f his
style, turned his attention to the eighteenth century, in the literature
of which he was always deeply interested. Eisen, Moreau, Watteau,
Cochin, Pietro Longhi, now became his masters. The alien romantic art
of Wagner often supplied the theme and subject. The level of excellence
sustained throughout the Savoy Magazine is extraordinary, in view of the
terrible state of his health. His unexampled precision of line hardly
ever falters; and while his composition gains in simplicity, his
capacity for detail has not flagged. It is, perhaps, an accident that
in his most pathetic drawing, "_The Death of Pierrot_," his hand seems
momentarily to have lost its cunning. The same year he gave us "The Rape
of the Lock," regarded by some artists as the testament of his genius;
and an even more astonishing set of drawings to the "Lysistrata" of
Aristophanes. These are grander than the "Rape of the Lock," and larger
in treatment than anything he ever attempted. Privately issued,
Beardsley was able to give full rein to a Rabelaisian fantasy, which he
sometimes cultivated with too great persistence. Irritated by what he
considered as over-niceness in some of his critics, he seemed determined
to frighten his public. There is nothing unwholesome or suggestive about
the "Lysistrata" designs: they are as as frank, free, and outspoken as
the text. For the countrymen of Chaucer to simulate indignation about
them can only be explained "because things seen are greater than things
heard." Yet, when an artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the
old canons regular of English art begin to thunder, the critics forget
their French accent; the old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts
himself; we fly for the fig-leaves. A real artist, Beardsley has not
burdened himself with chronology or archaeology. Conceived somewhat in
the spirit of the eighteenth century, the period of graceful indecency,
there is here, however, an Olympian air, a statuesque beauty, only
comparable to the antique vases. The illusion is enhanced by the absence
of all background, and this gives an added touch of severity to the
compositions.

Throughout 1896 the general tendency his style remains uniform, though
without sameness. He adapted his technique to the requirements of his
subject. Mindful of the essential, rejecting the needless, he always
realized his genius and its limitations. From the infinite variety
of the Savoy Magazine it is difficult to choose any