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. Nor has its
celebrity been confined to Great Britain. Though so exclusively a picture
of British scenes and manners, it has been translated into almost every
language, and everywhere its charm has been the same. Goethe, the great
genius of Germany, declared in his eighty-first year that it was his
delight at the age of twenty, that it had in a manner formed a part of his
education, influencing his taste 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.
It is needless to expatiate upon the qualities of a work which has thus
passed from country to country, and language to language, until it is now
known throughout the whole reading world, and is become a household book in
every hand.
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