Beardsley always had the astuteness to give great pains and care to the planning of his prospectuses--he watched over them with fatherly anxiety and solicitude. But what is less known is the very serious part he played on the literary editor’s side of the magazine of which he was art-editor. And in his advice to Smithers concerning the new venture of _The Peacock_, he has left to us not only the astute pre-vision upon which he insisted to Smithers, but he reveals his own tastes and ideals in very clear terms. The magazine, as he wisely warns Smithers, should not be produced “unless you have piles of stuff up your editorial sleeves.” And he proceeded to lay down with trenchant emphasis his ideals for the conduct of a magazine and, incidently, his opinions of the art and literature of the day, revealing a shrewd contempt for the pushful mediocrities who had elbowed their way into the columns of _The Yellow Book_ and even _The Savoy_. “The thing,” he writes, “must be edited with a savage strictness, and very definite ideas about everything get aired in it. Let us give birth to no more little backbone-less babies. A little well-directed talent is in a periodical infinitely more effective than any amount of sporadic and desultory genius (especially when there is no genius to be got).” Beardsley gives in more detail his mature attitude towards literature: “On the literary side, impressionistic criticism and poetry and cheap short-storyness should be gone for. I think the critical element should be paramount. Let verse be printed very sparingly.... I should advise you to let Gilbert Burgess do occasional things for us. Try to get together a staff. Oh for a Jeffreys or a Gibbon, or anybody with something to say.”... And then we get in definite terms his sympathies and antipathies in art--“On the art side, I suggest that it should attack _untiringly and unflinchingly_ the Burne-Jones and Morrisian mediæval business, and set up a wholesome 17th and 18th century standard of what picture making should be.” There we have Beardsley’s whole range and also, be it confessed, his limitations. To the 18th century he owed all; and on the edge of eternity, unreservedly, frankly, and honourably, he made the solemn confession of his artistic faith. X THE END 1898 Yet the cruelty of Fate but more grimly pursued the stricken man with relentless step. December went out in “a pitiless drench of rain.” It kept Beardsley indoors. A week of it gave place to the sunshine again, and his hopes were reborn. So the Yuletide of 1897 came and went; and the New Year broke, with Beardsley dreaming restless dreams of further conquests.