_The Yellow Book_ phase of Beardsley’s art is very distinct from what went before and what was to come after. There are two types: a fine firm line employed with flat black masses of which the famous _Lady Gold’s Escort_ and _The Wagnerites_ are the type, and of which The Nightpiece is the triumph--and a very thin delicate line, generally for portraiture, to define faintly the body to a more firmly drawn head--of which the _Mrs. Patrick Campbell_ is the type and _L’Education sentimentale_ a variant--whilst the three remarkable _Comedy-Ballets of Marionettes I, II, and III_, show white masses used against black. Beardsley employed his “Japanesque mark” for the last time in mid-1894 in the July volume, No. 2, of _The Yellow Book_. The _Plays of John Davidson_, several _Madame Réjanes_, the fine _Les Passades_, the _Scarlet Pastorale_, and the _Tales of Mystery and Wonder_ by Edgar Allan Poe, are all of the early 1894 _Yellow Book_ phase. But in the third volume of _The Yellow Book_, the fanciful and delightful portrait of _The Artist in bed_, “_Par les dieux jumeaux tous les monstres ne sont pas en Afrique_,” and the famous _La Dame aux Camélias_ standing before her dressing table, advance his handling in freedom and rhythm; as does the exquisite _The Mysterious Rose Garden_, which Beardsley described as “the first of a series of Biblical illustrations, and represents nothing more nor less than the _Annunciation_”--indeed he could not understand the objections of the prudish to it and resented its being misunderstood! The _Messalina with her Companion_ is of this later _Yellow Book_ phase; and the _Atalanta without the hound_ of the suppressed Fifth Volume is a fine example of it. The beautifully wrought _Pierrot Invitation Card_ for John Lane; the remarkable wash drawings _A Nocturne of Chopin_ from the suppressed Volume Five, and the _Chopin, Ballade III Op. 47_ of _The Studio_, all drawn on the eve of his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_, show Beardsley advancing with giant strides when the blow fell; and in the double-page _Juvenal_ of the monkey-porters carrying the Sedan-chair, he foreshadows his new design. But the surest test of the change, as well as the date of that change, is revealed by an incident that followed Beardsley’s expulsion from _The Yellow Book_; for, being commissioned to design a frontispiece by Elkin Mathews for _An Evil Motherhood_, Beardsley promptly sent the rejected _Black Cape_, of the suppressed Fifth Volume, direct to the printers; and it was only under the dogged refusal of Elkin Mathews to produce it that Beardsley made the now famous design of the _Evil Motherhood_ in which he entirely breaks from _The Yellow Book_ convention and craftsmanship, and launches into the craftsmanship of his Great Period. [Illustration: THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN _from “The Yellow Book” Volume IV_]