THE LITTLE REVIEW A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS MAKING NO COMPROMISE WITH THE PUBLIC TASTE Margaret C. Anderson Publisher JULY, 1917 Imaginary Letters, III. Wyndham Lewis Poems: T. S. Eliot Le Directeur Mélange adultère de tout Lune de Miel The Hippopotamus Aux Etuves de Wiesbaden Ezra Pound Three Nightpieces John Rodker Improvisations Louis Gilmore Poet’s Heart Maxwell Bodenheim The Reader Critic Published Monthly 15 Cents a copy MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor EZRA POUND, Foreign Editor 24 West Sixteenth Street NEW YORK CITY $1.50 a Year Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, New York, N. Y. The Little Review VOL. IV. JULY 1917 NO. 3 Copyright, 1917, by Margaret C. Anderson. Imaginary Letters (Six Letters of William Bland Burn to his Wife) Wyndham Lewis The Code of a Herdsman (_A set of rules sent by Benjamin Richard Wing to his young friend Philip Seddon enclosed with a letter. Under the above title now edited._) (1) Never maltreat your own intelligence with parables. It is a method of herd-hypnotism. Do not send yourself to sleep with the rhythm of the passes that you make.=As an example of herd-hypnotism, German literature is so virulently allegorized that the German really never knows whether he is a Kangaroo, a Scythian, or his own sweet self.=You, however, are a Herdsman. That is surely Parable enough! (2) Do not admit _cleverness_, in any form, into your life. Observe the accomplishment of some people’s signatures! It is the herd-touch. (3) Exploit Stupidity.=Introduce a flatness, where it is required into your commerce. Dull your eye as you fix it on a dull face.=Why do you think George Borrow used such idiotic clichés as “The beams of the descending luminary—?” He was a great writer and knew what he was doing.=Mock the herd perpetually with the grimance of its own garrulity or deadness. If it gets out of hand and stampedes towards you, leap on to the sea of mangy backs until the sea is still. That is: cast your mask aside, and spring above them. They cannot see or touch anything _above_ them: they have never realized that their backs—or rather their _tops_—exist! They will think that you have vanished into Heaven.