Noch Einmal Mit Gefuhl

I've set myself the task of completing 100 significant books in 2011.  Today I finished the first:  Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield".  The novel begins promisingly, but after a long series of increasingly far-fetched coincidences and secret identities, it ends with a denoument that reads more like Act Three of a stage play than the conclusion of a novel.  I could likewise have dispensed with the chapters devoted to recounting whole sermons verbatim.  Frye, in "Anatomy of Criticism", dismisses such comedies of manners as invariably ending "with a rustle of bridal gowns and a sheaf of banknotes"; he must surely have had this novel in mind when he penned those words.

Barely worth my time as a period piece, it lends weight to my suspicion that Goldsmith must have been a tiresome companion to Dr. Johnson et. al.