Be this as it may, the men of the nineties bequeathed a certain subtleness of emotion to our art that is not without its value. They took Byron’s satanism and inflamed it with the lurid light of Baudelaire. _Buveurs de lune_ after the manner of Paul Verlaine, they evoked something of the ethereal glamour of moonlight itself. A realist like Crackanthorpe tried to tread the whole _via dolorosa_ without faltering by the wayside. Poetry caught the mood of bizarre crises and Edgar Wilson wrought a strange delicate world of visions. In Max Beerbohm irony took on a weird twinge of grace almost Pierrot-like. Perhaps, indeed, they all had something of the Pierrot quality in them. Beardsley himself was enchanted by that little opera without words, ‘L’Enfant Prodigue.’ Dowson made a play about him. _The Happy Hypocrite_ might be a story of the Pierrot himself grown old.
As I have hinted, much of the work conceived by these men was doomed to die, as in the case of every movement. What then remains, what is their balance to the good? Who knows? About everything man has loved and fashioned there abides vestiges of the interest of humanity. Only some things are easier to recall than others. They stand out more, so that one is bound to remark them. They have, so to speak, a _cachet_ of their own. Among these in this movement there comes the work of the men I have so hastily attempted to realise. Each has about him something of that quality which is indefinable, but easily recognisable. Each has his charm for those who care to come with a loving interest.
_Ascension of St. Rose of Lima, The_, 25.
_Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow Book_, 37.
Beardsley, Aubrey, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-14, 16-19, 23-32, 34, 35, 37-39, 41-45, 47, 59, 61, 89, 91, 93, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121-123, 125, 126, 135, 136.
_Beardsley, Aubrey, and the Yellow Book_, 37.
_Beardsley, Aubrey, The Last Letters of_, 14.
Beerbohm, Max, 23, 33, 43, 63, 95, 102, 110, 111-117, 122, 130, 136.
_Blake, William, and his Illustrations to the ‘Divine Comedy,’_ 43, 44.
Conder, Charles, 4, 11, 41, 44, 61, 123, 124, 135.
Crackanthorpe, Hubert, 8, 11, 44, 47, 57, 58, 61, 64, 67-77, 101, 135, 136.
Davidson, John, 5, 8, 56, 59, 80, 83, 86, 91-97, 126.