NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 137, 10 June 1911, Page 13

NOTES.

H. T. Peck, editor of N.Y. "Bookman.'' recently got 2000 dots, damages from the "Boston Post," which was sorry to have permitted a contributor to call him an "ink-maniac," who had an almost "paranoiacal" desire to write about women. The judge summed good English law. "Limits of fair criticism are not narrow. In fact, a writer must express criticism. Anybody is free under our laws to express his honest opinion if the contents of the book justify it. It is good for the public to have the opinion of critics in review of books on the ground of public policy." But ''paranoiacal," plus "ink-maniac," plus a battery of pictures, the jury thought beyond fair criticism. As to damage, Peek claimed 100,000 dols., but the judge told him he could not recover vindictive or punitative damages— only compensation for proved injury.

Tn London they say that IT. G. Wells supplements invention with observation. The American "Publishers' Weekly" finds prototypes for the figures in "The New Machiavelli." It says the hero, Remington, was modelled partly on Sir Charles Dilke's career. Like Remington, Dilke was in his day the most prominent political figure in England; like Remington, Dilke was wrecked by a sexual entanglement; and. like Remington, Dilke possessed imagination and constructive ability in a degree unknown before in an English politician. "Wells' book has created a lot of talk in political circles in England, and a good many people feel that his character-drawing has been altogether too photographic. No one can fail to identify Kvesham, the leafier of the New Imperialist party, with Arthur Balfour, leader of the Tories. Crossington, the. newspaper proprietor, is to the life a picture of Lord NortbclifTe (Alfred TTarmsworth). The Baileys, who ran an idea and brain factory for the Radical wing of the Liberal party, are Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, the Fabian Socialists, who are doing just that in roal life, and so on all through the book. There is hardly a character in it that can't be identified with some real person in public life." But the imitations are not so close as this would suggest. Wells has merely used facts as a spring-board to fiction.