Jones in such wise that the latter should be led to avoid him altogether, that tradesman could claim damages for injuring his character and depriving him of custom. Should not the same rule apply to authors when they are condemned on mere hearsay? Or when their work is wilfully misrepresented and misquoted in the press?
It may not, perhaps, be considered out of place here to recall a "personal reminiscence" of the wilful misrepresentation made to a certain section of the public of a novel of mine entitled "Temporal Power." That book had scarcely left the printer's hands when W. T. Stead, of the Review of Reviews, wrote me a most cordial letter, congratulating me on the work, and averring that it was "the best" of all I had done. But in his letter he set forth the startling proposition that I "must have meant" King Edward, our own gracious Sovereign, for my "fictional" King, Queen Alexandra for the Queen, the Prince of Wales for my "Prince Humphry," and Mr. Chamberlain for the defaulting Secretary of State, who figures in the story as "Carl Perousse." I was so amazed at this curious free translation of my ideas, that at first I thought it was "Julia" who had thus persuaded Mr. Stead to see things upside down. But as his criticism of the book had not yet appeared in the Review of Reviews, I wrote to him at once, and earnestly assured him of the complete misapprehension he had made of my whole scope and intention. Despite this explanation on my part, however, Mr. Stead wrote and published a review of the book maintaining his own fabricated "case" against me, notwithstanding the fact that he held my
