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308 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
examination halls at Nanking of a great Confucian scholar, such a
scholar that he wrote a letter, and there was only one man in all
China who could understand it. That is not very democratic, I'm
afraid. That is aristocratic, like you, Mr. Pound.
POUND: But it is democratic as long as it provides that any one
may have the opportunity to learn enough to read that letter.
EDITH HAMILTON: You always puncture my balloons, Mr. Pound.
POUND: You haven't been out since my latest theory that Dante
was a real democrat and Shakespeare a bloody snob.
EDITH HAMILTON: I'm no Shakespearian, Mr. Pound, but I must
quarrel with you there. I don't believe Shakespeare ever had that
fixed an idea.
POUND: In the Inferno, Dante doesn't pay any attention to the
class from which the characters sprang.
EDITH HAMILTON: But he didn't have any common men in his
Inferno. They were all important people. He didn't portray the
torturing of the common man.
POUND: Shakespeare was propounding this idea of a limited
monarchy in his twelve histories.
EDITH HAMILTON: I don't think so. I think he was too careless
a man to do anything like that. And I think that Mr. Dante was
more aristocratic than Mr. Shakespeare. (She quotes Hamlet's
Soliloquy). The soliloquy was Mr. Shakespeare coming through—
the only time I know where he really came through. By the way, is
that Rousse translation of Homer a good one?
POUND: It doesn't have the movement or the sound or any
approximation of one. Edwards in the Hudson has done the best
translation, but it hasn't got the right quantities in it.
EDITH HAMILTON: Is anyone doing a good translation?
POUND: There are probably fifty or sixty people doing bad
translations, and I know of five or six incompetent young men
doing better translations that will not be good enough, but they
are trying to make a good translation.
EDITH HAMILTON: Mr. Pound is such a naughty fellow (to Mrs.
Pound). What do you do with him when he's like that? Does scolding
do him any good?
DOROTHY POUND (laughs): Oh help, I gave that up long ago.
(Pound grins, pleased at having amused the ladies.)"