We've all gone terribly quiet, perhaps understandably. May I break the silence with what is I hope an innocuous enquiry about the allusion in the following line from I think Canto 74 (quoted from memory): Beauty is difficult, Yeats, sd Mr Beardsley Terrell is not awfully helpful, merely telling me (again from memory) that Beardsley was a 19th century illustrator. What were Yeats and Beardsley talking about, and how did Pound come to know of their conversation? The reason I ask is that the lines have become something of a touchstone for the apologists of difficulty in modern poetry; whereas I think they may have misunderstood what Beardsley was saying, which was that precisely *because* "beauty is difficult" he didn't bother trying. He wasn't defending his art on the ground that its beauty could only be appreciated by the initiated few. I'm sure I've read somewhere about the source of these lines but at the moment I can't see where: it's not in Terrell, Cookson, Kenner, or Makin so far as I can tell. Richard Edwards _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.