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_.[79] 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.