Chapter Grass to Great Expectations of G by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Graysteel, the sword of Kol, fatal to its owner. It passed into several hands, and always brought ill-luck with it.—Icelandic Edda.

Great Captain (The), Gonsalvo de Cordova, el Gran Capitan (1453–1515).

Manuel I. [Comnenus] emperor of Trebizond, is so called also (1120, 1143–1180).

Great Cham of Literature, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784).

Great Commoner (The), William Pitt (1759–1806).

Great Dauphin (The), Louis the son of Louis XIV. (1661–1711).

(The “Little Dauphin” was the duke of Bourgogne, son of the Great or Grand Dauphin. Both died before Louis XIV.)

Great Duke (The), the duke of Wellington (1769–1852).

Bury the Great Duke
With an empire’s lamentation;
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a great nation.
   —Tennyson.

Great Expectations, the autobiography of “Pip,” a novel in three series, by Dickens (1860). Pip was the nephew of Joe Gargery, a village blacksmith, by whom he was brought up. When only seven years old he was encountered in the village churchyard by Magwitch, a runaway convict, who frightened the child into bringing him a file (to file off one of his fetters) and some food to eat. These Pip purloined from home, and carried to the convict very early next morning. Miss Havisham, the daughter of a very rich brewer, living in Satis House, being in want of a little boy to play with Estella, a child she had adopted, was persuaded to take Pip for the purpose. The boy lived at home, but went backwards and forwards to play with Estella. After a time, Miss Havisham bound Pip apprentice to his uncle Gargery; but when about half his time had expired, Mr. Jaggers, an Old Bailey lawyer, informed him that a person (whose name he was forbidden to reveal) had provided money for his education, and that he was to be brought up as a gentleman of “great expectations.” His indentures were accordingly cancelled, and he was sent as a private pupil to Mr. Matthew Pocket (of Harrow and Cambridge). Pip supposed that his “unknowed patron” was Miss Havisham, but it was Magwitch the convict, who had gone to New South Wales, where he had acquired great wealth as a sheep-farmer. When Pip was twenty-three years old, Magwitch clandestinely returned to England to see Pip, and give him a large fortune; but he was arrested as a returned convict, condemned to death, and all his property confiscated. He died at Newgate, and Pip was left penniless. He now entered the service of Cleriker and Co. as a clerk, and in eleven years he was taken into the firm as a junior partner. His love affair was a similar “great expectation.” He fell in love with Estella, the adopted daughter of the rich Miss Havisham, but in reality the child of Magwitch. But Estella married Bentley Drummle, who ill-treated her, spent all her money, and left her a penniless widow. She and Pip met again after this, apparently on most friendly terms, but the novel breaks off here, and leaves the sequel to the reader’s imagination. (See Joe Gargery.)