broadening the trail blazed by those who went first.

Every generation is privileged to stand on the shoulders of its
predecessors, and it is taller by what they accomplished. The art of
fiction, for example, is a finer art to-day than it was yesterday; and
so is every other art, even tho the artists themselves are no greater
now than then, and even tho genius is no more frequent than it was
formerly. Ghirlandajo and Marlowe and Cervantes were men of genius; but
their technic is seen to-day to be as primitive as their native talent
is indisputable. We can perceive them doubtfully feeling for a formula,
fumbling in the dark, for want of the model which they themselves were
to aid in establishing and which every novice nowadays has ready to his
hand, even tho he may lack the temperament to profit by what is set
before him.

It is significant that not a few of the masters, in the days when they
were but novices, found so much satisfaction in this mere acquiring of
the secrets of the craft, that they chose to linger in the
apprentice-stage longer than might seem necessary. In their earlier work
they were content modestly to put in practise the technical principles
they had just been acquiring; and for a little while they sought
scarcely more than mere technical adroitness. Consider the firstlings of
Shakspere's art and of Molière's; and observe how they reveal these
prentice playwrights at work, each seeking to display his cleverness
and each satisfied when he had done this. In 'Love's Labor's Lost,'
Shakspere is trying to amuse by inventive wit and youthful gaiety and
ingenuity of device, just as Molière in the 'Étourdi' is enjoying his
own complicating of comic imbroglios, not yet having anything of
importance to say on the stage, but practising against the time when he
should want to say something. Neither in the English comedy nor in the