At this point I should prefer to bring my review to a close. The authors of whom we have been speaking belong to history. So, too, does Leopoldo Alas, the author of _La Regenta_, an analytical novel which will be read long after his pungent criticisms are forgotten, though as a critic he did excellent work. It is a more delicate matter to judge contemporaries. You will not expect me to compile a list of names as arid and interminable as an auctioneer’s catalogue. How many important novelists are there in France, or England, or Russia? Not more than two or three in each, and we shall be putting it fairly high if we assume that Spain has as many notable novelists as these three countries put together. Passing by a crowd of illustrious obscurities, we meet with Benito Pérez Galdós, and with innumerable examples of his diffuse talent. Copiousness has always been more highly esteemed in Spain than elsewhere, and in this particular Pérez Galdós should satisfy the exacting standard of his countrymen. But to some of us copiousness is no great recommendation. There are forty volumes in the series of _Episodios Nacionales_, and who knows how many more in the series of _Novelas Españolas Contemporáneas_? Frankly there is a distasteful air of commercialism in this huge and punctual production. It would seem as though in Spain, as in England, literature is in danger of becoming a business, and of ceasing to be an art. This is not the way in which masterpieces have been written hitherto; but masterpieces are rare, and there is no recipe for producing them.