on the paper, the
blind slightly lowered.

The sources of Beardsley's inspiration have led critics into grievous
errors. He was accused of imitating artists, some of whose work he had
never seen, and of whose names he was ignorant at the time the alleged
plagiarism was perpetrated--Felicien Rops may be mentioned as an
instance. Beardsley contrived a style long before he came across any
modern French illustration. He was innocent of either Salon, the
Rosicrucians, and the Royal Academy alike; but his own influence on the
Continent is said to be considerable. That he borrowed freely and from
every imaginable master, old and new, is, of course, obvious. Eclectic
is certainly applicable to him. But what he took he endowed with a
fantastic and fascinating originality; to some image or accessory,
familiar to anyone who has studied the old masters, he added the touch
of modernity which brings them nearer to us, and reached refinements
never thought of by the old masters. Imagination is the great pirate
of art, and with Beardsley becomes a pretext for invention.

Prior to 1891 his drawings are interesting only for their precocity;
they may be regarded, as one of his friends has said, more as a presage
than a precedent. You marvel, on realizing the short interval which
elapsed between their production and the masterpieces of his maturity.
His first enthusiasm was for the work of the Italian primitives, as Mr
Charles Whibley says, distinguished "for its free and flowing line."
Even at a later time, when he devoted himself to eighteenth century
models and ideals, his love of Andrea Mantegna never deserted him. He
always kept reproductions from Mantegna at his side, and declared that
he never ceased to learn secrets from them. In the "_Litany of Mary
Magdalen_" and the two versions of "_Joan of Arc_" this influence
is very marked. A Botticelli phase followed, and though afterwards
discarded, was reverted to at a later period. The British Museum and the
National Gallery were at first his only schools of art. As a matter of
course, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, but chiefly through photographs and
prints, succeeded in their turn; the influence of Burne-Jones lasting
longer than any other.

Fairly drugged with too much observation of old and modern masters, he
entered Professor Brown's art school, where he successfully got rid
of much that was superfluous. The three months' training had the most
salutary effect. He now took the advice a