What is his horror when he finds that his education, comfort, and
prospects have no more reputable foundation than the bounty of a
murderous criminal called Magwitch, who has showered all these
benefits upon him from the antipodes, in return for the gift of food
and a file when he, Magwitch, was trying to escape from the hulks, and
Pip was a little lad. Magwitch, the transported convict, comes back to
England, at the peril of his life, to make himself known to Pip, and
to have the pleasure of looking at that young gentleman. He is again
tracked by the police, and caught, notwithstanding Pip's efforts to
get him off, and dies in prison. Pip ultimately, very ultimately,
marries a young lady oddly brought up by the queer Miss Havisham, and
who turns out to be Magwitch's daughter.

Such, as I have had occasion to say before in speaking of similar
analyses, such are the dry bones of the story. Pip's character is well
drawn. So is that of Joe. And Mr. Jaggers, the criminal's friend, and
his clerk, Wemmick, are striking and full of a grim humour. Miss
Havisham and her _protegee_, Estella, whom she educates to be the
scourge of men, belong to what may be called the melodramatic side of
Dickens' art. They take their place with Mrs. Dombey and with Miss
Dartle in "David Copperfield," and Miss Wade in "Little
Dorrit"--female characters of a fantastic and haughty type, and quite
devoid, Miss Dartle and Miss Wade especially, of either verisimilitude
or the milk of human kindness.

"Great Expectations" was completed in August, 1861, and the first
number of "Our Mutual Friend" appeared in May, 1864. This was an
unusual interval, but the great writer's faculty of invention was
beginning to lose its fresh spring and spontaneity. And besides he had
not been idle. Though writing no novel, he had been busy enough with
readings, and his work on _All the Year Round_. He had also written a
short, but very graceful paper[30] on Thackeray, whose death, on the
Christmas Eve of 1863, had greatly affected him. Now, however, he
again braced himself for one of his greater efforts.

Scarcely, I think, as all will agree, with the old success. In "Our
Mutual Friend" he is not at his best. It is a strange complicated
story that seems to have some difficulty in unravelling itself: the
story of a man who pretends to be dead in order that he may, under a
changed name, investigate the character and eligibility of the young
woman whom an erratic father h