SOURCE: "The Vicar of Wakefield" in Oliver Goldsmith Revisited, Twayne, 1991, pp. 75-96.

In the following excerpt, Dixon examines the literary devices Goldsmith employs in The Vicar of Wakefield.

As a book reviewer Goldsmith was necessarily a student of title pages. In one of his earliest reviews he thus rebukes the author of Memoirs of Sir Thomas Hughson, and Mr. Joseph Williams; with the Remarkable History, Travels, and Distresses of Telemachus Lovet: "Fair promises! Yet like a Smithfield [i.e., Bartholomew Fair] conjuror, who, to draw company, exhibits at the door his best show for nothing, this author exhausts all his scanty funds on the title page." Another work may tempt us with hints of arcane thrills: The History of Cleanthes, an Englishman of the Highest Quality. From its title page "some readers may be induced to search into this performance for hidden satire, or political allegory," only to...