To begin with Aubrey Beardsley has many advantages, for it brings us at once not only to the type of mentality most representative of the period, but also to the man whose creative power was probably the greatest factor of the period, to the boy who changed, as has been said, the black and white art of the world, and to the artist, from whose work we can most easily deduce the leading contemporary characteristics. The art of these men was in a way abnormal, while the men themselves who produced it were exotics; and Beardsley’s is not only the most abnormal art of them all, but also he himself is the greatest exotic. As Robert Ross well said as a mere comment on the decade, he is invaluable: ‘He sums up all the delightful manias, all that is best in modern appreciation--Greek vases, Italian primitives, the “Hypnerotomachia,” Chinese porcelain, Japanese kakemonos, Renaissance friezes, old French and English furniture, rare enamels, mediæval illumination, the débonnaire masters of the eighteenth century, the English pre-Raphaelites.’ In Beardsley, so to speak, was inset all the influences that went to make the period what it was. And another reason why it is so convenient to begin with him is that he and not Oscar Wilde was in reality the great creative genius of the age. Besides his black-and-white work all the world knows, in which, as Father Gray says, ‘His imaginative gifts never showed a sign of fatigue or exhaustion,’[2] Beardsley practised in other arts. While a youngster at Brighton he promised to become a musical prodigy, and in later days Symons describes him at a Wagner concert gripping the seat with nervous intensity. He wrote some charming poetry, and as picturesque a fairy tale for grown-ups as has ever been written in _Under the Hill_. In an interview he states, probably slyly, he was at work in 1895 on a modern novel[3]; while in 1897 he said, ‘Cazotte has inspired me to make some small contes. I have one in hand now called _The Celestial Lover_.’ He began once to write a play with the actor, Brandon Thomas. In his late illustrations for Gautier’s _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ he was clearly working towards water-colour work, while at one time he began under Walter Sickert his only oil painting (unfinished), ‘Women regarding a dead mouse.’ By no means least, he became a leader in English poster work. All of this was essentially creative work. And when death came he was very far from his artistic or intellectual maturity. So is it not just to say that this young man who practised nearly all the forms of art, and who was also an avid reader and student, remains the chief creative figure of the nineties? [2] _Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley_, with an Introduction by the Rev. John Gray, 1904. [3] _The Sketch_, April 10, 1895.