I

A recent prosecution by the People of New York, represented by Mr. Jerome, of a suit for criminal libel, attracted the attention of the entire nation. The alleged libel set forth in the complaint had appeared in Collier’s Weekly, stating the connection of a certain judge with a certain unwholesome publication. The defense to this action was that the statement was true; and, somewhat to the joy of all concerned, excepting the judge, the unwholesome publication, and those who were exposed in the course of trial as being its creatures, the jury were obliged to find that this defense was sound.^[9] From a lawyer’s point of view it was surprising to find that even professional critics and editorial writers looked upon this case as involving that part of the Common Law which prescribes the limits of criticism. It only needs to be pointed out that the statement relied upon as defamation was a statement of fact, to show that the case against the Collier editors involved no question of a critic’s right to criticise or an editor’s right to express his opinion. If the suit had been founded on the criticism of the contents of the unwholesome publication which had been offered to the public for those to read who would, then the law of fair comment would have controlled. No doubt, however, even the trained guides to the public taste seldom realize the presence of a law governing their freedom of comment. Such law is in force none the less, and, though the instinct to express only fair and honest opinion will generally suffice to prevent a breach of legal limits, it is evident that the consideration of the law upon the subject is important, not only to the professional critic, but to any man who has enough opinion on matters of public interest to be worth an expression.

It is public policy that the free expression of opinion on matters of public interest should be as little hampered as possible. Fair comment, says the law, is the preventive of affectation and folly, the educator of the public taste and ethics, and the incentive to progress in the arts. Often fair comment is spoken of as privileged. But privilege in its legal sense means that some statement is allowed to some particular person on some particular occasion—a statement that would be libel or slander unless it came within the realm of privilege. On the other hand, fair comment is not the right of any particular person or class, or the privilege of any particular occasion; it is not exclusively the right of the press or of one who is a critic in the sense that he is an expert. Doubtless the newspaper or professional critic is given a greater latitude by juries, who share the prevalent and not ill-advised view that opinion expressed by the public press is usually more sound than private comment. The law, however, recognizes no such distinction. Any one may be a critic.

In civil actions of defamation, truth in a general way is always a defense; whether the person against whom the suit is brought has made a statement of fact or opinion, if he can prove his words to be true, he is safe from liability. Such was the defense of the Collier editors in the criminal case mentioned above. Fair comment, however, does not need to be true to be defended, for it is, if we may use the phrase, its own defense. Then what is fair comment?

The right to comment is confined to matters which are of interest to the public. To endeavor to give a list of matters answering this requirement would be an endless task; even the courts of England and this country have passed upon only a few. Instances when the attention, judgment, and taste of the public are called upon are, however, most frequent in the fields of politics and of the arts. Such are the acts of those entrusted with functions of government, the direction of public institutions and possibly church matters, published books, pictures which have been exhibited, architecture, theatres, concerts, and public entertainments. Two reasons prohibit comment upon that which has not become the affair of the public nor has been offered to the attention of the public:—the public is not benefited by the criticism of that which it does not know, and about which it has no concern, and the act of the doer or the work of the artist against which the comment is directed cannot be said to have been submitted to open criticism.

The requirement, which seems right in principle, and which has been laid down many times in the remarks of English judges, was perhaps overlooked in Battersby vs. Collier, a New York case. Colonel Battersby, it appeared, was a veteran of the Civil War, and for six years had been engaged in painting a picture representing the dramatic meeting of General Lee and General Grant, at which Colonel Battersby was present. This painting was intended for exhibition at the Columbian Exposition. Unfortunately, a few days before Christmas, a young woman of a literary turn of mind had an opportunity to view this immense canvas, and was less favorably impressed with the painting than with the pathos surrounding its inception and development. Accordingly she wrote a story headed by that handiest of handy titles, The Colonel’s Christmas, but she did not sufficiently conceal the identity of her principal character. Colonel Battersby sued the publishers, and for damages relied upon the aspersions cast upon his picture, which in the story was called a “daub.” More than that, there occurred in the narrative these words: “What matters it if the Colonel’s ideas of color, light, and shade were a trifle hazy, if his perspective was a something extraordinary, his ‘breadth’ and ‘treatment’ and ‘tone’ truly marvelous, the Surrender was a great, vast picture, and it was the Colonel’s life.” The court held that this was a fair criticism; but it does not plainly appear that Colonel Battersby had yet submitted his six-year painting to the attention of the public, or that it had at the time become an object of general public interest; and if it had not, the decision would seem doubtful in principle.

