ABSTRACT
Brave New World and some of the less pretentious essays are so much better than the ponderous novels because Mr. Huxley has had there, by the nature of the undertaking, to commit himself to a line and take serious thought in advance about where he was coming out. As literary critics it is our business to assess merely Mr. Huxley's possibilities as a man of letters. And it seems evident that Mr. Huxley's talents are not those of a novelist but of a populariser of ideas: this, if we had the reasonably serious large reading-public we have a right to expect after nearly seventy years of compulsory education, would be a function needing several hundred middlemen of Mr. Huxley's calibre, nor would the crop be difficult to raise. But in fact the market for such writers disappeared with the old heavy reviews. There remains the public Mr. Huxley has secured; with that his success depends on keeping up with the intellectual fashions and getting his wares early to market, for it is a public that is always looking for tips.
