he begins to
produce first-rate work, will obtain instant recognition, and his work
will begin to sell, not perhaps at prices the same kind of work may
bring later, but at prices sufficient to support the artist and his
family in reasonable comfort. If it does not, he is not producing good
work and had better turn his attention to something else. As a matter
of fact very few true artists do advertise, use the press, or seek
patronage. The artist does not go to the press or the patron, for
nowadays, the moment the artist does excellent work, the press and the
patron go to him, and, when he is very exceptionally good, he is
advertised and patronized until he is sick of both advertisement and
patronage.

Naturally it is different in the case of the artist who is not
excellently good, but the Emperor was not considering such. These
artists too, however, insist on living and must find a market for
their wares. It is an age of advertisement, the growth of new economic
conditions, for advertisement creates as well as reveals new markets.
Hence the vast host of mediocrities, not only in art but in almost
every field of human activity, nowadays advertise and seek patronage
because only in this way can they find purchasers and live. These
artists, often men of talent, dislike having to advertise; they would
rather work for art's sake, but having to do so need not hinder them
from working for art's sake, since all that is meant by that much
misused phrase is that while the artist is working he shall not think
of the reward of his work, but simply and solely of how to do the best
work he can.

Before leaving the Emperor's speech one is tempted to inquire what
should be the attitude of a sovereign towards art and artists. For the
Englishman the doctrine of Individualism--the thing he is so apt to
make a fetish of--gives an answer, and, it may be, the right one. The
Englishman will probably say that if in any one province of life more
than in another freedom should be allowed to originality of conception
regarding the form as well as the substance, the manner as well as the
matter, it is in the province of art, always provided, of course, that
the artist is sane and not guilty of indecency. The artist, like the
poet, is born not made; you cannot make an artist, you can only make
an artisan. The artist, who represents the Creator, the creative
faculty, can influence man: man cannot, and should not try to,
influence the artist, but