Yet Goldsmith, untiring hack of genius as he was, wrote no other novel; evidently felt no particular call or predilection for the style; would have been dramatist, poet, essayist with greater satisfaction to himself, though scarcely (satisfactory as he is in all these respects) to us.

That he tried it at all can hardly be set down to anything else than the fact that the style was popular: and his choice is one of the highest possible testimonies to the popularity of the style.

Incidentally, of course, the _Vicar_ has more for us than this, because it indicates, as vividly as any of the work of the great Four themselves, how high and various the capacities of the novel are--how in fact it can almost completely compete with and, for a time, vanquish the drama on its own ground.

Much of it, of course--the "Fudge!" scene between Mr.Burchell and the town ladies may be taken as the first example that occurs--_is_ drama, with all the cumbrous accessories of stage and scene and circumstance spared.

One may almost see that "notice to quit," which (some will have it) has been, after nearly a century and a half, served back again on the novel, served by the _Vicar of Wakefield_ on the drama.
At the same time even the _Vicar_, though perhaps less than any other book yet noticed in this chapter, illustrates the proposition to which we have been leading up--that, outside the great quartette, and even to a certain extent inside of it, the novel had not yet fully found its proper path--had still less made up its mind to walk freely and firmly therein.