In a village of Europe, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those book reviewers that keep a soft-tongue in the lance-rack for his friends’ books, an old buckler with partisan coat-of-arms as a mark of his feudal loyalty to his academic ancestors, a lean hack to accompany him in the dark alleys of scholarly fears, and a greyhound for coursing his civil-servant oriented career’s ambitions.