On the other hand, in Gott vs. Pulsifer there was involved the “Cardiff Giant,” which all remember as the merriest of practical jokes in rock, which made Harvard scientists rub their eyes and called forth from one Yale professor a magazine article to prove that the man of stone was the god Baal brought to New York State by the Phoenicians. The court said that all manner of abuse might be heaped on the Giant’s adamant head. “Anything made subject of public exhibition,” said they, “is open to fair and reasonable comment, no matter how severe.” So you might with impunity call the Cardiff Giant, or Barnum’s famous long-haired horse, a hoax; they were objects of general public interest, and any one might have passed judgment upon them.

Letters written to a newspaper may be criticised most severely, as often happens when Constant Reader enters into a warfare of communication with Old Subscriber; and so long as the contention is free from actionable personalities, and remains within the bounds of fair comment, neither will find himself in trouble. Nor is the commercial advertisement immune from caustic comment, if the comment is sincere. The rhymes in the street cars, the posters on the fences, the handbill that is thrust over the domestic threshold, and the signboard, that has now become a factor in every rural sunset or urban sunrise, must bear the comment upon their taste, their efficiency, and their ingenuity, which by their very nature they invite. In England a writer was sued by the maker of a commodity for travelers advertised as the “Bag of Bags.” The writer thought the commercial catch-name was silly, vulgar, and ill-conceived, and he said so. The manufacturer in court urged that the comment injured his trade; but the judges were inclined to think that an advertisement appealing to the public was subject to the public opinion and its fair expression. What is of interest to the general public, so that comment thereon will be a right of the public, may, however, in certain cases trouble the jury. A volume of love sonnets printed and circulated privately, and the architecture of a person’s private dwelling, might furnish very delicate cases.

In a time when those who desire to be conspicuous succeed so well in becoming so, it is rather amusing to wonder just what may be the difference between the right to comment on the dancer on the stage, and on the lady who, if she has her way, will sit in a box. Both court public notice—the dancer by her penciled eyebrows, her tinted cheeks, her jewelry, her gown, and her grace; the lady in the box, perhaps, by all these things except the last; both wish favorable comment, and perhaps ought to bear ridicule, if their cheeks are too tinted, their eyebrows too penciled, their jewelry too generous, and their gowns too ornate. A more sober view, however, will show that the matter is one of proof. The dancer who exhibits herself and her dance for a consideration necessarily invites expressions of opinion, but it would be difficult to show in a court of law that the gala lady in the box meant to seek either commendation—or disapproval.

A vastly more important and interesting query, and one which must arise from the present state and tendency of industrial conditions, is whether the acts of men in commercial activity may ever become so prominent, and so far-reaching in their effect, that it can well be said that they compel a universal public interest, and that public comment is impliedly invited by reason of their conspicuous and semi-public nature. It may be said that at no time have private industries become of such startling interest to the community at large as at present in the United States. At least a few have had an effect more vital to citizens, perhaps, than the activities of some classes of public officials which are open to fair comment, and certainly more vital than the management of some semi-public institutions, which also are open to honest criticism.

As to corporations, it would seem that, as the public, through the chartering power of legislation, gives them a right to exist and act, an argument that the public retains the right to comment upon their management must have some force; in the case of other forms of commercial activity, whose powers are inherent and not delegated, the question must rest on the determination of the best public policy—a determination which in all classes of cases decides, and ought to decide, the right of fair comment.

When once the comment is decided to be upon a matter of public interest, there arises the question whether or not the comment is fair. The requirement of the law in regard to fairness is not based, as might be supposed, upon the consideration whether comment is mild or severe, serious or ridiculing, temperate or exaggerated; the critic is not hampered in the free play of his honest opinions; he is not prohibited from using the most stinging satire, the most extravagant burlesque, or the most lacerating invective.

