Sr. D. Ramón León Máinez,[93] whose honourable enthusiasm for all that relates to Cervantes forbids his admitting that there are spots on his sun, considers the _Galatea_ to be the best of pastorals, and other whole-hearted admirers (such as August and Friedrich von Schlegel)[94] have said as much. This, however, is not the general verdict of those who have read the _Galatea_ from beginning to end, and really such readers are not many. Prescott[95] cautiously observes that it is "a beautiful specimen of an insipid class." Hazlitt, who may be taken as the honest representative of a numerous constituency, confesses that he does not know the book, and offers an ingenious apology for his remissness. Cervantes, he declares, claims the highest honour which can belong to any author--"that of being the inventor of a new style of writing." But, after this ingratiating prelude, he continues:--"I have never read his _Galatea_, nor his _Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda_, though I have often meant to do it, and I hope to do so yet. Perhaps there is a reason lurking at the bottom of this dilatoriness. I am quite sure that the reading of these works could not make me think higher of the author of _Don Quixote_, and it might, for a moment or two, make me think less." And no doubt it might: just as the reading of _Hours of Idleness_, of _Zastrozzi_, and of _Clotilde de Lusignan ou le beau Juif_ might, for a moment or two, make us think less of the authors of _Don Juan_, of _Epipsychidion_, and of _Eugénie Grandet_.