young painters to whom his mere name is thrilling; to whom Picasso
is the liberator. His influence is ubiquitous: even in England it is
immense. Not only those who, for all their denials--denials that spring
rather from ignorance than bad faith--owe almost all they have to the
inventor of Cubism, but artists who float so far out of the main stream
as the Spensers and the Nashes, Mr. Lamb and Mr. John, would all have
painted differently had Picasso never existed.

Picasso is a born _chef d'école_. His is one of the most inventive minds
in Europe. Invention is as clearly his supreme gift as sensibility is
that of Matisse. His career has been a series of discoveries, each of
which he has rapidly developed. A highly original and extremely happy
conception enters his head, suggested, probably, by some odd thing he
has seen. Forthwith he sets himself to analyze it and disentangle those
principles that account for its peculiar happiness. He proceeds by
experiment, applying his hypothesis in the most unlikely places. The
significant elements of negro sculpture are found to repeat their
success in the drawing of a lemon. Before long he has established what
looks like an infallible method for producing an effect of which, a few
months earlier, no one had so much as dreamed. This is one reason why
Picasso is a born _chef d'école_. And this is why of each new phase
in his art the earlier examples are apt to be the more vital and
well-nourished. At the end he is approaching that formula towards
which his intellectual effort tends inevitably. It is time for a new
discovery.

Meanwhile a pack of hungry followers has been eyeing the young master as
he made clearer and ever clearer the nature of his last. To this pack
he throws hint after hint. And still the wolves pursue. You see them in
knots and clusters all along the road he has travelled, gnawing, tugging