In 1808, Lord Ellenborough, in Carr vs. Hood, stated the length of leash given to the critic, and the law has not since been changed. Sir John Carr, Knight, was the author of several volumes, entitled A Stranger in France, A Northern Summer, A Stranger in Ireland, and other titles of equal connotation. Thomas Hood was rather more deserving of a lasting place in literature than his victim, because of his sense of humor, and his well-known rapid-fire satire. According to the declaration of Sir John Carr, the plaintiff, Hood had published a book of burlesque in which there was a frontispiece entitled “The Knight leaving Ireland with Regret,” and “containing and representing in the said print, a certain false, scandalous, malicious and defamatory and ridiculous representation of said Sir John in the form of a man of ludicrous and ridiculous appearance holding a pocket handkerchief to his face, and appearing to be weeping,” and also representing “a malicious and ridiculous man of ludicrous and ridiculous appearance following the said Sir John,” and bending under the weight of several books, and carrying a tied-up pocket handkerchief with “Wardrobe” printed thereon, “thereby falsely scandalously and maliciously meaning and intending to represent, for the purpose of rendering the said Sir John ridiculous and exposing him to laughter, ridicule and contempt,” that the books of the said Sir John “were so heavy as to cause a man to bend under the weight thereof, and that his the said Sir John’s wardrobe was very small and capable of being contained in a pocket handkerchief.” And at the end of this declaration Sir John alleged that he was damaged because of the consequent decline in his literary reputation, and, it may be supposed, because thereafter his books did not appear in the list of the “six bestsellers” in the Kingdom.

But no recovery was allowed him, for it was laid down that if a comment, in whatever form, only ridiculed the plaintiff as an author, there was no ground for action. Said the eminent justice, “One writer, in exposing the follies and errors of another, may make use of ridicule, however poignant. Ridicule is often the fittest weapon for such a purpose.... Perhaps the plaintiff’s works are now unsalable, but is he to be indemnified by receiving a compensation from the person who has opened the eyes of the public to the bad taste and inanity of his compositions?... We must not cramp observations on authors and their works.... The critic does a great service to the public who writes down any vapid or useless publication, such as ought never to have appeared. He checks the dissemination of bad taste, and prevents people from wasting both their time and money upon trash. Fair and candid criticism every one has a right to publish, although the author may suffer a loss from it. Such a loss the law does not consider an injury, because it is a loss which the party ought to sustain. It is, in short, the loss of fame and profits to which he was never entitled.”

Criticism need not be fair and just, in the sense that it conforms to the judgment of the majority of the public, or the ideas of a judge, or the estimate of a jury; but it must remain within certain bounds circumscribed by the law.

In the first place, comment must be made honestly; in recent cases much more stress has been laid upon this point than formerly. It is urged that, if criticism is not sincere, it is not valuable to the public, and the ground of public policy, upon which the doctrine of fair criticism is built, fails to give support to comment which is born of improper motives or begotten from personal hatred or malice. Yet he who seeks for cases of criticism which have been decided against the critic solely on the ground that the critic was malicious must look far. The requirement in practice seems difficult of application, since, if the critic does not depart from the work that he is criticising, to strike at the author thereof as a private individual, and does not mix with his comment false statements or imputations of bad motives, there is nothing to show legal malice, and it is almost impossible to prove actual malice. If you should conclude that your neighbor’s painting which has been on exhibition is a beautiful marine, but if, because you do not like your neighbor, you pronounce it to be a dreadful mire of blue paint, it would be very hard for any other person to prove that at the moment you spoke you were not speaking honestly. Again, if the comment is within the other restrictions put by the law upon criticism, it would seem that to open the question whether or not the comment was malicious, is in effect very nearly submitting to the jury the question whether or not they disagree with the critic, since the jury have no other method of reaching a conclusion that the critic was or was not impelled by malice.

Malice, in fact, is a bugaboo in the law—and the law, especially the civil law, avoids dealing with him whenever it can. Yet it is quite certain that malice must be a consideration in determining what is fair comment; an opinion which is not honest is of no help to the public in its striving to attain high morals and unerring discernment. All the reasons of public policy that give criticism its rights fly out of the window when malice walks in at the door.

