"There are a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties: but it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity." Let's assume that Goldsmith knows what he is doing. He is both serious and not serious about his characters and plot (which soon will be getting pace). It is a sort of game with the enlightened reader - well, nobody to this very day can say for sure whether VoW is a novel of the sentimental genre or a parody. In those novels (remember the 1st chapter of Northanger Abbey) characters must be angels or villains. What price is a well-meaning man, with kind heart, but unworldly, who loves his wife and children, but won't rule them, though he thinks it is his duty, though he doesn't know how to begin with it... I cannot say that I love everything about the novel or the vicar himself, but I admire Goldsmith's going against the grain of his contemporaries' expectations. Yours, perhaps, too? :)