Goethe, when in his eighty-first year, declared that Goldsmith’s novel “was his delight at the age of twenty, that it had in a manner formed a part of his education, influencing his tastes and feelings throughout life, and that he had recently read it again from beginning to end, with renewed delight, and with a grateful sense of the early benefit derived from it.”  “Rogers, the Nestor of British literature, whose refined purity of taste and exquisite mental organization rendered him eminently calculated to appreciate a work of the kind, declared that of all the books, which, through the fitful changes of three generations he had seen rise and fall, the charm of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ had alone continued as at first; and could he revisit the world after an interval of many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undiminished.”  So wrote Washington Irving; and if the reader is inclined to look for the causes of the extraordinary endurance of Goldsmith’s work, he can find them nowhere better stated than in the words of John Forster:  “Not in those graces of style, nor even in that home-cherished gallery of familiar faces can the secret of its extraordinary fascination be said to consist.  It lies nearer the heart.  A something which has found its way there; which, while it amused, has made us happier; which, gently interweaving itself with our habits of thought, has increased our good-humour and charity; which, insensibly it may be, has corrected wilful impatiences of temper, and made the world’s daily accidents easier and kinder to us all; somewhat thus should be expressed, I think, the charm of the ’Vicar of Wakefield.’”

In 1760 was published “Chrysal, the Adventures of a Guinea,” by Charles Johnstone, the author of several deservedly forgotten novels.[193] The first volume was sent to Dr. Johnson for his opinion, who thought, as Boswell tells us, that it should be published—­an estimate justified by the considerable circulation which the book enjoyed.

Chrysal is an elementary spirit, whose abode is in a piece of gold converted into a guinea.  In that form the spirit passes from man to man, and takes accurate note of the different scenes of which it becomes a witness.  This is a natural and favorable medium for a satire, which Johnstone probably owed, in some measure, both to the “Diable Boiteux” of Gil Blas, and the “Adventures of a Halfpenny” of Dr. Bathurst.  The circulation of the guinea enables the author to describe the characteristics of its possessors as seen by a truthful witness, and he has taken advantage of his opportunity to produce one of the most disgusting records of vice in literature.  A depraved mind only could find any pleasure in reading “Chrysal,” and whoever is obliged to read it from cover to cover for the purpose of describing it to others, must find himself, at the end of his task, in sore vexation of spirit.  Human depravity is never an agreeable subject for a work of entertainment,