ABSTRACT
I doubt if he is a story-writer at all. He does not care to concentrate, to dig. All the time his fancy, which is monstrously alive, meanders into attractive side-paths, in pursuit of the 'amusing'. His sensitiveness to the atmosphere of a period or milieu would make him an admirable critic. But Mr. Huxley takes nothing seriously: least of all his own talents. In Mr. Douglas and Mr. Pearsall Smith this attitude is the not unbecoming cynicism of men who were young in the Nineties. In Mr. Huxley it is a sort of precocity, and in one who has published three or four books, precocity is no longer decent. At the risk of feeling, as well as of appear ing, ridiculous, I must insist to him upon the importance of being earnest.
