ABSTRACT
The English house-party is conducted upon a broadly tolerant prin ciple. Anyone with the slightest modicum of individuality-even if it be merely enough to make him a recognizably distinct variety of the general class of bores-is considered eligible; and while one man is invited because he has won a great battle another is likely to find him self asked merely because he happens to be mad upon some unhack neyed subject, like trousers for women or the cross-breeding of white rats. The result is not only a delightful social institution which offers the opportunity to study more different varieties of the human animal than can be found in any other similarly restricted area, but also a perfect framework for the satirical novel. In Those Barren Leaves, as in a previous work, Mr. Huxley takes advantage of it and is able, without the slightest apparent lack of verisimilitude, to bring together in the Italian villa of an English lady a marvelous menagerie which includes among others, a lady novelist, an aging parasite, a gilded youth in-
terested in love and the other arts, and the impecunious editor (lately down from Oxford) of the Rabbit Fanciers' Gazette as well as a variety of minor personages who are all sufficiently distinguished by some virtue or defect to be regarded by their eclectic hostess as 'interesting.' Of each he draws an unforgettable satiric portrait, and in their company he continues his search, long ago begun, for that which, lacking a better word, we must still call his soul.
