Books: The Pursuit of Quality

THE GOLDEN HORIZON (596 pp.)—Edited by Cyril Connolly—British Book Centre ($5.50).

The life cycle of little magazines compares unfavorably to that of horses, dogs, kangaroos and duck-billed platypuses. When death, as it must to all little mags, came to London's highbrow monthly Horizon in December 1949, the magazine had beaten the actuarial tables and reached the advanced old age of ten years. Since there was always more red ink than red blood in its circulation (peak figure: 10,-ooo), Horizon owed much of its vitality to two men: 1) Angel Peter Watson, the millionaire son of a milkman, who blotted up some $20,000...