d to say
that here is one of those enchanting girls whom the author in question
has endeared to generations of readers; or one of those tedious prudes
for whom his name is a synonyme. If, after many psychological romances,
the author has stepped down to the level of actual life, he is praised
or blamed for the vital or servile naturalism of his work; or if the
contrary is the case, he has to read of himself as doing something
habitual and entirely characteristic of him. In vain, so far as that
acute young critic is concerned, has he broken new ground. But if he has
with much compunction consciously turned his furrows in a field tilled
before, he stands a fair chance of being hailed at the outset of a new
career.

He cannot openly complain, and if he could the critic cannot help being
what he is. If the critic were older and more versed in the veteran
author, he might not like him so well, and he could not, at any rate,
bring the fresh interest to his work which the young reviewer brings.
What Eugenio would really wish would be to have each successive book of
his given for review to some lifelong admirer, some dear and faithful
friend, all the better for not being an acquaintance, who had liked him
from the beginning and was intimately versed in all his work. Such a
critic would know that Eugenio was always breaking new ground, and that
he was never more true to this inherent tendency than when he seemed to
be ploughing the same old furrows in the same old fields. Such a critic
would be alert to detect those fine differences of situation which
distinguish a later from an earlier predicament. He would note with
unfailing perspicacity the shades of variance which constitute Florindo
an essentially novel character when presented under the name of Lindoro,
or Floribella a fresh delight when she reappears as Doralinda. Even when
he could not deny that these persons were in themselves one and the
same, he would be able to make the reader observe that the new light
thrown upon them by the author's ever-renascent art revealed in familiar
creations traits of mind and charms of spirit unimagined before. He
would insist that, if not new, they were newer, because being more fully
ascertained they were truer. He would boldly recur to the personages in
Eugenio's former books whom they reminded one of, and, studying them in
contrast, would convince the reader that the increasing purpose of the
author in the treatment of the well-known