370 Leaves from the Journal of the Poor Wiltshire Vicar. 



xix. (2), p. 95, and would need correction in two important 

 particulars. The date " 1750," if intended to be taken as exact, 

 would carry the story back some ten or fifteen years earlier than 

 the earliest form in which the tale is known to us as having been 

 extant — earlier, that is, than the brief Curate^s week (Dec, 1766), 

 or the Vicar of Wakefield (March, 1766), as well as Miss Stanton 

 (1766). Dr. Ames only mentions the date 1766. Further, I 

 have not come across any evidence that Zschokke (who, by the 

 way, was misled as to the relative priority of the Viccir of Wakefield 

 and the Curate's week) had before him any English story to translate 

 as a whole.-"^ He incorporated sentences from the Curate's week, 

 but in such a manner as to spin it out into a Vicar's month, making 

 the poor man a widower, and thus suppressing all that related to 

 " my poor woman," while the shadowy " Betsey and Polly " of the 

 brief sketch develop into the more interesting Jenny and Polly of 

 Zschokke's tale. Dr. Ames gives a just criticism of the story, and 

 with his kind permission I append an extract from his remarks, 

 but the reader will be well repaid if he looks up the whole paper 

 in B. S. Lit. Transactions, xix. (2), 93 — 105 : — 



"A much slighter work than Goldsmith's immortal tale, the 'Juitinal' 

 presents some resemblances in details. In both there are two daughters, one 

 of whom in each case marries a wealthy baronet, a benefactor to the family, 

 who appears at first as an apparently poor man under an assumed name, 1 

 Again, in both are found the simple devotion of the poor parishioners, and! 

 the accumulated misfortunes of the Vicar, borne by him with simple heroism i 

 and unaffected piety." 



" The Vicar of Wakefield " was described as superior to " 2'he 

 Journal of a Poor Vicar " in magnitude, humour, and literary , 

 distinction. The anonymous author of the "Journal"- evidently 

 wished to present a type of genuine humility without baseness,] 



' Zschokke's own note appended to the German tale appears to me to refer] 

 merely to the week's Journal, and to the Ticar of Wakefield. 



- Dr. Ames, apparently, believes that the Curate's week was an extract I 

 from a genuine diary, and that Zschokke had the whole thing before him. 

 But the stories have little in common after the first few lines. The Alhemeum, 

 July 3rd, 1897, p. 38; Transactions R. Soc. Lit., xix., part 2, p. 95. 



