esperate
remedies. Our fathers had a plain sort of pity; if you will, a gross and
coarse pity. They had their own sort of sentimentalism. They were quite
willing to weep over Smike. But it certainly never occurred to them to
weep over Squeers. Even those who opposed the French war opposed it
exactly in the same way as their enemies opposed the French soldiers.
They fought with fighting. Charles Fox was full of horror at the
bitterness and the useless bloodshed; but if any one had insulted him
over the matter, he would have gone out and shot him in a duel as coolly
as any of his contemporaries. All their interference was heroic
interference. All their legislation was heroic legislation. All their
remedies were heroic remedies. No doubt they were often narrow and often
visionary. No doubt they often looked at a political formula when they
should have looked at an elemental fact. No doubt they were pedantic in
some of their principles and clumsy in some of their solutions. No
doubt, in short, they were all very wrong; and no doubt we are the
people, and wisdom shall die with us. But when they saw something which
in their eyes, such as they were, really violated their morality, such
as it was, then they did not cry "Investigate!" They did not cry
"Educate!" They did not cry "Improve!" They did not cry "Evolve!" Like
Nicholas Nickleby they cried "Stop!" And it did stop.

This is the first mark of the purely romantic method: the swiftness and
simplicity with which St. George kills the dragon. The second mark of it
is exhibited here as one of the weaknesses of _Nicholas Nickleby_. I
mean the tendency in the purely romantic story to regard the heroine
merely as something to be won; to regard the princess solely as
something to be saved from the dragon. The father of Madeline Bray is
really a very respectable dragon. His selfishness is suggested with much
more psychological tact and truth than that of any other of the villains
that Dickens described about this time. But his daughter is merely the
young woman with whom Nicholas is in love. We do not care a rap about
Madeline Bray. Personally I should have preferred Cecilia Bobster. Here
is one real point where the Victorian romance falls below the
Elizabethan romantic drama. Shakespeare always made his heroines heroic
as well as his heroes.

In Dickens's actual literary career it is this romantic quality in
_Nicholas Nickleby_ that is most important. It is his first definite
at