There was always a very deep and sincere
religious vein in his temperament, only noticeable to very intimate
friends. With all his power of grasping the essential and absorbing
knowledge, he remained charmingly unsophisticated. He took people as
they came, never discriminating, perhaps, sufficiently the issues of
life. He was unspoiled by success, unburdened with worldly wisdom.
He was generous to a fault, spending his money lavishly on his friends
to an extent that became almost embarrassing.

[Illustration: THE TOILETTE OF SALOME
_From "Salome"_]

His love and knowledge of books increased rather than diminished even
after he devoted himself entirely to art. In early days he would
exchange his drawings for illustrated books and critical texts of the
English classics with Mr Frederick Evans, an early and enthusiastic
buyer of his work. His tastes were not narrow. Poetry, memoirs, history,
short stories, biography, and essays of all kinds appealed to him; but
he cared little for novels, except in French. I don't think he ever
read Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, though he enjoyed Scott
during the last months of his life. He had an early predilection for
lives of the Saints. The scrap-book of sketches, containing drawings
done prior to 1892, indicates the range and extent of his taste. There
are illustrations to "Manon Lescaut," "Tartarin," "Madame Bovary,"
Balzac ("Le Cousin Pons," the "Contes Drolatiques"), Racine, Shelley's
"Cenci." He retained his love of the drama, and began to write a play in
collaboration with Mr Brandon Thomas. While dominated by pre-Raphaelite
influences, he read with great avidity "Sidonia the Sorceress," and "The
Shaving of Shagpat," a favourite book of Rossetti's; and it was with a
view to illustrate Mr Meredith's Arabian Night that he became introduced
to Mr John Lane, who divides with Mr Herbert Pollit the honour of
possessing the finest Beardsleys still in this country. He read Greek
and Latin authors in translations, and often astonished scholars by his
acute appreciation of their matter. He approached Dantesque mediaevalism
through Rossetti and, later on, at the original source. Much of his
early work illustrated incidents in the "Divine Comedy." He was a
fervent admirer of the "Romance of the Rose" in the original, and
several mediaeval French books, but he once told me that he found the
"Morte d'Arthur" very long-winded.

[Illustration: THE DANCER'S REWARD
_From "Salome"_]