For some unfortunate reason, but probably with good-natured intention of preventing Beardsley from suffering discredit at his dismissal from _The Yellow Book_, John Lane whilst in America during the summer started a well-meaning but quite fatuous theory, much resented by Beardsley, that the young fellow, so far from being the flower of decadence, was “a pitiless satirist who will crush it out of existence.... He is the modern Hogarth; look at his _Lady Gold’s Escort_ and his _Wagnerites_.... The decadent fad can’t long stand such satire as that. It has got to go down before it.” Scant wonder that the _Daily Chronicle_ asked dryly: “Now, why was Mr. Lane chaffing that innocent interviewer?” This apology for his art bitterly offended Beardsley, who knew it to be utterly untrue, but who still more resented this desire to show him as being really “quite respectable.” As a matter of fact, Beardsley had nothing of the satirist in him; had he wanted to satirise anything he would have satirised the respectabilities of the middle-class which he detested, not the musicians and the rich whom he adored and would have excused of any sin. Look through the achievement of Beardsley and try to fling together a dozen designs that could be made to pass for satire of the vices of his age! It became a sort of cant amongst certain writers to try and whitewash Beardsley by acclaiming him a satirist--he was none. A dying satirist does not try to recall his “obscene drawings.” * * * * * At a loose end, on his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_, Beardsley drifted somewhat. He now turned his attention to a literary career, and began to write an erotic novel which he meditated calling _Venus and Tannhäuser_--it was to emerge later in a much mutilated state as _Under the Hill_--a sly jest for Under the Venusburg or Mons Veneris. He completely put behind him the Greek vase-painting phase of his drawings for _The Yellow Book_, and developed a new craftsmanship which was to create his great style and supreme achievement in art. The smallness of the page of _The Yellow Book_ had galled him by compelling upon him a very trying reduction of his designs to the size of the plate on the printed page; the reduction had always fretted him; it was become an irk. It compelled him largely to keep to the line and flat black masses of his Greek Vase phase longer than his interest was kept alive by that craftsmanship. His developments were uncannily rapid as though he knew he had but a short way to go. [Illustration: ATALANTA]