noble experiment; and its suppression will sadden the virtuous at the same time that it gratifies the base. America, we my be sure, is not going to “get culture” by stamping upon every germ of new life. America’s present degree of cultural toleration may ensure a herb-garden, but not a flower will grow upon the soil of Comstock. Among the scores of interesting experiments in composition and style exhibited in _Ulysses_, not the least novel is Mr. Joyce’s attempt to develop a theory of harmonics in language. By compounding nouns with adjectives and adjectives with adverbs, Mr. Joyce tries to convey to the reader a complex of qualities or ideas simultaneously instead of successively. “Eglintoneyes looked up skybrightly.” In such a sentence agglutination has been carried beyond the ordinary level of particles into the plane of words, and the effect is to present a multitude of images as if they were one. Thus “a new and complex knowledge of self” finds its “appropriate medium of expression in terms of art.” I am not so sure that Mr. Joyce has not carried the experiment too far, but this, again, is a virtue rather than a defect in a pioneer. Moreover, the world needs a few studio-magazines like the _Little Review_, and a few studio writers like Mr. James Joyce. What does it matter if, in his enthusiasm, Mr. Joyce travels beyond the limits of good taste, beyond, that is, the already cultivated, if only a single new literary convention is thereby brought into common use? THE BEST IS YET TO BE.—“One dreams of a prose,” says _The Times Literary Supplement_, “that has never yet been written in English, though the language is made for it and there are minds not incapable of it, a prose dealing with the greatest things quietly and justly as men deal with them in their secret meditations ... the English Plato is still to be.” Alas, however, that _The Times_ should be just a little misled, for the “quiet” of meditation is not the real genius of the English language, and the emphasis in the phrase, “English Plato,” should be on the word English. Greek Plato translated into English would not give us what we are seeking. What we need is Plato’s mind. It is characteristic, however, this demand for quiet, or, rather, quietism, in _The Times Literary Supplement_, since, on the whole, the _Supplement_ is about the deadest mouse in the world of journalism. Above all, it is suggested, writers must keep their voices low, speak in whispers, even, perhaps, a little under their breath as if in meditation, in case—well, in case of what? Is there not a _hush_ in the _Literary Supplement_ which is not the hush of reverence for literature, but of fear and prudence?