w Book, appreciation of his work has been
confined rather to the few. He enjoyed, however, the friendship and
intimacy of great numbers of people, shewing that his amiable qualities,
no less than his art, received due recognition. His conversation was
vehement and witty rather than humorous. He had a remarkable talent for
mimicking, very rarely exercised. He loved argument, and supported
theories for the sake of argument in the most convincing manner, leaving
strangers with a totally wrong impression about himself, a deception to
which he was much addicted. He possessed what is called an artificial
manner, cultivated to an extent that might be mistaken for affectation.
He never could sit still for very long, and he made use of gesture for
emphasis. His peculiar gait has been very happily rendered in a portrait
of him by Mr Walter Sickert; he also sat to M. Blanche, the well-known
French portrait painter; the portrait by himself is tinged with
caricature.

* * * * *

To estimate the art of Aubrey Beardsley is not difficult. That his
drawings must excite discussion at all times is only a proof of their
lasting worth. They can never be dismissed with unkindly comment, nor
shelved into the limbo of art criticism which waits for many blameless
and depressing productions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Among artists and men of letters no less than with that great inartistic
body, "the art-loving public," Aubrey Beardsley's name will always call
forth wonder, admiration, speculation, and contempt. It should be
conceded, however, that his work cannot appeal to everyone; and that
many who have the highest perception of the beautiful see only the
repulsive and unwholesome in the troubled, exotic expression of his
genius. Fortunately, no reputation in art or letters rests on the
verdict of majorities--it is the opinion of the few which finally
triumphs. Artists and critics have already dwelt on the beauty of Aubrey
Beardsley's line, which in his early work too often resolved itself into
mere caligraphy; but the mature and perfect illustrations to "Salome"
and "The Rape of the Lock" evince a mastery unsurpassed by any artist in
any age or country. No one ever carried a simple line to its inevitable
end with such sureness and firmness of purpose. And this is one of
the lessons which even an accomplished draughtsman may learn from
his drawings, in any age when scraggy execution masquerades