Beardsley's defect as Art Editor was youth. He would not take himself seriously: as an editor and draughtsman he was almost a practical joker, for one had, so to speak, to place his drawings under a microscope, and look at them upside down. This tendency on the eve of the production of Vol. V., during my first visit to the United States, rendered it necessary to omit his work from that volume. Beardsley was responsible for the art of the first four volumes, and it must be frankly confessed that, when he severed his connection with the magazine, the quarterly suffered an irretrievable loss. Soon after this period, Mr. Arthur Symonds started "The Savoy," as a rival, to which Beardsley, again as Art Editor, contributed another fine series of drawings. I well remember being interviewed in New York regarding the alleged decadence in Beardsley's work. I said then, and repeat now, that he merely lashed the follies of his time, that he was the Hogarth of his day, and that he had no more sympathy with decadence than Hogarth had for the vices depicted in "The Rake's Progress" and "Marriage à la Mode." Knowledge must never be confounded with sympathy. I will go farther, and declare that Beardsley, by his grotesque and powerful pictures of several hideous phases or life, dealt a death blow to decadence. Had he lived till now, it is quite possible that the Royal Academy might have justified its existence by recognising in him the greatest exponent of the most vital of the graphic arts--namely, Black and White. In support of this theory it may be well to point out that Mr. Harland is now the delight or millions by his charming love romances, and that "Max" in his brilliant weekly articles in the _Saturday Review_ pleads eloquently for an intelligent drama. It was not often that Beardsley took up his pen to write to the newspapers, preferring to allow the hostile and adverse criticism with which he was continually assailed to confute themselves. On two occasions, however, he did so, and the letters he wrote will be round included in this volume. The first, I think, with the accompanying illustration, explains itself. The second was the outcome of the following criticism by the _DAILY Chronicle._ March I, 1894, on the frontispiece of Mr. John Davidson's "Plays". "AN ERROR OF TASTE" "Mr. Beardsley has contributed a frontispiece à propos of 'Scaramouch in Naxos' in which one or two well-known faces of the day are to be recognised--an error or taste which is to be regretted." The subjects of Beardsley's two portraits were Mr. Wilde and Sir Augustus Harris; the latter Beardsley considered his debtor by virtue of his having taken half a crown at Covent Garden Theatre without providing him with a seat.