Had he continued along this line all his books might very well have been note-books. It would be very easy to split up all his subsequent books into scraps and episodes, such as those which make up the _Sketches by Boz_. It would be easy enough for Dickens, instead of publishing _Nicholas Nickleby_, to have published a book of sketches, one of which was called "A Yorkshire School," another called "A Provincial Theatre," and another called "Sir Mulberry Hawk or High Life Revealed," another called "Mrs. Nickleby or a Lady's Monologue." It would have been very easy to have thrown over the rather chaotic plan of the _Old Curiosity Shop_. He might have merely written short stories called "The Glorious Apollos," "Mrs. Quilp's Tea-Party," "Mrs. Jarley's Waxwork," "The Little Servant," and "The Death of a Dwarf." _Martin Chuzzlewit_ might have been twenty stories instead of one story. _Dombey and Son_ might have been twenty stories instead of one story. We might have lost all Dickens's novels; we might have lost altogether Dickens the novelist. We might have lost that steady love of a seminal and growing romance which grew on him steadily as the years advanced, and which gave us towards the end some of his greatest triumphs. All his books might have been _Sketches by Boz_. But he did turn away from this, and the turning-point is _Nicholas Nickleby_. Everything has a supreme moment and is crucial; that is where our friends the evolutionists go wrong. I suppose that there is an instant of midsummer as there is an instant of midnight. If in the same way there is a supreme point of spring, _Nicholas Nickleby_ is the supreme point of Dickens's spring. I do not mean that it is the best book that he wrote in his youth. _Pickwick_ is a better book. I do not mean that it contains more striking characters than any of the other books in his youth. The _Old Curiosity Shop_ contains at least two more striking characters. But I mean that this book coincided with his resolution to be a great novelist and his final belief that he could be one. Henceforward his books are novels, very commonly bad novels. Previously they have not really been novels at all. There are many indications of the change I mean. Here is one, for instance, which is more or less final. _Nicholas Nickleby_ is Dickens's first romantic novel because it is his first novel with a proper and dignified romantic hero; which means, of course, a somewhat chivalrous young donkey. The hero of _Pickwick_ is an old man. The hero of _Oliver Twist_ is a child. Even after _Nicholas Nickleby_ this non-romantic custom continued. The _Old Curiosity Shop_ has no hero in particular. The hero of _Barnaby Rudge_ is a lunatic. But Nicholas Nickleby is a proper, formal, and ceremonial hero. He has no psychology; he has not even any particular character; but he is made deliberately a hero--young, poor, brave, unimpeachable, and ultimately triumphant. He is, in short, the hero. Mr. Vincent