SOURCE: "Sensibility among the Great and Near Great" in History of the Pre-Romantic Novel in England, Modem Language Association of America, 1949, pp. 104-38.

In the following excerpt, Foster discusses Goldsmith's views on morality and sentimentality as expressed in The Vicar of Wakefield.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-74) was not such a strait-laced classicist that he could not see good in Richardson's brand of sentimentality. In fact, he approved of it: however, not without some reservations and the thought that a dash of whimsey and humor might improve it. As for those perfervid souls who yearned for something more intense and drastic in the way of sentiment, he would have none of them. One of the objectives of the Vicar of Wakefield¹ was to act as a sedative and febrifuge, and at the same time to set an example of feeling properly controlled.

As a classicist Goldsmith could not believe in...