The terms 'Tradition' and 'Traditional' are generally used in the derogatory sense. But with T.S. Eliot they are hallowed with historical and cultural stream from antiquity to the modern times. It is a stream that connects the past with the future through the present. So Eliot says, "It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence". He continues to say, "This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional".
A great poet can conspicuously show his talent in this stream of tradition. No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance can be judged only when he is placed and evaluated in the stream of the great poets of the past. So Eliot says, "You cannot value a poet alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison among the dead. This is a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical criticism". A poet must know that he has to be judged by the standards of the past. It is a comparison in which two things are measured by each other. The poet must be very conscious of the main currents, past as well as the present. A great poet must set himself in this tradition coming down since antiquity.