Some decisions of the courts seem to set the standard of fair comment even higher. They not only demand that the critic speak with an honest belief in his opinion, but insist also that a person taking upon himself to criticise must exercise a reasonable degree of judgment. As one English judge expressed it in charging the jury: “You must determine whether any fair man, however exaggerated or obstinate his views, would have said what this criticism has said.” It would seem, however, that in many cases this would result in putting the judgment of the jury against that of the critic. To ask the jury whether this comment is such as would be made by a fair man is not distinguishable from asking them whether the comment is fair, and it sometimes happens that, in spite of the opinion of the jury,—in fact, the opinion of all the world,—the single critic is right, and the rest of the community all wrong. Does any one doubt that the comment of Columbus upon the views of those who opposed him would have been considered unfair by a jury of his time, until this doughty navigator proved his judgment correct? What would have happened in a court of law to the man who first said that those who wrote that the earth was flat were stupidly ignorant? Often the opinion or criticism which is the most valuable to the community as a contribution to truth is the very opinion which the community as a body would call a wild inference by an unfair man; to hold the critic up to the standard of a “fair man” is to deprive the public of the benefit of the most powerful influences against the perpetuity of error.

No better illustration could be found than the case of Merrivale and Wife vs. Carson, in which a dramatic critic said of a play: “The Whip Hand... gives us nothing but a hash-up of ingredients which have been used ad nauseam, until one rises in protestation against the loving, confiding, fatuous husband with the naughty wife, and her double existence, the good male genius, the limp aristocrat, and the villainous foreigner. And why dramatic authors will insist that in modern society comedies the villain must be a foreigner, and the foreigner must be a villain, is only explicable on the ground that there is more or less romance about such gentry. It is more in consonance with accepted notions that your continental croupier would make a much better fictitious prince, marquis, or count, than would, say, an English billiard-maker or stable lout. And so the Marquis Colonna in The Whip Hand is offered up by the authors upon the altar of tradition, and sacrificed in the usual manner when he gets too troublesome to permit of the reconciliation of husband and wife and lover and maiden, and is proved, also much as usual, to be nothing more than a kicked-out croupier.”

The jury found that this amounted to falsely setting out the drama as adulterous and immoral, and was not the criticism of a fair man. Granting that there was the general imputation of immorality, it seems, justly considered, a matter of the critic’s opinion. Is not the critic in effect saying, “To my mind the play is adulterous; no matter what any one else may think, the play suggests immorality to me”? And if this is the honest opinion of the critic, no matter how much juries may differ from him, it would seem that to stifle this individual expression was against public policy, the very ground on which fair criticism becomes a universal right. It does not very clearly appear that the case of Merrivale and Wife vs. Carson was decided exclusively on the question whether the criticism was that of a fair man, but this was the leading point of the case. The decision and the doctrine it sets forth seem open to much doubt.

III

Criticism must never depart from a consideration of the work of the artist or artisan, or the public acts of a person, to attack the individual himself, apart from his connection with the particular work or act which is being criticised. The critic is forbidden to touch upon the domestic or private life of the individual, or upon such matters concerning the individual as are not of general public interest, at the peril of exceeding his right. Whereas, in Fry vs. Bennett, an article in a newspaper purported to criticise the management of a theatrical troupe, it was held to contain a libel, since it went beyond matters which concerned the public, and branded the conduct of the manager toward his singers as unjust and oppressive.

J. Fenimore Cooper was plaintiff in another suit which illustrates the same rule of law. This author had many a gallant engagement with his critics, and, though it has been said that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, Mr. Cooper, conducting his own actions, won from many publishers, including Mr. Horace Greeley and Mr. Webb. In Cooper vs. Stone the facts reveal that the author, having completed a voluminous Naval History of the United States, in which he had given the lion’s share of credit for the Battle of Lake Erie, not to the commanding officer, Oliver H. Perry, but to Jesse D. Elliot, who was a subordinate, was attacked by the New York Commercial Advertiser, which imputed to the author “a disregard of justice and propriety as a man,” represented him as infatuated with vanity, mad with passion, and publishing as true, statements and evidence which had been falsified and encomiums which had been retracted. This was held to exceed the limits of fair criticism, since it attacked the character of the author as well as the book itself.

The line, however, is not very finely drawn, as may be seen by a comparison of the above case with Browning vs. Van Rensselaer, in which the plaintiff was the author of a genealogical treatise entitled Americans of Royal Descent. A young woman, who was interested in founding a society to be called the “Order of the Crown,” wrote to the defendant, inviting her to join and recommending to her the book. The latter answered this letter with a polite refusal, saying that she thought such a society was un-American and pretentious, and that the book gave no authority for its statements. The court said that this, even though it implied that the author was at fault, was not a personal attack on his private character.

