of particular
importance: for his elaborate manner, the first plate to "_Under the
Hill_"; and in a simpler style, the fascinating illustration to his own
poem, "_The Barber_"; "_Ave Atque Vale_" and "_The Death of Pierrot_"
have, besides, a human interest over and above any artistic quality
they possess. For the "Volpone" drawings Beardsley again developed
his style, and seeking for new effects, reverted to pure pencil work.
The ornate, delicate initial letters, all he lived to finish, must be
seen in the originals before their sumptuous qualities, their solemn
melancholy dignity, their dexterous handling, can be appreciated. The
use of a camel's-hair brush for the illustrations to "_Mademoiselle de
Maupin_," one of his last works, should be noted, as he so rarely used
one. Beardsley's invention never failed him, so that it is almost
impossible to take a single drawing, or set of drawings, as typical of
his art. Each design is rather a type of his own intellectual mood.

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BEAUX AND BELLES
_From "The Rape of the Lock"_]

If the history of grotesque remains to be written, it is already
illustrated by his art. A subject little understood, it belongs to the
dim ways of criticism. There is no canon or school, and the artist is
allowed to be wilful, untrammelled by rule or precedent. True grotesque
is not the art either of primitives or decadents, but that of skilled
and accomplished workmen who have reached the zenith of a peculiar
convention, however confined and limited that convention may be.
Byzantine art, one of our links with the East, should some day furnish
us with a key to a mystery which is now obscured by symbolists and
students of serpent worship. The Greeks, with their supreme sanity and
unrivalled plastic sense, afford us no real examples, though their
archaic art is often pressed into the category. Beardsley, who received
recognition for this side of his genius, emphasized the grotesque to
an extent that precluded any popularity among people who care only for
the trivial and "pretty." In him it was allied to a mordant humour, a
certain fescennine abstraction which sometimes offends: this, however,
does not excuse the use of the word "eccentric," more misapplied than
any word in the English language, except perhaps "grotesque" and
"picturesque." All great art is eccentric to the conservative multitude.
The decoration on the Parthenon was so eccentric that Pheidias was put
in pr