In so far as it is possible, I should like _The Little Review_ to aid and abet _The Egoist_ in its work. I do not think it can be too often pointed out that during the last four years _The Egoist_ has published serially, in the face of no inconsiderable difficulties, the only translation of Remy de Gourmont’s _Chevaux de Diomedes_; the best translation of Le Comte de Gabalis, Mr. Joyce’s masterpiece _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, and is now publishing Mr. Lewis’s novel _Tarr_. Even if they had published nothing else there would be no other current periodical which could challenge this record, but _The Egoist_ has not stopped there; they have in a most spirited manner carried out the publication in book form of the _Portrait of the Artist_, and are in the act of publishing Mr. Eliot’s poems, under the title _Mr. Prufrock and Observations_. I see no reason for concealing my belief that the two novels, by Joyce and Lewis, and Mr. Eliot’s poems are not only the most important contributions to English literature of the past three years, but that they are practically the only works of the time in which the creative element is present, which in any way show invention, or a progress beyond precedent work. The mass of our contemporaries, to say nothing of our debilitated elders, have gone on repeating themselves and each other. II. Secondly, there are certain prevalent ideas to which I can not subscribe. I can not believe that the mere height of the Rocky Mountains will produce lofty poetry; we have had little from Chimborazo, the Alps or the Andes. I can not believe that the mere geographical expanse of America will produce of itself excellent writing. The desert of Sahara is almost equally vast. Neither can I look forward with longing to a time when each village shall rejoice in a bad local poetaster making bad verse in the humdrum habitual way that the local architect puts up bad buildings. The arts are not the mediocre habit of mankind. There is no common denominator between the little that is good and the waste that is dull, mediocre. It may be pleasing to know that a cook is president of the local poetry society in Perigord,—there is no reason why a cook should not write as well as a plowman,—but the combination of several activities is really irrelevant. The fact remains that no good poetry has come out of Perigord since the Albigensian crusade, anno domini twelve hundred and nine. There being a local poetry society has not helped to prevent this. The shell-fish grows its own shell, the genius creates its own milieu. You, the public, can kill genius by actual physical starvation, you may perhaps thwart or distort it, but you can in no way create it.