Now, though the _Morte d’Arthur_ was in large part done before _The Studio_ eulogy by Pennell appeared in this April of 1893, otherwise the eulogy would never have been written, it is well to cast a glance at Beardsley’s art as it was first revealed to an indifferent public in _The Studio_ article. There are examples from the _Morte d’Arthur_, of which the very fine chapter-heading of the knights in combat on foot amongst the dandelion-like leaves of a forest, with their sword-like decoration, was enough to have made any reputation. The most mediocre design of the lot, a tedious piece of Renaissance mimicry of Mantegna called _The Procession of Joan of Arc entering Orleans_ was curiously enough the favourite work of Beardsley’s own choice a year gone by when he made it--so far had he now advanced beyond this commonplace untidy emptiness! Yet the writers on art seem to have been more impressed by this futility than by the far more masterly _Morte d’Arthur_ decorations. If the writers were at sea, the public can scarce be blamed. The _Siegfried Act II_ of mid-1892, which Beardsley had given to his patron Burne-Jones, shows excellent, if weird and fantastic, combination by Beardsley of his Japanesque and Burne-Jonesesque mimicry--it is his typically early or “hairy-line” Japanesque, hesitant in stroke and thin in quality. The _Birthday of Madame_ _Cigale_ and _Les Revenants de Musique_ show the Japanesque more asserting itself over the mock mediæval, and are akin to _Le Debris d’un Poète_ and _La Femme Incomprise_. But there was also a Japanesque in _The Studio_ which was to have an effect on Beardsley’s destiny that he little foresaw! There had been published in the February of 1893 in French the play called _Salome_ by Oscar Wilde, which made an extraordinary sensation in literary circles and in the Press. Throughout the newspapers was much controversy about the leopard-like ecstasy of Salome when the head of John the Baptist has been given to her on a salver: “J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai baisé ta bouche.” Beardsley, struck by the lines, made his now famous Japanesque drawing, just in time to be included in _The Studio_ which was to appear in April. It was this design that, a few weeks later, decided Elkin Mathews and John Lane that in Beardsley they had found the destined illustrator of the English _Salome_, translated by Lord Alfred Douglas, which was soon to appear. In that _Salome_ was to be a marvellous significance for Aubrey Beardsley. It is interesting to note in surveying the first number of _The Studio_, the rapid development of Beardsley’s art from the fussy flourishy design of this _Salome_ drawing to the more severe and restrained edition of the same design that was so soon to appear in the book. The hairy Japanesque line has departed.