When Beardsley began the _Salome_ drawings at twenty-one he was, as we have seen, greatly interested in the erotic works of the Japanese masters; and this eroticism dominated his art quite as much as did the craftsmanship of the Japanese in line, whilst the lechery of his faces was distinctly suggested by the sombre, the macabre, and the grotesque features so much affected by the Japanese masters. Whilst at work upon the _Salome_ designs he was much at the British Museum and was intensely drawn to the Greek vase-paintings in which the British Museum is very rich. Now not only did the austere artistry of the Greeks in their line and mass fascinate Beardsley--not only was he struck by the rhythm and range of mood, tragic, comic, and satirical, uttered by the Greeks, but here again was that factor in the Greek genius which appealed to Beardsley’s intense eroticism. The more obscene of the Greek vase-painters are naturally turned away from the public eye towards the wall, indeed some of them ’tis said, have been “purified” by prudish philistinism painting out certain “naughtinesses”; but it was precisely the skill with which the great Greek painters uttered erotic moods by the rhythmic use of line and mass that most keenly intrigued Beardsley. The violences of horrible lecherous old satyrs upon frail nymphs, painted by such Greek masters as Brygos and Duris, appealed to the morbid and grotesque mind and mood of Beardsley as they had tickled the Greeks aforetime. He had scarce finished his _Salome_ drawings under the Japanese erotic influence before the Greek satyr peeps in; Beardsley straightway flung away the Japanesque, left it behind him, and boldly entered into rivalry with the Greeks. It was to make him famous. * * * * * [Illustration: LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS _from “The Yellow Book,” Volume III_] On the 15th of April 1894 appeared _The Yellow Book_. It made Beardsley notorious. In the February of 1894 Salome had been published cheek by jowl with the 3rd, the last, volume of _Bon Mots_; and _Morte d’Arthur_ was in full career. It is a common fallacy amongst writers to say that _Salome_ made Beardsley famous. _Salome_ was an expensive book, published in a very limited edition. Except in a small but ever-increasing literary and artistic set, the _Morte d’Arthur_ and _Salome_ passed quite unrecognised and unknown. But _Salome_ did lead to an act which was to make Beardsley leap at a bound into the public eye.