Yeats reports this comment in his Autobiography, The Trembling of the
Veil (1922), Book IV, The Tragic Generation,

"I see his [Beardsley] with more understanding now, than when he lived,
for in 1895 or 1896, I was in despair at the new breath of comedy that
had begun to wither the beauty that I loved, just when the beauty seem
to have united itself to mystery. I said to him once, 'You have never
done anything to equal your Salome with the head of John the Baptist.' I
think, for the moment he was sincere when he replied, 'Yes, yes; but
beauty is so difficult.' It was for the moment only, for as the popular
rage increased and his own disease increased, he became more and more
violent in his satire, or created out of a spirit of mockery a form of
beauty where his powerful logical intellect eliminated every outline
that suggested meditation or even satisfied passion."

Although this does not identify the comment as having passed from Yeats
to Pound. Oddly enough, there is not a single reference to Pound in "The
Autobiography of William Butler Yeats," a fact that has always puzzled
me.

Sam Grolmes