He was a minute philosopher, his philosophy
was kindly, and he taught the delicate art of making much out of little.
Less coarse than Fielding, he is far more corrupt. Fielding goes bluntly
to the point; Sterne lingers among the temptations and suspends the
expectation to tease and excite it. Forbidden fruit had a relish for
him, and his pages seduce. He is full of good sayings both tender and
witty. It was Sterne, for example, who wrote, "God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb."
A very different writer was Oliver Goldsmith, whose _Vicar of
Wakefield_, 1766, was the earliest, and is still one of the best, novels
of domestic and rural life. The book, like its author, was thoroughly
Irish, full of bulls and inconsistencies. Very improbable things
happened in it with a cheerful defiance of logic. But its characters are
true to nature, drawn with an idyllic sweetness and purity, and with
touches of a most loving humor. Its hero, Dr. Primrose, was painted
after Goldsmith's father, a poor clergyman of the English Church in
Ireland, and the original, likewise, of the country parson in
Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_, 1770, who was "passing rich on forty
pounds a year." This poem, though written in the fashionable couplet of
Pope, and even containing a few verses contributed by Dr.
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