A few months afterwards, he commenced the "Morte d'Arthur." Suggested and intended to rival the volumes of the Kelmscott Press, it is his most popular and least satisfactory performance. Still the borders have far more variety and invention than those of Morris; the intricate splendours of mediæval manuscripts are intelligently imitated or adapted. The initial- and tail-pieces are delightful in themselves, and among the most exquisite of his grotesques and embellishments. But the popularity of the book was due to its lack of originality, not to its individuality. Mediævalism for the middle classes always ensures an appreciative audience. Oddly enough, Morris was said to be annoyed by the sincerest form of flattery. Perhaps he felt that every school of art comes to an end with the birth of the founder, and that Beardsley was only exercising himself in an alien field of which Morris himself owned the tithe. At all events it is not unlikely that Beardsley aroused in the great poet and decorator the same suspicion that he had undoubtedly done in Watts.
The "Morte d'Arthur" may be said, for convenience, to close Aubrey Beardsley's first period; but he modified his style during the progress of the publication, and there is no unity of intention in his types or scheme of decoration. He was gravitating Japanwards. He began, however, his so-called Japanesques long before seeing any real Japanese art, except what may be found in the London shop windows on cheap trays or biscuit-boxes. He never thought seriously of borrowing from this source until some one not conversant with Oriental art insisted on the resemblance of his drawings to Kakemonos. It was quite accidental. Beardsley was really studying with great care and attention the Crivellis in the National Gallery; their superficial resemblance to Japanese work occasioned an error from which Beardsley, quick to assimilate ideas and modes of expression, took a suggestion, unconsciously and ignorantly offered, and studied genuine examples. "Raphael Sanzio" (first version) was produced prior to this incident, and "Madame Cigale's Birthday Party" immediately afterwards. His emulation of the Japanese never left him until the production of the Savoy Magazine. In my view this was the only bad artistic influence which ever threatened to endanger his originality, or permanently vitiate his manner. The free use of Chinese ink, together with his intellectual vitality, saved him from "succumbing to Japan," to use Mr Pennell's excellent phrase.
A series of grotesques to decorate some rather silly anthologies produced in the same year as the "Morte d'Arthur" are marvels of ingenuity, and far more characteristic. With them he began a new period, throwing over the deliberate archaism and mediævalism, of which he began to tire. In the illustrations to "Salomé," he reached the consummation of the new convention he created for himself; they are, collectively, his masterpiece. In the whole range of art there is nothing like them. You can trace the origin of their development, but you cannot find anything wherewith to compare them; they are absolutely unique. Before commencing "Salomé" two events contributed to give Beardsley a fresh impetus and stimulate his method of expression: a series of visits to the collection of Greek vases in the British Museum (prompted by an essay of Mr D. S. McColl), and to the famous Peacock Room of Mr Whistler, in Prince's Gate—one the antithesis of Japan, the other of Burne-Jones. Impressionable at all times to novel sensations, his artistic perceptions vibrated with a new and inspired enthusiasm. Critical appreciation under his pen meant creation. From the Greek vase painting he learned that drapery can be represented effectually with a few lines, disposed with economy, not by a number of unfinished scratches and superfluous shading. If the "Salomé" drawings have any fault at all, it is that the texture of the pictures suggests some other medium than pen and ink, as Mr Walter Crane has pointed out in his other work. They are wrought rather than drawn, and might be designs for the panel of a cabinet, for Limoges or Oriental enamel. "The Rape of the Lock" is, therefore, a more obvious example of black and white art. Beardsley's second period lasted until the fourth volume of the Yellow Book, in which the "Wagnerites" should be mentioned as one of the finest. In 1896 Beardsley, many people think to the detriment of 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 archæology. 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 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.
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 prison. The works of Whistler and Burne-Jones, once derided as eccentric, are now accepted as the commencement of great traditions. All future art will be dubbed eccentric, trampled on, and despised; even as the first tulip that blossomed in England was rooted out and burnt for a worthless weed by the conscientious Scotch gardener.