Aubrey Beardsley is one of the outstanding figures of the later nineteenth century. He was born in 1872. He died in 1898. He was always delicate. Much of his work was done in the shadow of the Angel of Death. He was famous when: he was twenty-two, and died at twenty-six.
Beardsley's art was all his own. The late Robert Ross says in his admirable monograph, 'Aubrey Beardsley'? (Lane, 5s.), of which a second edition has just been issued Profoundly interested in literature for tie purposes of his art, he only extracted from it whatever was suggestive as pattern; he never professed to interpret for dull people. unable to understand what they read, any more than the medieval illuminator and carver of grotes-cure attempted to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith on the borders of missals and breviaries or the misrere seats of the choir. His art' was, of course, intensely literary, to use the word hated of modern critics, but his expression of it was the legitimate litera ture of the artist, not the art peculiar to literature.
He has decorated white sheets of paper as they have never been decorated befo whether hung on the wall reproduced in a book, or concealed in a museum, they remain' among the most precious and exquisite works in the art of the nineteenth century resembling the designs of William Blake only—in that they {must be hated. misunderstood. and neglected ere they are recognized as works of a master.
The sources of Beardsley's inspiration have led critics Into grievous errors. He
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.