t to comment upon his works generally unless you are well
acquainted with them.

To sum up: if the opinion expressed is honest and relevant, then mere
unsoundness of judgment will not hurt you. The opinion of the jury, or
even of the judge, is not to be substituted for yours, otherwise we
should have to burn our pens. There is sense in this. The butcher, the
baker, the candlestick-maker, and even the learned judge, may have less
knowledge of art, or less taste in music, than the starving critic of
Fleet Street.

Honesty is the other element. Yet it has been suggested, though
unsuccessfully, that honesty is not a necessary ingredient in the
defence of "fair comment." It was argued that a criticism, defensible if
written by an honest critic, could not be indefensible because written
by one whose motive was malicious--in other words, that the matter was
objective, not subjective. Certainly, at first sight, it seems strange
that A can say with impunity that Smith's book is dull and B may have to
pay damages for saying the same thing in the same words. Clearly the
injury to the author may be the same in each case, might be greater in
A's if he wrote for a paper of larger circulation than the one which
published "B's" criticism.

On the other hand, few acts can be regarded in law from the point of
view of their consequences only. Smith may be killed by "A" or "B," and
the former, on account of the circumstances, may commit non-culpable
homicide, the latter murder.

To eliminate the ingredient of malice or, and it is the same thing, to
say that a criticism need not be honest might lead to shocking
consequences. The skilful craftsman would be able to write a fiendish
criticism with impunity and boast of the gratification of his hatred.
There is no half-way house. A plaintiff must be entitled to offer
evidence to a jury that the so-called critic has stated that, although
he called the plaintiff's book dull and clumsy, he really thought it a
delightful masterpiece; or he must be limited to inviting judge and jury
to study the defendant's article. Who would be satisfied that justice
had not slept if such evidence were excluded?

If, then, you dislike the author, dip your pen in honey rather than in
vinegar or, wiser still, leave his work alone. You must be more than
human not to be biassed and if, to contradict the bias, you praise the
book against your judgment, you act wrongly as a critic. What is
honesty? There is the cru