Note 2 — INTRODUCTION.
Edward Rehatsek translation
But are even the best novels of these days of grace marked by very much “originality”? Do not prolific novelists repeat themselves? Have they not, for the most part, a limited set of characters, which reappear in each succeeding novel? In short, may it not be truly said of them, as Burton (not he of The Nights, but he of The Melancholy) says of authors in general: “They weave the same web, twist and untwist the same rope, and make new books as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring out of one vessel into another”?