The essays in Creatures of Habit & Creatures of Change, gathered together for the first time from long unavailable periodicals, reflect the full dizzying range of Lewis's interests in art, literature and society. Subjects include Marinetti and Futurism, Picasso, Matisse and Francis Bacon; Matthew Arnold, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot; the sense of humor, the function of the arts in society and the length of women's hemlines. Throughout, Lewis's principal critical target is a monolithic, mechanistic, standardized modern society, indifferent to art and the imagination. His prophetic vision of a dehumanized culture in which ''creatures of change'' have been superseded by ''creatures of habit'' will perhaps ring even truer for our time than for his own.