entertaining little record, I am sorry to say, was destroyed. Beardsley was always sensible about friendly and intelligent criticism. When he reached a position enjoyed by no artist of his own age, he was swift to remedy any defect pointed out to him by artists or even by ordinary friends. I never met anyone so receptive on all subjects; he would record what Mr Pennell or Puvis de Chavannes said in praise or blame of a particular drawing with equal candour and good humour. This was only one of his many amiable qualities. When he afterwards became a sort of household word and his fame, or notoriety as his enemies called it, was established, he never changed in this respect. He made friends and remained friends with many for whom his art was totally unintelligible. Social charm triumphed over all differences. He would speak with enthusiasm about writers and artists quite out of sympathy with his own aims and aspirations. He never assumed that those to whom he was introduced either knew or admired his work. His character was brisk and virile to an extraordinary degree. He made enemies, I believe, by refusing to revolve in mutual admiration societies or to support literary and artistic cliques. With the shadow of death always over him and conscious of the brief time before him, he never gave himself up to morbid despair or useless complaints. He determined to enjoy life, and, equipped with all the curiosity and gaiety of boyhood, he caught at life's exquisite moments. There was always a very deep and sincere religious vein in his temperament, only noticeable to very intimate friends. With all his power of grasping the essential and absorbing knowledge, he remained charmingly unsophisticated. He took people as they came, never discriminating, perhaps, sufficiently the issues of life. He was unspoiled by success, unburdened with worldly wisdom. He was generous to a fault, spending his money lavishly on his friends to an extent that became almost embarrassing.

THE TOILETTE OF SALOME
From "Salome"

His love and knowledge of books increased rather than diminished even after he devoted himself entirely to art. In early days he would exchange his drawings for illustrated books and critical texts of the English classics with Mr Frederick Evans, an early and enthusiastic buyer of his work. His tastes were not narrow. Poetry, memoirs, history, short stories, biography, and essays of all kinds appealed to him; but he cared little for novels, except in French. I don't think he ever read Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, though he enjoyed Scott during the last months of his life. He had an early predilection for lives of the Saints. The scrap-book of sketches, containing drawings done prior to 1892, indicates the range and extent of his taste. There are illustrations to "Manon Lescaut," "Tartarin," "Madame Bovary," Balzac ("Le Cousin Pons," the "Contes Drôlatiques"), Racine, Shelley's "Cenci." He retained his love of the drama, and began to write a play in collaboration with Mr Brandon Thomas. While dominated by pre-Raphaelite influences, he read with great avidity "Sidonia the Sorceress," and "The Shaving of Shagpat," a favourite book of Rossetti's; and it was with a view to illustrate Mr Meredith's Arabian Night that he became introduced to Mr John Lane, who divides with Mr Herbert Pollit the honour of possessing the finest Beardsleys still in this country. He read Greek and Latin authors in translations, and often astonished scholars by his acute appreciation of their matter. He approached Dantesque mediævalism through Rossetti and, later on, at the original source. Much of his early work illustrated incidents in the "Divine Comedy." He was a fervent admirer of the "Romance of the Rose" in the original, and several mediæval French books, but he once told me that he found the "Morte d'Arthur" very long-winded.

THE DANCER'S REWARD
From "Salome"

For one so romantic in the expression of his art, I should say his literary and artistic tastes were severely classic, though you would have expected them to be bizarre. He was ambitious of literary success, but any aspirations were wisely discouraged by his admirers. His writings, however brilliant—and they often were brilliant—shewed a dangerous cleverness, which on cultivation might have proved disastrous to the realization of his true genius. "Under the Hill" is a delightful experiment in a rococo style of literature, and it would be difficult to praise sufficiently the rhythm and metrical adroitness of the two poems in the Savoy Magazine. Though I cannot speak of his musical attainments, it may be regarded as fortunate that so remarkable a genius was directed to a more permanent form of executive power.

His knowledge of life, art, and literature seemed the result of instinct rather than study; for no one has ever discovered where he found the time or opportunity for assimilating all he did. Gregarious and sociable by nature, he was amusingly secretive about his methods and times of work. Like other industrious men, he never pretended to be busy or pressed for time. He never denied his door to callers, nor refused to go anywhere on the plea of "work."

He disliked anyone being in the room when he was drawing, and hastily hid all his materials if a stranger entered the room. He would rarely exhibit an unfinished sketch, and carefully destroyed any he was not thoroughly satisfied with himself. He carried this sensitive spirit of selection and self-criticism rather far. Calling on friends who possessed primitives, he would destroy these early relics and leave a more mature and approved specimen of his art, or the édition de luxe of some book he had illustrated. Some of us were so annoyed that we were eventually obliged to lock up all early examples. For though friends thus victimized were endowed with a more valuable acquisition, they had a natural sentiment and affection for the unsophisticated designs of his earlier years.

TAILPIECE
From "Salome"

His life, though many-sided and successful, was outwardly uneventful. In the early summer of 1892 he entered Professor Brown's night school at Westminster, but during the day continued his work at the Guardian Fire Insurance until August, when, by his sister's advice, he resigned his post. In December he acquainted with Mr Pennell, from whose encouragement and advice he reaped the fullest advantage. After commencing the decorations to the "Morte d'Arthur," he ceased to attend Professor Brown's classes. In February 1893 some of his drawings were first published in London in the Pall Mall Budget under the editorship of Mr Lewis Hind, but one of the most striking of his early designs appeared in a little college magazine entitled The Bee. When The Studio was started by Mr Charles Holme under the able direction of the late Gleeson-White, Beardsley designed the first cover and Mr Pennell contributed the well-known appreciation of the new artist.

Towards the end of