ABSTRACT
However good Mr. Huxley's work may be one rarely reads it without a small pang of disappointment. To surpass themselves is for many novelists a comparatively easy task; but here is one who has contrived to set his own standard so high that, captivate and divert us as he may, he still seems to fall short of a proposed excellence. The shadow of a commanding talent and a distinguished mind is thrown across each page, but though Mr. Huxley has many altitudes that are visible enough we can never quite descry that single peak which puts so much, even Mr. Huxley's own work, into the shade. Perhaps it is to his dis advantage that he makes his meaning so clear: he is the victim of his own lucidity. He has such a gift for expression that for the imagination to look beyond the written word in search of private overtones seems an impertinence. And the imagination, always eager to contribute its little quota, however futile and irrelevant, resents being warned off in this way, and sulks because it may not co-operate. It complains that Mr. Huxley makes Aunt Sallies of his characters, setting them up simply to bowl them over with a few good shots, and that these figures of un reason are sometimes too near and too flimsy to justify their impressive bombardment by Mr. Huxley's heavy guns. Grace Peddley, for instance, in the first and most important story: is she made substantial enough to carry our interest through her various metamorphoses, her ungraceful,
almost disgraceful, antics as one man's wife and two men's mistress? Are we prepared to shed tears, as Mr. Huxley seems to require us to, over such a figure of fun? But the mind delights in the humours of Grace's progress, rejoices in the deft exposure of Peddley, Rodney and Kingham, never withholds its laughter when for the hundredth time Mr. Huxley demonstrates that futility is futile. It is even impatient of the softer note that has lately crept into Mr. Huxley's voice and makes a faint deprecating undertone to the brilliant derisive music with which he plays his characters out of his pages.
