[Illustration: A DESIGN FROM "LYSISTRATA"]
To compare Beardsley with any of his contemporaries would be unjust to them and to him. He belonged to no school, and can leave no legend, in the sense that Rossetti, Whistler, and Professor Legros have done; he proclaimed no theory; he left no counsel of perfection to those who came after him. In England and America a horde of depressing disciples aped his manner with a singular want of success; while admirable and painstaking artists modified their own convictions in the cause of unpopularity with fatal results. The sensuous charm of Beardsley's imagination and his mode of expression have only a superficial resemblance to the foreign masters of black and white. He continued no great tradition of the 'sixties; has nothing in common with the inventive and various genius of Mr Charles Ricketts; nothing of the pictorial propriety that distinguishes the work of his friend, Mr Pennell, or the homogeneous congruity of Boyd Houghton, Charles Keene, and Mr Frederic Sandys. He made use of different styles where other men employed different mediums. Unperplexed by painting or etching or lithography, he was satisfied with the simplest of all materials, attaining therewith unapproachable executive power. Those who cavil at his flawless technique ignore the specific quality of drawing characterising every great artist. The grammar of art exists only to be violated. Its rules can be learnt by anyone. Those who have no artistic perception invariably find fault with the perspective, just as those who cannot write a well-balanced sentence are always swift to detect faults in grammar or spelling. There are, of course, weaknesses in the extremities of Beardsley's figures--the hands and feet being interruptions rather than continuations of the limbs. Occasional carelessness in this respect is certainly noticeable, and the structure of his figures is throughout capricious. It was no fault in his early work; the hands and feet in the "_Joan of Arc_," if crude and exaggerated, being carefully modelled. While the right hand of "Salomé" in "_The Dancer's Reward_," grasping 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 "Salomé." 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.