain by Olivia, and the squire has not declared himself, and she is on the point of keeping her word to Williams by marrying him, the Vicar creates a situation out of it all that takes the reader roundly by surprise: "I frequently applauded her resolution in preferring happiness to ostentation." The good Goldsmith! Here is Olivia perfectly frank with her father as to her exceedingly sincere preference