“SHAKESPEARE” SIMPLIFIED 151 THE “LONDON MERCURY” AND ENGLISH 152 MR. G. K. CHESTERTON ON ROME AND GERMANY 155 THE ORIGINS OF MARX 161 MARX AS POLITICIAN 163 JOHN MITCHEL AS THE SAME 166 NORSE IN ENGLISH 167 THE COMEDY OF IT 168 THE EPIC SERBS 171 ERNEST DOWSON 173 A SENTIMENTAL EXCURSION 175 THE NEWEST TESTAMENT 178 NOTHING FOREIGN 182 PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 184 PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE MYSTERIES 185 GENTLY WITH PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 188 A CAMBRIDGE “COCOON” 190 AN OXFORD MISCELLANY 195 THE IMPOTENCE OF SATIRE 196 THE “DIAL” OF AMERICA 199 AMERICA REGRESSING 206 THE BEST IS YET TO BE 209 INDEX 215 Readers and Writers FONTENELLE.—There is a reason that Fontenelle has never before been translated into English. It is not that Mr. Ezra Pound, who has now translated a dozen of Fontenelle’s dialogues, was the first to think of it. Many readers of the original have tried their hand at the translation only to discover that somehow or other Fontenelle would not “go” in English as he goes in French. The reason is not very far to seek. Fontenelle wrote a French peculiarly French, a good but an untranslatable French. He must, therefore, be left and read in the original if he is to be appreciated at his intrinsic value. Mr. Pound has made a rash attempt at the impossible in these dialogues, and he has achieved the unreadable through no further fault of his own. The result was foregone. The dialogues themselves in their English form are a little more dull than are the _Conversations_ of Landor, which is to say that they are very dull indeed. Nothing at the first glance could be more attractive than dialogues between the great dead of the world. To every tyro the notion comes inevitably sooner or later, as if it were the idea for which the world were waiting. Nevertheless, on attempting it, the task is found to be beyond most human powers. Nobody has yet written a masterpiece in it. Fontenelle was not in any case the man to succeed in it from an English point of view. We English take the great dead seriously. We expect them to converse paradisaically in paradise, and to be as much above their own living level as their living level was above that of ordinary men. Here, however, is a pretty task for a writer of dead dialogues, for he has not only to imitate the style, but to glorify both the matter and style of the greatest men of past ages.