Nickleby_, the scene where Nicholas hopelessly denounces the
atrocious Gride in his hour of grinning triumph, and a thud upon the
floor above tells them that the heroine's tyrannical father has died
just in time to set her free. That is the apotheosis of the pure heroic
as Dickens found it, and as Dickens in some sense continued it. It may
be that it does not appear with quite so much unmistakable youth,
beauty, valour, and virtue as it does in Nicholas Nickleby. Walter Gay
is a simpler and more careless hero, but when he is doing any of the
business of the story he is purely heroic. Kit Nubbles is a humbler
hero, but he is a hero; when he is good he is very good. Even David
Copperfield, who confesses to boyish tremors and boyish evasions in his
account of his boyhood, acts the strict stiff part of the chivalrous
gentleman in all the active and determining scenes of the tale. But
_Great Expectations_ may be called, like _Vanity Fair_, a novel without
a hero. Almost all Thackeray's novels except Esmond are novels without a
hero, but only one of Dickens's novels can be so described. I do not
mean that it is a novel without a _jeune premier_, a young man to make
love; _Pickwick_ is that and _Oliver Twist_, and, perhaps, _The Old
Curiosity Shop_. I mean that it is a novel without a hero in the same
far deeper and more deadly sense in which _Pendennis_ is also a novel
without a hero. I mean that it is a novel which aims chiefly at showing
that the hero is unheroic.

All such phrases as these must appear of course to overstate the case.
Pip is a much more delightful person than Nicholas Nickleby. Or to take
a stronger case for the purpose of our argument, Pip is a much more
delightful person than Sydney Carton. Still the fact remains. Most of
Nicholas Nickleby's personal actions are meant to show that he is
heroic. Most of Pip's actions are meant to show that he is not heroic.
The study of Sydney Carton is meant to indicate that with all his vices
Sydney Carton was a hero. The study of Pip is meant to indicate that
with all his virtues Pip was a snob. The motive of the literary
explanation is different. Pip and Pendennis are meant to show how
circumstances can corrupt men. Sam Weller and Hercules are meant to show
how heroes can subdue circumstances.

This is the preliminary view of the book which is necessary if we are
to regard it as a real and separate fact in the life of Dickens. Dickens
had many moods because he was an