ng to precisely 99.99 per cent. of our fellow-creatures; and
ourselves we make unpopular.

The tradition of art begins with the first artist that ever lived, and
will end with the last. Always it is being enriched or modified--never
is it exhausted. The earliest artists are driven to creation by an
irresistible desire to express themselves. Their over-bubbling minds
supply abundance of matter; difficulties begin when they try to express
it. Then it is they find themselves confronted by those terrible
limitations of the human mind, and by other limitations, only less
terrible, imposed by the medium in which they work. Every genuine
artist--every artist, that is, with something of his own to say--is
faced afresh by the problem, and must solve it for himself.
Nevertheless, each one who succeeds in creating an appropriate form for
his peculiar experience leaves in that form a record, and from the sum
of these records is deduced something, less definite far than a code,
by no means a pattern or recipe, which is yet a sign and a source of
half-conscious suggestion to those that follow. No artist can escape the
tradition of art except by refusing to grapple with the problem; which
is how most do escape it. The academic humbug uses the old language to
say nothing, the bombastic charlatan devises a new one for the same
purpose; but once a man has something to express, and the passion to
express it, he will find himself attacking the eternal problem and
leaning on the inevitable tradition. Let anyone who doubts this mention
quickly the name of some artist who owes nothing to his predecessors.

Often, however, owing either to some change in circumstances or to his
innate peculiarity, a man of uncommon force and imagination will find
himself with something to say for which the traditional instrument is,
or at first seems to be, inadequate. What shall he do? Why, what Giotto
did, what Masaccio did, what Ronsard and the poets of the Pleiade did,
what Wordsworth did, and what Cezanne has done. All these great artists
struck new veins, and to work them were obliged to overhaul the
tool-chest. Of the traditional instruments some they reshaped and
resharpened, some they twisted out of recognition, a few they discarded,
many they retained. Above all, they travelled back along the tradition,
tapping it and drawing inspiration from it, nearer to its source. Very
rarely does the pioneer himself work out his seam: he leaves it to
successors