An intimate relationship almost always exists between the doer of an act which interests the public and the act itself; the architect is closely associated with his building, the painter with his picture, the author with his works, the inventor with his patent, the tradesman with his advertisement, and the singer with his song; and the critic will find it impossible not to encroach to some extent upon the personality of the individual. It seems, however, that the privilege of comment extends to the individual only so far as is necessary to intelligent criticism of his particular work under discussion. To write that Mr. Palet’s latest picture shows that some artists are only fit to paint signs is a comment on the picture, but to write, apart from comment upon the particular work, that Mr. Palet is only fit to paint signs is an attack upon the artist, and if it is untrue, it is libel for which the law allows recovery.

No case presents a more complete confusion of the individual and his work than that of an actor. His physical characteristics, as well as his personality, may always be said to be presented to general public interest along with the words and movements which constitute his acting. The critic can hardly speak of the performance without speaking of the actor himself, who, it may be argued, presents to a certain extent his own bodily and mental characteristics to the judgment of the public, almost as much as do the ossified man and the fat lady of the side show.

The case of Cherry vs. the Des Moines Leader will serve to illustrate how far the critic who is not actuated by malice may comment upon the actors as well as the performance, and still be held to have remained within the limits of fair criticism. The three Cherry sisters were performers in a variety act, which consisted in part of a burlesque on Trilby, and a more serious presentation entitled, The Gypsy’s Warning. The judge stated that in his opinion the evidence showed that the performance was ridiculous. The testimony of Miss Cherry included a statement that one of the songs was a “sort of eulogy on ourselves,” and that the refrain consisted of these words:—

She also stated that in The Gypsy’s Warning she had taken the part of a Spaniard or a cavalier, and that she always supposed a Spaniard and a cavalier were one and the same thing. The defendant published the following comment on the performance: “Effie is an old jade of fifty summers, Jessie a frisky filly of forty, and Addie, the flower of the family, a capering monstrosity of thirty-five. Their long, skinny arms, equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechanically, and anon waved frantically at the suffering audience. The mouths of their rancid features opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailings of damned souls issued therefrom. They pranced around the stage with a motion that suggested a cross between the danse du ventre and fox-trot—strange creatures with painted faces and hideous mien.” This was held to be fair criticism and not libelous; for the Misses Cherry to a certain extent presented their personal appearance as a part of their performance.

The critic must not mix with his comment statement of facts which are not true, since the statement of facts is not criticism at all. In Tabbart vs. Tipper, the earliest case on the subject, the defendant, in order to ridicule a book published for children, printed a verse which purported to be an extract from the book, and it was held that this amounted to a false accusation that the author had published something which in fact he had never published; it was not comment, but an untrue statement of fact. So when, as in Davis vs. Shepstone, the critic, in commenting upon the acts of a government official in Zululand, falsely stated that the officer had been guilty of an assault upon a native chief, the critic went far beyond comment, and was liable for defamation. Not unlike Tabbart vs. Tipper is a recent case, Belknap vs. Ball. The defendant, during a political campaign, printed in his newspaper a coarsely executed imitation of the handwriting of a political candidate of the opposing party, and an imitation of his signature appeared beneath. The writing contained this misspelled, unrhetorical sentence: “I don’t propose to go into debate on the tariff differences on wool, quinine, and such, because I ain’t built that way.” Readers were led to believe that this was a signed statement by the candidate, and the newspaper was barred from setting up the plea that the writing was only fair criticism made through the means of a burlesque; it was held that imputing to the plaintiff something he had never written amounted to a false statement of fact, and was not within fair comment.

The dividing line between opinion and statement of fact is, however, most troublesome. Mr. Odgers, in his excellent work on Libel and Slander, remarks that the rule for the distinction between the two should be that “if facts are known to hearers or readers or made known by the writer, and their opinion or criticism refers to these true facts, even if it is a statement in form, it is no less an opinion. But if the statement simply stands alone, it is not defended.” Applying this rule, what if a critic makes this simple statement: “The latest book of Mr. Anonymous is of interest to no intelligent man”? According to the opinion of Mr. Odgers, it would seem that such a sentence standing alone was a statement of fact, whereas it is manifest that no one can think that the critic meant to say more than that in his opinion the book was not interesting. In Merrivale and Wife vs. Carson, the jury found that the words used by the critic described the play as adulterous, and the court said that this was a misdescription of the play—a false statement of fact; but an adulterous play may be one which is only suggestive of adultery; and even if the critic had baldly said that the play was adulterous, many of us would think that he was only expressing his opinion.

