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The charm of Cervantes's style, at its best, lies in its spontaneity, strength, variety, swiftness, and noble simplicity: it is the unrestrained expression of his most original and seductive personality. In the Galatea, on the other hand, Cervantes is too often an echo, a timid copyist, reproducing the accepted clichés with an exasperating scrupulousness. Galatea is discreta, Silvia is discreta, Teolinda is discreta: Lisandro is discreto, Artidoro is discreto, Damon is discreto. The noun and its regulation epithet are never sundered from each other. And verde—the eternal adjective verde—haunts the distracted reader like an obsession: the verdes árboles, the verde suelo, the verde yerba, the verde prado, the verde carga, the verde llano, the verde parra, the verde laurel, the verdes ramos,—and even verdes ojos.ssss1 A hillock is espeso: a wood is espeso. One may choose between verdadero y honesto amor and perfeto y verdadero amor. Beauty is extremada: grace or wit is extremada: a good voice is extremada. And infinito sparkles on almost every second page. It is all, of course, extremely correct and in accord with a hundred thousand precedents. But, since the charm palls after incessant repetition, it would not be surprising if some should think that such undeviating fidelity to a model is not an unmixed good, that tame academic virtues may be bought too dear, and that a single chapter of that sadly incorrect book, Don Quixote, is worth a whole wilderness of impeccable pastorals.