ABSTRACT
Mr. Huxley's. He has had experience of every good thing that civilised society has to offer, and he has not a good word to say for it. The only things that excite his admiration are the two most abstract arts, music and architecture. (The odd thing is that his passion for Wren does not induce him to take more pains with the architecture of his book, which is unnecessarily formless.) Otherwise he can only interest himself in things that strike him as repulsive enough to be amusing, often quite harmless things, but for some reason stimulants of his hatred. He is on the way to become the complete misanthrope: he revels in his own disgust. He has tried all the pleasures, enjoys none of them, and cannot bear that others should. His distaste for life resembles at moments that of a Falsetto in face of a Casanova. This new intensity of emotion gives a new savour to the wit which is, after all, what we read Mr. Huxley for. But if, as I think, Antic Hay is more entertaining than any novel that has appeared this year in England, I also feel somehow that Mr. Huxley is capable of writing a book a lot more entertaining than Antic Hay.