Since the test of whether the statement is of opinion or of fact lies, not in what the critic secretly intended, but rather in what the hearer or reader understood, the question is for the jury, and, it seems, should be presented to them by the court in the form: “Would a reasonable man under the circumstances have understood this to be a statement of opinion or of fact?”

One other care remains for the critic: he must not falsely impute a bad motive to the individual when commenting upon his work. No less a critic than Ruskin was held to have made this mistake in the instance of his criticism of one of Mr. Whistler’s pictures. This well-known libel case may be found reported in the Times for November 26 and 27, 1878. “The mannerisms and errors of these pictures,” wrote Mr. Ruskin, alluding to the pictures of Mr. Burne-Jones, “whatever may be their extent, are never affected or indolent. The work is natural to the painter, however strange to us, and is wrought with utmost care, however far, to his own or our desire, the result may yet be incomplete. Scarcely as much can be said for any other picture in the modern school; their eccentricities are almost always in some degree forced, and their imperfections gratuitously if not impertinently indulged. For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

Out of all this, stinging as it must have been to Mr. Whistler, unless, since he loved enemies and hated friends, he therefore found pleasure in the metaphorical thrashings he received, the jury could find only one phrase, “wilful imposture,” which, because it imputed bad motives, overstepped the bounds of fair criticism.

Mr. Odgers’s treatise states the rule to be that “When no ground is assigned for an inference of bad motives, or when the writer states the imputation of bad motives as a fact within his knowledge, then he is only protected if the imputation is true. But when the facts are set forth, together with the inference, and the reader may judge of the right or wrong of the opinion or inference, then if the facts are true, the writer is protected.” It is, however, difficult to see why the imputation of bad motives in the doer of an act or the creator of a work of art should in any case come under the right of fair comment, for, no matter how bad the motives of the individual may be, they are of no consequence to the public. If a book is immoral, it is immaterial to a fair criticism whether or not the author meant it to have an immoral effect; the public is not helped to a proper judgment of the book by any one’s opinion of the motives of the author, and if the book is bad in its effect, it makes it no better that the author was impelled by the best of intentions, or it makes it no worse that the author was acting with the most evil designs. And if, as in most of the cases that have arisen, the imputation is one of insincerity, fraud, or deception practiced upon the public,—where, for example, the critic, in commenting upon a medical treatise, about which he had made known all the facts, said that he thought the author wrote the book, not in the interest of scientific truth, but rather to draw trade by exploiting theories which he did not believe himself,—it would seem that this charge of fraud or deception should not be protected as a piece of fair comment, but that it should be put upon an equality with all other imputations against an individual, which if untrue and damaging would be held to be libel or slander. Under Mr. Odgers’s rule, in making a comment upon the acts of a public officer, one could say, “In pardoning six criminals last week the governor of the province, we think, has shown that he wishes to encourage criminality.” No court would, we think, hold this to be within the right of fair comment upon public matters. If the critic had said, however, “We think that the governor of the province, in pardoning six criminals, encouraged criminality,” all the true value of criticism remains, and the imputation that the public officer acted from an evil motive is stripped away. The best view seems to be that the right of fair comment will not shield the false imputations of bad motive.

Whether or not the critic may impute to the individual certain opinions does not seem to be settled, but logically this would be quite as much a statement of fact, or a criticism directed at the individual, as an imputation of bad motives. A few courts in this country have expressed a leaning to the opposite view, but the ground upon which they place their opinion does not appear.

From the legal point of view, then, we as critics are all held to a high standard of fairness. We must not comment upon any but matters of public interest. We must be honest and sincere, but we may express any view, no matter how prejudiced or exaggerated it may be, so long as it does not exceed the limits to which a reasonably fair man would go; we must not attack the individual any more than is consistent with a criticism of that which he makes or does, and we must not expect that we are within our right of comment when we make statements of fact or impute to the individual evil motives.

All the world asks the critic to be honest, careful, above spite and personalities, and polite enough not to thrust upon us a consideration in which we have no interest. The law demands no more.