THE TOO CLEVER.—Neglect means nothing very much; success is a matter of time for everything that is really classic. On the other hand, deliberately to incur neglect by writing for the few involves the further risk of more and more deserving it. Whoever makes a boast of writing for a coterie sooner or later finds himself writing for a coterie of a coterie, and at last for himself alone. It cannot be otherwise. As the progress of the classic is from the one to the many, the progress of the romantic is from the many to the one; and the more sincerely the latter is a romantic, the sooner he arrives at his journey’s end. The involution of aim thus brought about is obvious already in the succession of works of the chief writers of the _Little Review_. They grow cleverer and cleverer, and, at the same time, more and more unintelligible. I am staggered by the cleverness of such a writer as Mr. Wyndham Lewis, and a little more so at the cleverness of Mr. James Joyce. But in the case of both of them I find myself growing more and more mystified, bewildered, and repelled. Is it, I ask, that they do not write for readers like me? Then their circle must be contracting, for I am one of many who used to read them with pleasure. And who are they gaining while losing us? Are their new readers more intensive if fewer, and better worth while for their quality than we were for our numbers? But I decline to allow the favourable answers. The fact is that the writers of the _Little Review_ are getting too clever even for coterie, and will soon be read only by each other, or themselves. A characteristic example is to be found in the opening chapter of Mr. James Joyce’s new novel, _Ulysses_. This is how it begins:— Stately, plump Buck Milligan came from the stairway, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing-gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned....