this criticism will apply.

Dickens' vast popularity resulted only in part from the artistic merit
of his works. The breadth of his canvas, his intense realization of
fictitious scenes, and his extraordinary descriptive power are
qualities enough to win for him his eminent position in fiction. But
the affection felt for Dickens as a man, which has made him occupy so
much the hearts as well as the minds of the reading public, was
attracted by qualities apart from those which excited admiration for
the author. Dickens was essentially a national writer in the variety of
the characters with whom he brought his readers into communion. He was
essentially popular, from the fact that he dealt with the masses and
not with any particular class. He was essentially English, in that he
was the apostle of home. No novelist who has treated domestic life has
so thoroughly caught its spirit, and has so sympathetically traced its
joys and sorrows, its trials and recompenses. Family life has been for
more than two centuries gradually supplanting the life of the camp and
the court. It is in the domestic circle that men now find the interest
which was formerly sought in adventure or publicity. Not only in the
Christmas stories, especially devoted to the celebration of home, but
through all his great fictions Dickens made domestic life his chief
study. And he is, above all others, the favorite household novelist.
While he lived, each new work of his was welcomed alike by parent and
child, and when he died, there were few homes where books ever came
that the loss of a friend was not felt.

Scott, Dickens, almost all the great English novelists described heroes
and heroines. They made their chief character an embodiment of virtue
or strength, and strove to win for him the admiration of the reader.
Even Tom Jones was a hero to Fielding, and Roderick Random to Smollett.