[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.