the head of the Baptist, is
perfectly drawn, the left is feeble, when examined closely. For sheer
drawing nothing can equal the nude figure in the colophon to "Salome."
The outstretched, quivering hands of _Ali Baba_ are intentionally
rendered larger than proportion allows, to render dramatic expression,
not reality. For the purpose of effect he adapted proportions, realizing
that perfect congruity and reality are irreconcilable. None of the
figures in the dramatic "_Battle of Beaux and Belles_" could sit on
the fallen chair in the foreground.

There is no need to disturb ourselves with hopes and fears for the
estimation with which posterity will cherish his memory; art history
cannot afford to overlook him; it could hardly resist the pretext of
moralising, expatiating and explaining away so considerable a factor
in the book illustration of the nineties. As a mere comment on the
admirations of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century,
Beardsley is invaluable; he sums up all the delightful manias, all that
is best in modern appreciation--Greek vases, Italian primitives, the
"Hypnerotomachia," Chinese porcelain, Japanese Kakemonos, Renaissance
friezes, old French and English furniture, rare enamels, mediaeval
illumination, the _debonnaire_ masters of the eighteenth century, the
English pre-Raphaelites. There are differences of kind in aesthetic
beauty, and for Beardsley it was the marriage of arabesque to figures
and objects comely or fantastic, or in themselves ugly. For hitherto
the true arabesque abhorred the graven image made of artists' hands.
To future draughtsmen he will have something of the value of an old
master, studied for that fastidious technique which critics believed to
be a trick; and collectors of his work may live to be rallied for their
taste; but the wheat and the chaff contrive to exist together through
the centuries.

A passing reference should be made to the Beardsley of popular
delusion. A student of Callot and Hogarth, he took suggestions from
the age in which he lived and from the literature of English and French
contemporaries, but with no implicit acceptance of the tenets of any
groups or schools which flutter the dove-cots of Fleet Street. He stood
apart, independent of the shibboleths of art and literature, with the
grim and sometimes mocking attention of a spectator. He revealed rather
than created a feminine type, offering no solution for the problems of
Providence.

[Illustrat